(Pam Minty | b + w & color | sound | 5:45 | 16mm to digital | 2022 | US)

Archival marketing images produced by a former hotel for women, The Martha Washington, are juxtaposed to damaged images of a resident from the 1930s and contemporary portraits of women filmmakers in Portland. Lena Loomis, a domestic worker at the Martha Washington (which is now part of student housing at Portland State University) sends a letter advocating for herself demanding fair hours and wages.

(Abinadi Meza | color | sound | 8:38 | 16mm to digital | 2023 | US)

A handmade cameraless 16mm film of materiality and transformation; an enigmatic otherworld where hues of water evolve into prismatic blooms. Tlaloc is the deity of waters, rain, lightning, and growth in the Aztec pantheon. This film explores the membrane of film itself – a moving skin marked by fluid, punctured by light. The protean soundtrack was entirely composed with contact microphones to capture handmade surface markings and gestures. The motion picture was made with direct animation, scratching, hand-painting, and contact-printing techniques.

(Madelyn Gowler | b + w | sound | 3:26 | film to digital | 2021 | Canada)

“Film About Film: Second Cut” is a stop motion loop of a collaged piece of 120 film, prints, and stamps from film spools. The video is a slow, meditative deconstruction of photo, escaping from the typical treatment of film as a precious object, overcoming the fear of ruining the original copy.

(Anne-Marie Bouchard | color | sound | 2:49 | 16mm to digital | 2021 | Canada)

100 feet of clear 16mm, using mostly blue paint & inks, playing with the persistence of vision by drawing on one of two frames only. Music improvised on the images.

(Josh Drake, Jeremy Moss, James Hollenbaugh & Caleb Smith | color | sound | 3:38 | 16mm | 2023 | US)

A collaborative Dadaist/exquisite corpse film on the theme of waste by four members of the Harrisburg-based collective Moviate.

Process: A found, expired 100’ roll of 16mm color negative film was split into four parts and photographed separately by each participant. Then each section was developed in a homemade b&w developer from the participant’s own compostable waste. The negative was then printed to 16mm color print stock on a makeshift DIY contact printer along with found optical sound. Lastly, it was assembled in the Dadaist poetry method by cutting the printed film into pieces, placing them into a large wooden box with holes, randomly pulling strips of film out through the holes one at a time and splicing them together in that order.

(Malic Amalya | color | sound | 20:00 | 16mm | 2023 | US)

This film examines the carceral logics of the Orca Encounter at SeaWorld San Diego and the “Doing Time” tour of the former Alcatraz prison in the San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz is part of a larger industry of prison tourism that treats prisons and jails as real-life haunted houses. Through an immersive audio tour with stories from prisoners and guards, “Doing Time” reinforces racist beliefs that police and prisons “keep us safe.” Gently challenging this narrative, Alcatraz has recently hosted art and educational exhibitions that question the prison industrial complex. Likewise, Alcatraz’s buildings are permanently marked with evidence of Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism during the Occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971. In contrast to the empty prison cells and crumbling buildings at Alcatraz, SeaWorld is full of marine life in above ground tanks with see-through walls. Under pressure from activists and exposés on the cruelty of their practices, SeaWorld’s marketing focuses on their habitat conservation and animal rescue efforts, as well as hyperbole about how their scientific research and education materials help marine animals – both captive and wild. Juxtaposing original 16mm footage, promotional VHS and 16mm footage, and analog video feedback, Living Lessons in the Museum of Order explores the tensions between public fantasies and exploitative practices, as well as between rhetorical and cultural changes, within the two California entertainment empires.

(Philip Cartelli & Mariangela Ciccarello | b + w & color | sound | 6:00 | 16mm | 2022 | Greece)

“The four corners of the hexagon.” The formal simplicity of the “hexagon” (which refers to the idealized shape of metropolitan France) is countered in the film by convoluted drawings and twisted branches of a coastal environment, evoking French colonial domination and the illusion of national unity and harmony.

(Devon Damonte | b + w & color | sound | 3:50 | 16mm | 2021 | US)

A plethora of PPE masks are sliced and diced then stuck directly onto 16mm film, then photogrammed and cyanotyped to reveal spiritual alchemies of fossil-fueled plastics melt-blown and spun-bond to strap onto our faces.

(Sofia Theodore-Pierce | color | sound | 11:07 | 16mm to digital | 2023 | US)

Seizure dreams, horses, and long-distance conversations from bed. Loose reenactments from Marguerite Duras Baxter, Vera Baxter. A year of stormy weather and temporal rupture recalled in fragments. Featuring my mother and other star-crossed lovers.

(Patrick Connelly | b + w | sound | 3:14 | 16mm to digital | 2020 | US)

Pin and Tumbler is a 16mm scratch film animation exploring the shapes and movements of locks and keys. The film imagines an experimental journey through the inner mechanisms of a lock. Images were hand scratched onto 16mm black leader using household keys as guides.

(Janice VanderKelen | color | sound | 6:10 | 16mm to digital | 2022 | US)

This film embraces plant sentience as fact and speculates how beings of the vegetal variety might approach interspecies communication with humans (who are far more sensorially limited). Leaves, mycelium, and roots playfully examine how humans experience the world, and the (supposedly) silent watchers consider what language those swift blurs of human might possibly understand.

(Abigail Smith | color | sound | 2:00| 35mm | 2022 | US)

“Thread” uses machine sewn techniques to create abstractions on film that explore the medium’s relationship to motion and mechanics, the relationship between passing film through a sewing machine and film passed, or “threaded” through a camera or projector.

The 6th Engauge Experimental Film Festival celebrates sprocket-driven, artist-made experimental film, presenting seven programs of shorts and one feature over the course of four nights at NWFF’s cinema in Capitol Hill. All work features in the festival originated on film stock.

The festival features a solo show by San Francisco-based filmmaker Greta Snider, and Lori Goldston and friends’ live score for a 16mm print of Anacortes-born, Beat Generation filmmaker Harry Smith’s feature Heaven and Earth Magic.

⚠️ Please note: NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. We are not currently checking vaccination cards.