Curious Light

After receiving a VHS tape claiming she's a disciple of an alien species known as the "True Mothers", Amy joins a local UFO cult, donning the name Celisse and befriending a number of other members while under the watch of the cult's peculiar founder, Ascensia.

Wasteland is a five-part anthology film that deals with isolation, mental illness, and the subjectivity of reality. Each of the five parts can be watched individually, but when viewed in sequence, each story brings out a more interesting and distinct context to its respective pieces.

Witness an alchemist's spell: the transmutation of light into substance. A glimpse of gold.

"Sandy Ding's WATER SPELL is a bold, abstract journey that takes us into the psychic interior of our very cellular structure... and back. For me, this film is about reincarnation and transformation, on both the spiritual and sub-atomic levels. This is not an easy film, but it is a powerful one."

--Nina Menkes

Delicate threads of energy spiral and transform into mysterious microscopic cells of golden dust: these are the luminous particles of the alchemist’s dream. Prima Materia is inspired by the haunting wonderment of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. It is an homage to the first, tentative photographic records that revealed the extraordinary nature of phenomena lurking just beyond the edge of human vision.

"As a filmmaker, I spend many hours examining the world through a lens. When asked to reflect on the collections at the Huntington, I was instantly drawn to the 1665 edition of Micrographia, a seminal work of observations made with the aid of a microscope by the great natural philosopher Robert Hooke. As I subsequently wandered the gardens and collections I searched for resonances in texture and form, seeking out plants and objects that suggested the exquisite delicacy of the engraved illustrations in Micrographia." (Charlotte Pryce).

A dirge, a dance. A portrait of stillness and silence disturbed by the urgency of sadness. The film is composed of paintings from the Northern Renaissance, collaged and combined with hand-painted, hand-processed and optically manipulated images of seashells, hands and dolls. The Ave Maria is sung by Rosa Ponselle, the dancer is Annie Morad.

Pwdre ser is the Welsh name for the mythical substance star jelly that has been observed since the 1400s. The film depicts an encounter with a mysterious, luminous, electrical substance. Inspired equally by medieval accounts of visionary experiences and by 19th-century photography of the invisible, Pwdre Ser joins coronal Kirlian photography with hand-processed images.

An intoxicating flower; a metaphorical insect; a longing reach across the centuries. The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly is a philosophical search drenched in luminous colours and sparkling light. The film was shot on colour reversal, entirely hand-processed and re-printed on the optical printer. "Having grown the exquisite tulip, I feel deeply under its spell--an affliction shared by an artist from another time and place, yet the dilemma we faced was shared: to fall for such a luxurious and temporary beauty raised a fear (a reminder--a fly) of the transience of life" - CP

The film takes the form of an ecorchee: an anatomical drawing in which the outer layer of skin is pulled back to reveal an embryo. Images flicker and pages are turned creating an unfolding of layers in time. The film is entirely hand processed.

A live performance with vintage magic lanterns and handmade lantern slides tells the tale of famed naturalist Hudson's spellbinding recollection of birds seen as a child from the pampas of his native Argentina. But the magic lantern also brings out other, hidden layers, including an encounter with nature teetering between joy and dread.

Charlotte Pryce's innocent observations of striders dancing on the water's surface in "Of This Beguiling Membrane" conceal darker glimpses of what lurks beneath. Inspired by Scottish folklorist Robert Kirk's "The Secret Commonwealth" (1671), Pryce arranges a meeting with the mysterious spirits lying in wait. What happens when we tempt fate and provoke that which we aren’t supposed to see? A reminder of the dangerous seduction of beauty.

A mythological tale, retold and recast, unfurls on the periphery of a common. The entangled intrigues of the seen and the unseen conspire to disclose an underland at once enticing and threatening. But what are the consequences of such trespassing between worlds? The title of this allegorical story refers to the ecological process that occurs when organisms enter a dormant phase in response to adverse conditions. The film was made during the months and years of the pandemic. There were two aspects of this time that I was particularly struck by: firstly, that the virus occurred because of an extraordinary contact between the animal and human worlds, and secondly, that this contact resulted in a global "dormancy". Such events seemed terrifying and inexplicable - and yet our folklore, myths and fairy tales are replete with such events and occurrences. In turn these stories drew from observation of natural processes.

Three Miniature, Illuminated, Heliographic studies of plants, observed and imagined. Fragile leaves and very fine threads of fungus string together in Charlotte Pryce’s three plant studies. Plants and images of the plants, and their envisioned environments, are intertwined. The title is taken from an obscure genre of 17th century painting: Forest Floor Paintings, which placed plants into a 'real' environment as opposed to a vase.

The film takes its title from chapter three of Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking-Glass. This play of observation makes use of magnifying glasses, used by both entomologists and filmmakers alike. The magnifying glasses can be seen as a visual metaphor for the cinematic process. Yet the insects of the story dissolve into darkness.

This live, vintage magic lantern performance tells the colourful story of a reluctant outlaw, a scavenger, a visionary. It is a science-fiction fable for the Anthropocene told with the delicate light of the magic lantern. It is a work of pre-cinematic moving images, with slides that are handmade and hand processed.