(Nicole Blundell + Sandy McLennan | 3:50 | Canada | b + w | sound | 8mm to 16mm | 2024)

The postal system serves as more than just a means of transportation; for these two filmmakers it becomes a conduit through which they forged a connection, weaved a tapestry and created Correspondence-dance. With each shipment by mail of both camera and 8mm film, they infuse the work with their individual perspectives and practices allowing them to transcend geographical boundaries and language to co-create something that links the Two Solitudes.

(Robin Riad | 1:30 | Canada | Color | sound | 16mm | 2024)

Learn how to pronounce the Arabic Alphabet in 28 easy steps! Direct animation, laser-printing, and synthetic/animated sound.

(Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy | 7:36 | Australia | color | sound | 16mm | 2024)

Humanity approaches in an ineluctable wave of uncertainty, hope and inevitability. A ferry crossing in Mumbai stands here for all such places and times of human expansion and human vulnerability.

(Steven Woloshen | 3:31 | Canada | color | sound | 35mm to digital | 2023)

A short visit to the surface of a desolate planet, or an inspection of a damaged film print.

(Hsin-Yu Chen | 2:28 | Taiwan | b + w | silent | Super 8mm to digital)

On one roll of Super 8 film, 15m (50ft) = 2.5 minutes, at 24 frames per second. I walked 15 meters over 2.5 minutes of an entire roll of Super 8 film outside the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), where the international system of units, including standardized time and length, was developed and defined. The forced synchronicity premised on the structural materiality of film interrogates the notion of measurement, standardization, adaptation, and embodied experience.

(Federica Foglia | 4:00 | Canada | color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2023)

A handmade tattoo film that utilizes a camera-less direct-on-film animation approach to collage multiple layers of water tattoos (commonly used by children.) The filmmaker intervenes on the 16mm polyester base of recycled film scraps and treats the water based tattoos as film emulsion – creating an abstract animation inspired by the playful legacy of Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren.

(Sarah Bliss | 3:35 | USA | B + w | sound | 16mm to digital | 2023)

Moth Print is a collaboration with my deceased father. It traces lines of loss and confronts failure of memory. A cameraless handmade film, it employs a laser printer to image directly onto clear film leader, creating both (optical) sound and image. Each printed sheet contains 231 frames patiently composed and assembled one by one: 9.6 seconds of projected film. It utilizes two texts: digital video I shot of a Galium Sphinx moth compulsively divebombing a light that could destroy it, and a manuscript page from my father’s unpublished memoir in which he describes visiting his own father who was dying of Alzheimer’s. My father found him imprisoned in a state hospital, brutally beaten and bruised, strapped to a gurney unable to speak.

(Abinadi Meza | 6:00 | USA | Color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2024)

Aka 赤 (Japanese for “red”) is made from 33 meters of handmade 16mm film and shinkansen (bullet train) recordings. The intention is to construct a film as a space for primordial feeling, complex time, immersion, and one’s own living body.

(Patrick Connelly | 3:02 | USA | B + w | sound | 16mm to digital | 2024)

A scratch animation film about the experience of commuting by train. Exploring the movement of repeating patterns and shapes that pass by on the familiar route. Hand scratched on 16mm film.

(Ruth Hayes | length TBD | USA | color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2024)

A phytogram cocktail made with three varieties of basil.

(Sujin Lee | 4:33 | S. Korea | b + w | silent | 16mm to digital | 2022)

The Rorschach Inkblot Test was created by Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist, in 1921. The test employs a series of ten inkblot cards, and the test taker is asked to provide their perceptions or perspectives on the presented images. The test was considered effective in identifying and diagnosing schizophrenia and was administered to Nazi war criminals in an attempt to understand the Nazi personality. Often criticized as pseudoscience, the Rorschach is still used and remains controversial. The test is often referred to as Ro-sha (short for Rorschach) in Korea. The film Rosha tells stories spoken by a girl named Rosha. It is a photogram of the ten inkblot images on B&W 16mm film. The images overlap and break apart, leaving impressions on the film surface. When the film is projected, the printed inkblots turn into Rosha’s glossolalia,* which lies between language and non-language. *Glossolalia: often understood in a religious context, it refers to incomprehensible speech in an unknown or imaginary language.

(Sarah Ballard | 3:13 | USA | color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2023)

“to be with you (grotto)” fuses 16mm hand-processed film and digital artifacts in an attempt to adapt a love song written and performed by my mother in the 1980s.

(Dave Johnson | 2:40 | Canada | b + w | sound | 2:40 | 2023)

This film is a collision of images combining a visual and auditory adventure while talking about being an artist and the process of making this film…Or any film! As a filmmaker you are going through various adventures trying to assemble a unique and intriguing combination of visual and auditory stimulation. Sometimes the process of creating the film becomes flawed and your original intent inevitably becomes something new. In the end, does the film become a success or “the dream I tried for that couldn’t be realized”? “Adventures in Perception” is a “print film” using bi-packing and multiple exposures of found images and sounds. The found images and sound are sourced from previously existing educational films: “Adventures in Perception” about M.C. Escher, and one about sound called “Frequencies and Vibration.”

(Michael Morris | 3:22 | USA | Color | sound | 16mm to digital | 2023)

The music video for Black Taffy’s Riding Day is a loving nod to British experimental filmmaker Malcom Le Grice’s 1970 film Berlin Horse, an iconic work of Structural/Materialist filmmaking that featured a soundtrack by Brian Eno. Like that film, this film is an exploration of the material qualities of celluloid film in ways that are analogous to gestures in electronic music. Just as Black Taffy has sampled and reworked the soundtrack for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to create a new musical composition, this film samples and reworks images from its sequel Tears of the Kingdom, translating the interactive game world into a physical form. Similar to the way Eno’s tape loops fall in and out of sync with one another, the images of Link’s horse are made into loops that superimpose positive on top of negative and allow them to drift away from each other.

(Eislow Johnson | 1:23 | USA | b + w | sound | 16mm to digital | 2023)

The first of an interlude series within the multiple potential interstitial states of string harmonics. Hand processing and 16mm-to-digital scanning are treated as points of intervention and compositional instruments.

(Scott Stark | 15:00 | USA | color | sound | 16mm expanded cinema performance | 2022)

In a live double-16mm projector performance, Scott Stark feeds gorgeous Kodachrome found footage, from a 1950s promo doc about a fabled teen music camp near Stockton, CA, into his propeller-driven system to generate a transformative visual spectacle. Using two reels of film, the on-screen image alternates between the left and right projectors, transposing objects onto bodies, landscapes onto buildings, sidewalks onto swimming pools, and subtle musical movements onto frenetic explosions of color.

The 7th 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 featured in the festival originates on film stock.

The festival features a 35mm presentation of Kathryn Ramey’s El Signo Vacío (the empty sign), and a closing-night live performance from Lori Goldston and friends’ of original compositions over six films, presented on 16mm.

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