THURSDAY 2/17 8 PM

What Hits the Moon   (4:12)
Lilli Carré, Chicago, IL
The moon: inscrutable lover, or smug creep? Cartoonist Lilli Carré (Tales of Woodsman Pete, The Lagoon) reveals the sad and everlasting truth.

Old Gowns   (6:00)
Director: Habib Yazdi, Director of Photography: Andrew Synowiez, NYC and Durham, NC
The City of Tobacco and Sad Longing. Durham band Mount Moriah proves we’re soaking in it.

Daphne 2.0   (3:36)
Marc Russo and Francesca Talenti , Raleigh & Chapel Hill, NC
Nature versus technology, human versus nonhuman in the retelling of a classic myth. Who will win?

Inside Out/Side One   (5:00)
Matt Meindl, Columbus, OH
A homemade amalgam packed with hearty nostalgia chunks. Part of a complete remembrance.

“IOKA”   (19:15)
Kyle S. Glowacky, Brentwood, NH
16mm
A poetic exploration of Exeter, New Hampshire’s late, lamented Ioka theater and the idea of motion projected in a space.
Live musical accompaniment by the filmmaker

Self Improvement   (2:43)
Clint Enns, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
A self-help video that resides somewhere between the realms of code hacking and spiritual awakening.

Greenland Shark   (5:27)
Joe Lachajczyk, New Orleans, LA
A legally blind shark, a pubescent caribou, and lo-fi animation goodness.

mono.nucle.osis   (3:48)
Charlotte Taylor, Fletcher, NC
“Mom, I’m sick.” Let’s hope your mother is more sympathetic.

Sandpiper   (4:00)
John Scott, Ithaca, NY
An adaptation of Elizabeth Bishop’s eponymous poem.

DURHAM CINEMATHEQUE PRESENTS
“INTERVIEWED”
16mm
A film + sound program by Tom Whiteside and Khristian Weeks
On film: six anonymous interviews shot in Salt Lake City in 1960. Why made? Who asks? What learned? We don’t know much. Whiteside and Weeks extrapolate from there.


FRIDAY 2/18 8 PM

My Five Years in a Nutshell    (30:00)
Vincent Trasov and Byron Black, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Art, sex, politics, and Mr. Peanut. All secrets are revealed in this 1975 Canadian time capsule.

Sharp Edge Blunt    (1:50)
Leighton Pierce, Iowa City, IA
A simple task executed with ambiguous intent.

The Salariat in Parts    (11:18)
Zachary Epcar, San Francisco, CA
The Regional District Manager can’t believe he ate the whole thing. A queasy gastric bubble of a film.

Susan’s Horses    (6:15)
Elizabeth Henry, Glenwood Springs, CO
A Colorado horse camp helps kids, and its owner.

Heroin Takes a Fall - A Mandy Tamate! Film     (5:00)
Nic Beery, Chapel Hill, NC
The filmmaker adopts a new persona to stitch together sounds and images from long ago.

Place for Landing    (6:08)
Shambhavi Kaul, Durham, NC
An unsettling bedtime story about mirrors and reflection. That lovely moon/This round earth/ Aliens are made of diamonds/Earthlings are made of pearls.

Up the Rabbit Hole     (5:00)
Asa Mori, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Post-apocalyptic mutant girl takes the ride of her life in this scary animation.

Winged    (3:00)
Jennifer Hardacker, Portland, OR
A mother must protect her young. Is she up to it?

Wrestling with My Father     (5:00)
Charles Fairbanks, Lexington, NE
Once a wrestler, always a wrestler.

How the Bridge Works     (6:51)
Irit Reinheimer and Sara Zia Ebrahimi, Philadelphia, PA
Using projections and reprojections, two filmmakers reflect on their fathers’ departures.

Sleeping and Dreaming of Food     (8:00)
Eva-Marie Elg, London, England
A startling and surreal animation based on Swedish legend Kolbeinn Karlsson’s comic book about the perils of going to bed without any supper.

WORLD PREMIERE
Sound Between Lines: Triangle Soundpainting Orchestra    (23:36)
Jason Middleton, Rochester, NY
An exploration of the method and music of Durham’s improvisational ensemble.
Live performance by the Triangle Soundpainting Orchestra and WINKY immediately following the screening


SATURDAY 2/19 3:15 PM

Wrecking Ball     (6:25)
Lyle Pisio, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Our bartender ponders the meaning of Life, Music, and The Road, but mostly about doing terrible violence to the regulars. A return to the captivating animated world from last year’s selection “The Empress.”

Emptiness in My Heart     (3:15)
Dan Anderson & Bobby Missile, Hot Springs National Park, AR
A video with music, a mission through time and space, and enough analog effects to make your Haggar double-knits jealous.

The Great Dictator     (7:33)
Nancy Kalow, Durham, NC
An eccentric collection of mid-20th century dictating equipment reflects one man’s zeal for the history and design of “dead media”: wax cylinder, wire, and magnetic recording machines.

Upgrades     (1:21)
Anya Belkina, Boston, MA
Moore’s Law meets “Flight of the Bumblebee” in this breakneck-paced animated parody.

South Dakota     (8:32)
Scott Browning, Durham, NC
An elegiac repurposing of amateur films of Depression-era South Dakota taken by theater projectionist Ivan Besse.

Four Cubic Feet of Space     (8:42)
Tony Gault, Glenwood Springs, CO
Artist Daniel Spride ruminates on the strange fact that…we all exist.

