December 9 | 7 PM
The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. Cambridge, MA, USA
Awards, live screenings, & filmmaker Q&A featuring local and international shorts.
All films are presented in English or in their original language with English subtitles
The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. Cambridge, MA, USA
Awards, live screenings, & filmmaker Q&A featuring local and international shorts.
All films are presented in English or in their original language with English subtitles
Symptom - Kamee Abrahamian, Armenia, 23:00, Documentary
Trace on My Body - Yue Hua, China, 3:10, Experimental
Passageways - Geneviève Tremblay, Milla Cummings, Canada, 4:41, Animated, Documentary
Death of the Monarch - Monae Kyhara Sims, US, 6:23, Experimental, Dance
Strange Horizons - Lauren Marie Dake, US, 6:26, Experimental
Crybaby - Elif Öner, Turkey, 17:28, Horror, Drama
Sogno Rosso (Red Dream) - Coco Roy, US, 7:49, Experimental
The Game - Inga Sunagatullina, Russia, 14:43, Drama, Horror
Reversal - Diane Nerwen, US, 6:34, Video Art
Buurthuis 2 - Josefin Arnell, Netherlands, 17:03, Comedy, Experimental
Trace on My Body - Yue Hua, China, 3:10, Experimental
Passageways - Geneviève Tremblay, Milla Cummings, Canada, 4:41, Animated, Documentary
Death of the Monarch - Monae Kyhara Sims, US, 6:23, Experimental, Dance
Strange Horizons - Lauren Marie Dake, US, 6:26, Experimental
Crybaby - Elif Öner, Turkey, 17:28, Horror, Drama
Sogno Rosso (Red Dream) - Coco Roy, US, 7:49, Experimental
The Game - Inga Sunagatullina, Russia, 14:43, Drama, Horror
Reversal - Diane Nerwen, US, 6:34, Video Art
Buurthuis 2 - Josefin Arnell, Netherlands, 17:03, Comedy, Experimental
Symptom
Dir. Kamee Abrahamian
Embodying the dreams and ideologies of Yerevan's post-Soviet generation, Sona and Amassia meet in high school and form an experimental electronica band called Symptom Error. They soon become known for their underground shows, which are often disrupted by sexist and homophobic police intervention. The stakes get higher on the eve of the Velvet Revolution, when thousands take to the streets demanding social and political change. Sona and Amassia are the first amongst their friends to join the crowds. As the people of Armenia feel the waves of the revolution for years to come, we follow Symptom in their rise to fame. They continue to make music through the pandemic and war, and their dreams finally begin to take shape as they prepare for their first international tour.
Kamee is a queer SWANA artist, storyteller, producer, mother, waitress and witch whose work summons ancestral reclamation, diasporic futurism, and justice. Their creative practice is collaborative, rooted in relational ethics of care, and oriented towards generative, visionary world-building. They have degrees in cinema, poli-sci, art therapy, and a PhD in community and liberation psychology. Their work spans across narrative & documentary film, visual & media art, staged & immersive performances, magazines, podcasts. workshops, festivals, and advocacy campaigns. Their projects have been supported by organizations across Canada, USA and Armenia, including Sundance, HotDocs and Catapult. Kamee is also a Pushcart nominated writer, literary alumni at VONA and Banff Center for Arts, and Lambda-awarded theatre maker. Their short film Transmission (2019) - the first Armenian sci-fi film known to date - premiered at BFI FLARE and their short doc Symptom (2024) is currently circulating at festivals. Kamee recently published a children’s book (The Brighter I Shine), organized a 4-day arts program for a gathering of 3000 global-south feminists in Bangkok (AWID Forum), and through the mentorship of Lilly Wachowski is developing multiple projects for the screen.
Dir. Kamee Abrahamian
Embodying the dreams and ideologies of Yerevan's post-Soviet generation, Sona and Amassia meet in high school and form an experimental electronica band called Symptom Error. They soon become known for their underground shows, which are often disrupted by sexist and homophobic police intervention. The stakes get higher on the eve of the Velvet Revolution, when thousands take to the streets demanding social and political change. Sona and Amassia are the first amongst their friends to join the crowds. As the people of Armenia feel the waves of the revolution for years to come, we follow Symptom in their rise to fame. They continue to make music through the pandemic and war, and their dreams finally begin to take shape as they prepare for their first international tour.
Kamee is a queer SWANA artist, storyteller, producer, mother, waitress and witch whose work summons ancestral reclamation, diasporic futurism, and justice. Their creative practice is collaborative, rooted in relational ethics of care, and oriented towards generative, visionary world-building. They have degrees in cinema, poli-sci, art therapy, and a PhD in community and liberation psychology. Their work spans across narrative & documentary film, visual & media art, staged & immersive performances, magazines, podcasts. workshops, festivals, and advocacy campaigns. Their projects have been supported by organizations across Canada, USA and Armenia, including Sundance, HotDocs and Catapult. Kamee is also a Pushcart nominated writer, literary alumni at VONA and Banff Center for Arts, and Lambda-awarded theatre maker. Their short film Transmission (2019) - the first Armenian sci-fi film known to date - premiered at BFI FLARE and their short doc Symptom (2024) is currently circulating at festivals. Kamee recently published a children’s book (The Brighter I Shine), organized a 4-day arts program for a gathering of 3000 global-south feminists in Bangkok (AWID Forum), and through the mentorship of Lilly Wachowski is developing multiple projects for the screen.
