Philip Rabalais

On a pivotal ballet performance night, Annie, a reluctant dancer battling an injury and uncertainty, faces the pressures of her mother, family tensions, a ready-to-rise younger sister, and Juilliard scouts in the audience.

RELIGION OF MESS. A kaleidoscopic tapestry of colorful characters collide in a small Iowa town. Runaway children make a movie, aging idealists hatch a dangerous plan, aimless townie girls get into mischief, a mysterious mother digs for buried treasure, and shirtless man ponders the meaning of the town’s towers. Spooky, serendipitous resonances bubble up between stories where people play themselves in fictionalized as well as real life scenarios. In a world in crisis, filmmaking itself becomes a form of coping and celebration.

A break from our regularly scheduled programming.

Charging scenes of the present with dystopian speculation, "Field Resistance" blurs the boundaries between documentary filmmaking and science fiction to investigate overlooked environmental devastation in the overlooked state of Iowa. Footage collected from disparate locations—a university herbarium, karst sinkholes inhabited by primordial flora and fauna, a telecommunication tower job site, a decaying grain silo, among others—interlocks to evoke a narrative of present danger and future disaster, of plant expansion and humanity's retreat. The film rejects the human individual as the focus of narrative cinema, and, instead, adopts the perspective of a symbiotic "implosive whole" in which human and nonhumans are related in an overlapping, non-total way.

At Wisconsin Dells, the world capital of water parks, foreign students are employed on summer work visas. This programme, presented as an immersion into American culture, is also a way of profiting from cheap labour. An inspired portrait of contemporary America through the eyes of this young generation.

Earth FM is a minimalist sci-fi about imaginary science and sonic symbiosis. Three researchers reach into the planet using esoteric audio equipment. Their search for signal culminates when their transmissions cross, resulting in a mysterious and cathartic discovery.

A fragile young woman takes her lifelike doll out in public for the first time, but a visit to the natural history museum triggers a dark childhood memory, forcing her to confront reality and let go.

This boat is out of control!