Foreign Powers

An adaptation of “Sea Foam”, a chapter from Cesare Pavese’s “Dialoghi con Leucò” published in 1947. The ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis meet beside the sea and have a conversation about love and death. Sappho is said to have thrown herself into the ocean from lovesickness. Britomartis apparently tumbled off a cliff and into the water while fleeing from a man. Together, the two discuss the stories and images that have emerged around them to try and understand, at least for a moment, the bittersweet nature of desire.

Twentysomething Brooklynites Mara and Jo have been close friends since middle school. Gradually, it becomes apparent that the increasingly unstable Jo has troubles that may be the result of substance abuse, or an even deeper problem. Over the course of a decade, the more stable Mara tries to help.

For the Plasma begins in a remote house on the coast of Maine, where a young woman named Helen has found work as a forest-fire lookout responsible for monitoring the nearby woodland. While analyzing CCTV footage of the surrounding forest, she discovers she can reconfigure her perception to predict shifts in global financial markets. But when her inquisitive and demanding friend Charlie arrives at the house, Helen finds herself challenged and unsettled by her new colleague, and the two girls’ relationship begins to unravel. From this cryptic premise grows a lo-fi mind-bender of intimate scale and startling relevance that flirts with sci-fi and horror conventions, even as it subverts them. To the strains of an electronic score, For the Plasma juxtaposes pastoral imagery with surveillance technology, every shade and shadow captured in gorgeous 16mm.

Camila, a young Argentine theater director, travels from Buenos Aires to New York to attend an artistic residency to develop a Spanish translation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Upon her arrival, she begins to receive a series of mysterious postcards which set her down a winding path through her past and towards her future.

Caterina was born in South America but lives in New York. Her willingness to make close emotional connections to others is as much of a burden as it is a gift.

A young man disappears amid talk of violence and demagoguery, leaving behind an obscure cache of letters, postcards, and notebooks.

An applauded New York intellectual hires a young archivist to whitewash her late psychologist father's reputation by eliminating a forbidding, potentially incriminating paper trail.

A mosaic-style comedy following the life of a woman as time passes in her long-term casual BDSM relationship, low-level corporate job, and quarrelsome Jewish family.

Twenty years ago, believing she was doomed, Irma took a trip to Greece. Today, she retraces that journey, accompanied by three young men. From island to island, between sky and sea, the travelers read, listen and live, carried by a longing for beauty and clarity.

Two young Argentines, brought together by chance, wander the streets of New York City, increasingly lost in a maze of currency exchange, translation problems, religious vocation and nocturnal flirtation.

Mirages have been reported along the Spanish coast. A young French woman travels to San Sebastián to observe these visual aberrations. There, she meets a mysterious Portuguese woman who tells her a story from her youth: of obsession, and a gaze that can turn the world inside out.

Maria and Matías feel life is slipping through their fingers, and turn to birds, real and imagined, in a search for meaning and connection.

A young filmmaker named Domino travels from the UK to New York City to hunt down funding for her new film. Harkening back to classic counter-cultural Big Apple films of the 70s and 80s, Keep Looking has a loose, jazzy feel that gives this simple narrative a hip freshness.

Short for Portuguese television channel Canal180's "Jogo Cruzado" series.

New York’s Miguel Abreu Gallery is at the center of Bingham Bryant’s short, which follows Adrian Dannatt across his eponymous exhibit while observing works from, among others, Pablo Picasso, Guy Debord, Nan Goldin, Damien Hirst, and Duncan Hannah. Each is captured by cinematographer Sean Price Williams in appropriately textured images while a studious, amusing voice-over jumps between biography and philosophy.

As the day begins, a woman sets out to go about her routine, until she decides to take her children to the cemetery to see zombies. When she returns home, this interruption in her day will leave her with a strange and magical feeling.