Ross Meckfessel

A diary film of blue sunlight, digitized faces, and neon.

2011/2012, 16mm, Optical Sound, B&W, 17 min

Inescapable forces intersect in Ross Meckfessel’s Estuary when the increasingly unreal landscape of everyday life is invaded by the hyperreality of computer graphics and AI social-media influencers. The analog and the digital vie and blend with each other as Nature, dissected and repackaged, reemerges in pixel form.

“The life of a flower is short Only bitter things are many” – Fumiko Hayashi “If they don't see happiness in the picture at least they'll see the black” – Chris Marker Sans Soleil

16mm, Optical Sound, Color.

A walk through corridors and rooms culminates in a familial Reiki session – what’s underneath and within. Zero Length Spring is an apotropaic film, imprinted by rituals and symbols, basking in ruptures of the body and the earth. ASMR brush tracks and the language of self-help therapy, film surface abrasions and alleged paranormal photos, all help give shape to various unseeable forces. You’re worth it, you deserve love, you can grow.

An homage to Gregory Markopoulos (specifically the film Himself as Herself) by Lyra Hill and Ross Meckfessel. This film was made for the Bride of Super 8 screening at the 2011 Chicago 8 Small Gauge Film Festival.

The real and the virtual fold together and apart until space itself is rendered immaterial in this slipstream of digital-modulated environments that brings together landscape photography, video game interfaces, and drone-conducted land surveys in brisk montage.

The stink of seaweed permeates the streets. I’ve heard there’s growing dissatisfaction among the youth. Do you feel content? How often do you dream? Are you better off alone?

A forbidding soundtrack of horns and distorted noise sets the scene for Ross Meckfessel’s Spark from a Falling Star, where shots of grocery store parking lots and dimly lit suburban roads breed atmospheres of low-level menace. At the other extreme, smooth digital renderings promise a shiny, spectral future utopia of clean lines and mirrored grids.

He, She, I Was captures strangers on the street as I tell their, and my own, supposed life stories. By switching between presumed fact and fiction, the film calls its own validity into question. Can movies ever be trusted to tell the truth?

A silent film by Ross Meckfessel.

Every Star Wars card I owned. A eulogy.

Ostensibly an abstracted portrait of actress Jojo Hill as she portrays five different characters in this behind-the-scenes documentary of Uzi’s Party: an experimental pagan teen drama by Lyra Hill. However, the film is also a ritual in and of itself; it captures the energies within the pagan temple used as a filming location, while visually portraying the disintegration of identity that occurs throughout the narrative of Uzi's Party.

"I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn't enough. I was exploding inside." - Ingrid Bergman A cry for help in the form of a pop song. A village cast as a simulacrum of the past by Oliver Stone and Ridley Scott, Pasolini and Scorsese. As the future starts devouring the present, how can we hope to remember the past? Pics or it never existed. For Ingrid and Roberto