Welcome to My Paradise     (21:46)
Rhonda Klevansky, Durham, NC
A portrait of sand artists in Durban, South Africa, the highs and lows of a life at the beach.

Drifting     (18:00)
Malic Amalya, Seattle, WA
16mm
Both an homage to and a polemic on nostalgia for Americana, Drifting re-photographs damaged bits of 8mm home movies to get viewers to reconsider the framing of images and memory.
Live musical accompaniment by Wendy Spitzer of Felix Obelix

Black Moon     (1:00)
Brandon Blommaert, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Creepy, creeping fungus and clay animation are a potent mix.

The Lost Tribe of the Anarcho-Mofungus: An Ethnographic Document     (10:18)
Brad Boll, Carrboro, NC
That shotgun-wielding tribe of West Virginia freakazoids finally gets some serious academic study. Cannibalism ensues.

The Well of Representation     (7:50)
Evan Meaney, Knoxville, TN
In part a remake of Hollis Frampton’s Gloria! (1979), in part a repurposing of hacked, 16-bit video game technology. The tenth part of the filmmaker’s body of glitch-art, Ceibas Cycle.

Boldly Going     (4:15)
L J Frezza, Cambridge, MA
Captain James T. Kirk, whose video image keeps oddly breaking down, reads the Preamble, then kicks some serious ass—his own.

The Three of Us     (20:00)
Chris Renaud, Iowa City, IA
A reclusive artist and his companion, living on the edge of town, have an opportunity to purge their overwhelming collections of stuff and start afresh. Or is this possible? A documentary rumination on collection, partnership, and a certain kind of haunting.


SATURDAY 2/19 8 PM

Anima Mundi     (3:33)
Kate Balsley, Brown Deer, WI
Let a thousand cinematic flowers bloom.

The Garden     (10:00)
Ann Steuernagel, Cambridge, MA
Recycled film footage reflects, in a trio of situations, ecological change and everyday rhythms.

Gift     (2:30)
Sean (Seong-Young) Kim , Los Angeles, CA
The relationship between the butcher and the chicken takes some humorous twists in this hand-drawn animation.

For the Birds     (5:47)
Lilli Carré, Chicago, IL
Bear on wire, old man in flight. And other everyday occurrences.

Aliki     (5:00)
Richard Wiebe, Iowa City, IA
Lake Aliki, Cyprus. For centuries, countless flamingos have wintered here from Iran. It is said that Lazarus spent his days on the shores of this lake after his resurrection—staring into the sun to shake off the darkness of the grave.

Sun Moon Stars Rain     (3:20)
Leslie Supnet, Manitoba, Alberta, Canada
A psychedelic visual elegy, lamenting the death of Mother Nature’s children.

STRANGE BEAUTY AURAL FIXATION
(various artists)    (30:00)
Jennifer Deer of Big Shed Audio + Media curates a listening block of audio documentary and audio art from the archives of The Big Shed Podcast, a DIY kinda place for the exploration of voices, stories, and sound.

Golden Tigers     (2:38)
Matt Hedt, Durham, NC
John Harrison of North Elementary is Durham’s gastric troubadour supreme.

Yellow Movie     (8:43)
Josh Gibson, Durham, NC
A child’s soundtrack and finger painting on film provides the inspiration as a proud father attempts to savor fleeting moments on hand processed 16mm film.

At the Top of the Tallest Mountain in the World     (6:03)
Matt Reynolds, Mill Valley, CA
What’s the sound of one hand smacking? The guru you seek may not be the one you find in this cautionary, extravagantly hypnotic animation.

Silos     (8:52)
Jim Kellough, Durham, NC
Looking out across a flat earth (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa), the Silos stick up. What are they for? Get out of the car: other things grab your attention.

Three Times a Liberty Lady     (5:40)
David Craig, Portland, OR
There’s a gal he carries a torch for, but she’s got one of her own. An homage to one man’s obsessive love of Liberty.

Sleeper     (8:00)
Marina Roy, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Don’t worry little Johnny, it’s all a dream. A crazy, terrifying, funhouse mirror kinda dream. Where that creepy dude just can’t stop eating the hot dogs. Say goodnight, Gracie...


Some highlights of 2011’s festival:

THU Feb 17 8 pm: Durham Cinematheque presented “Interviewed,” a film & sound program by Tom Whiteside and Khristian Weeks

+Opening night party at Fullsteam Brewery after the show

FRI Feb 18 8 pm: World premiere of a new documentary, Sound Between Lines: Triangle Soundpainting Orchestra by former Durham resident Jason Middleton, plus live performance by the Triangle Soundpainting Orchestra and WINKY.

SAT Feb 19 3:15 pm: Seattle filmmaker Malic Amalya’s Drifting, with live musical accompaniment by Wendy Spitzer of Felix Obelix.

SAT Feb 19 8 pm: The Strange Beauty Aural Fixation, a listening session of audio art & audio documentary produced by Big Shed Audio+Media.

+After-Party show at Motorco Music Hall on Sat, Feb 19 featuring Schooner, Justin Robinson & the Mary Annettes (featuring Justin Robinson of the Carolina Chocolate Drops), and Felix Obelix,

PLUS a new photography installation by Durham photographer M.J. Sharp in the Manbites Dog theater lobby, which spotlighted two of her recent obsessions, dead-of-night photography in Scotland, and “domestic interior landscapes,” both quite strange and beautiful!