Baja Come Down

Two young misfits head for New York City to celebrate their idol and muse, Stevie Nicks, at The Night of 1,000 Stevies. Along the road, in order for them to escape their painful pasts, they must discover their strengths and learn self-acceptance.

A moment of youth is a short film compilation that showcases nine up-and-coming directors from seven countries in five continents.

But where does the heart go when that voice is displaced from a body that still breathes? In a world where artificial intelligence accelerates and replicates the human form, the boundary between spirit and simulation begins to dissolve. Time, life, and voice become commodities. 40 Epochs is a hybrid-narrative film exploring spiritual displacement, fractured identity, and the unseen labor behind human-like technologies. Inspired by the artists' experience training an AI model to reproduce Sun’s voice, the film follows a donor in solitude as she reads, records, and revises. What begins as ritual becomes rupture, as intimate gestures entwine with the demands of machinic repetition. Narration is carried by the artifact at its core: a synthetic voice generated from Sun’s speech. Disembodied from its origin, it speaks in her place—an uncanny meditation on memory, embodiment, and the estrangement of being heard without being present.

Sidka, a filmmaker in the process of gender transition, explores the vibrant nightlife of Buenos Aires, capturing the essence of underground culture and the deep connections that celebrate acceptance and self-expression.

A man and a woman begin in a womb, then converge with the sea.

A reject teenager follows some hot radicals and finds themself in the woods. An eco-parable produced by a mutual aid collective, shot on 16mm and portions hand-processed with plants.

A career driven woman fixated on become a single mom finds herself with more family and loves than she ever thought possible when a precocious preteen plays matchmaker with her jaded single dad.

A poetic Super 8mm film created by Rachael Wilson and Anderson Matthew set to accompany the live recital performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi – Chant d’amour et de mort (1945).

Mima, an American college student, embarks on a road trip to the rural Romanian village where her grandmother, Esther, was born. Her friend Jacob, a recent film-school dropout, joins her in the old country, along with an 18-year-old translator whom she found on Facebook. Decades after Esther’s death, Mima relies on her grandmother’s unmarked photos of the village and recorded oral history to orient herself in the remote area. As the trio scale walls and trek through fields searching for any evidence of Esther’s life in Romania, the deeper unknowns animating Mima's journey begin to reveal themselves.

Utilizing super 8mm and an economical shooting method of quick, short shots building idiosyncratic rhythms via rapid editing techniques, time, nature, and even the body folds in on itself. Everybody Dies (2020) is a poetic journey into the desert. It’s a reflection on the nature of death as something not to be feared, but embraced as a part of a personal and universal human experience. Super 8mm.

It’s Initiation Night at Chi Theta Fraternity and six Pledges face off on their quest toward Brotherhood. Adapted from a play, Frat Pie is a bold, tragicomic exploration of toxic masculinity and the silent presence of homophobia within male-dominated spaces.

Documentary film about the controversial artist, poet, and musician Rozz Williams, founder of the band Christian Death, who passed away at the young age of 34, leaving a legacy behind, now to be discovered for the first time for a new generation.

Four friends reflect on a road trip through Mexico, sifting through fragments of super 8mm, evoking questions of home, family and textures of memory itself. 

A young Latinx trans woman skateboards through Los Angeles trying to make her rent.

“And, 'twixt the shadows and frights of nocturnal splendors, My beloved will secretly be hiding. Say what you will, say what you may.” The sound of a distant whistle and theorbo calls a sleeping singer through the empty streets of Stuttgart in a midnight journey to the opera house. ‘dei notturni splendori’ is an experimental opera film made for the Staatsoper Stuttgart in the early months of the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown. Anderson Matthew captures the singer Helene Schneiderman through a midnight dream with a hand-cranked kino camera in an ecstatic 35mm photo roman, in search for her own performance of the Tarquinio Merula madrigal Folle é ben chi se crede from 1638.

Short Super 8mm film reflections on Hollywood Blvd with Orkgotik.