Bookended by stunning astral compositions, this programme explores the elemental as informed by myths, legends, dreams, and cosmic forces. With films by Kevin Jerome Everson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sky Hopinka, Britany Gavelly & Ken Linehan, Jodie Mack, Lina Rodriguez, and Malena Szlam.
Wavelengths 1: Earth, Wind & Fire
Playing as part of this programme:
Fainting Spells
Sky Hopinka's Fainting Spells responds to Ho-Chunk traditions of revival and a myth inspired by the Xawiska, or the Indian Pipe Plant, producing a trance-like meditation on arrivals, departures, and ascendance.
Prologue to the Tarot: Glenna
Described by the filmmakers as a "cinematic tarot card", Brittany Gravely and Ken Linehan's twice-exposed Prologue to the Tarot: Glenna is a shimmering portrait of the titular Glenna, accompanied by drapes and opulent crystals worthy of Kenneth Anger or Josef von Sternberg.
ALTIPLANO
Malena Szlam's magnificent follow-up to Lunar Almanac employs superimpositions and other effects to recast the lakes, salt flats, and volcanic deserts of Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina as psychedelic, otherworldly landscapes.
ante mis ojos
Shot on grainy, amber-like Super 8, Lina Rodriguez’s elusive and evocative ante mis ojos offers a fragmentary glimpse of Colombia's mythic Lake Guatavita, long considered the inspiration for the legend of El Dorado.
Polly One
Across Polly One's two exquisite shots, veteran filmmaker (and amateur meteorologist) Kevin Jerome Everson utilizes 16mm film and unconventional lenses to render — in swirling Turneresque colours — a natural phenomenon even more cosmic.
Blue
In the hushed, somnolent, yet unsettling Blue, Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul and frequent collaborator Jenjira Pongpas Widner present a choreographed dance of scrolls and a portrait of feverish slumber.
Hoarders Without Borders
In Jodie Mack's Hoarders Without Borders gems and other oddities from the collection of mineralogist Mary Johnson are rapidly manipulated by ghost-like hands, producing a stunning, hypnotic take on the (super)natural sciences.