Kersti Jan Werdal

Kersti Jan Werdal’s Test Piece critically examines the art of filmmaking as a synthesis of conceptual construction and intricate editing. Inspired by Straub-Huillet, the film deconstructs the fundamental elements of film, image, sound, and text, to create a space for reflection and thought rather than conventional narrative explanation or emotional immersion.

Film installation intended to play on loop, S16mm.

Asli Baykal’s Darkroom, created with the young participants of the Sirkhane Darkroom Workshop in a border town between Turkey and Syria, opens the screening program. In it, children roam the area, looking at the world through the viewfinders of analog cameras, in an intimate vision of the medium as a form of play and a way to forge an alternate reality in a conflict zone.

Promenade is an observational doc portrait of dancer-choreographer Brittany Bailey as she prepares to debut a new work, while interrogating performance representation in moving image.

A coming-of-age film about a group of outsider teenagers in Seattle dealing with the consequences of accidental gun violence in their hometown.

In I Cannot Now Recall, a collection of Yvonne Rainer's dreams are presented, selected by the filmmaker from Rainer's journals. Through choice and abstraction, the film produces a shared psychic landscape that is as expansive as it is anxious.