Trace on my Body
Dir. Yue Hua
A film about the female gaze and self-acceptance. In spring 2023, a physical illness forced me to re-examine my relationship with my body. Scars, spots, skin, hair, and my unflattering voice, everything belongs to my body.
Yue Hua/华越 is an filmmaker and multimedia artist, born and raised in China, currently based in Boston, MA. Yue’s art explores themes like spirit-body relationships, searching for belonging, and the female perspective. She teaches 16mm film production at Emerson College and is a member of the AgX film collective.
Dir. Yue Hua
A film about the female gaze and self-acceptance. In spring 2023, a physical illness forced me to re-examine my relationship with my body. Scars, spots, skin, hair, and my unflattering voice, everything belongs to my body.
Yue Hua/华越 is an filmmaker and multimedia artist, born and raised in China, currently based in Boston, MA. Yue’s art explores themes like spirit-body relationships, searching for belonging, and the female perspective. She teaches 16mm film production at Emerson College and is a member of the AgX film collective.
Passageways
Dir. Geneviève Tremblay, Milla Cummings
Stop motion documentary that takes a positive look at menopause. While different women confide how they experienced this natural and important passage in their lives, a female character tames her new environment and welcomes new ways of perceiving and projecting her femininity.
A graduate of the Quebec Drama Conservatory in 1998, Geneviève has been a scenographer and author for the stage for over twenty years. Her experiences in the performing arts sector led her to become interested in screenwriting, directing, project management and artistic direction. She obtained a bachelor's degree in art and science of animation at Laval University in 2024. Always looking for new ways to tell stories, Geneviève explores the possibilities of 2d animation and especially stop motion where she exploits his skills as a set designer and his fascination with the art of puppetry.
Milla Cummings is a bachelor’s student in Animation Arts and Science at Laval University. Having obtained a DEC in cinema, she now specializes in stop motion animation, experimental animation and documentary animation. His film M was presented in the 2023 edition of the Fantasia festival, as well as at the Dérapage festival the same year.
Dir. Geneviève Tremblay, Milla Cummings
Stop motion documentary that takes a positive look at menopause. While different women confide how they experienced this natural and important passage in their lives, a female character tames her new environment and welcomes new ways of perceiving and projecting her femininity.
A graduate of the Quebec Drama Conservatory in 1998, Geneviève has been a scenographer and author for the stage for over twenty years. Her experiences in the performing arts sector led her to become interested in screenwriting, directing, project management and artistic direction. She obtained a bachelor's degree in art and science of animation at Laval University in 2024. Always looking for new ways to tell stories, Geneviève explores the possibilities of 2d animation and especially stop motion where she exploits his skills as a set designer and his fascination with the art of puppetry.
Milla Cummings is a bachelor’s student in Animation Arts and Science at Laval University. Having obtained a DEC in cinema, she now specializes in stop motion animation, experimental animation and documentary animation. His film M was presented in the 2023 edition of the Fantasia festival, as well as at the Dérapage festival the same year.
Death of the Monarch
Dir. Monae Kyhara
After the death of the families matriarch, this film uses African American praise worship as a form of visual narration, showing grieving as nonlinear.
Monae Kyhara is an experimental multimedia artist raised in San Antonio, TX. She has attended The University of Texas at San Antonio and Syracuse University focusing on Studio Arts, New Media, and Film. With works having the opportunity to be shown at BlueStar and The Images Festival, she now continues to build her portfolio, and strengthen their work at Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin, Germany for the fall of 2024.
Dir. Monae Kyhara
After the death of the families matriarch, this film uses African American praise worship as a form of visual narration, showing grieving as nonlinear.
Monae Kyhara is an experimental multimedia artist raised in San Antonio, TX. She has attended The University of Texas at San Antonio and Syracuse University focusing on Studio Arts, New Media, and Film. With works having the opportunity to be shown at BlueStar and The Images Festival, she now continues to build her portfolio, and strengthen their work at Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin, Germany for the fall of 2024.
Strange Horizons
Dir. Lauren Marie Dake
Strange Horizons is an impressionistic travel film about traversing the unknown. Using home movies on 16mm from the 1960's, the artist responds to the material through collage, painting and abstraction directly onto film. It is a meditation on chaos, self reflection, and the urge to escape.
Lauren Marie Dake is an interdisciplinary artist from Seattle and an MFA candidate in the MassArt Film program. Her practice centers on notions of escape, dystopia, the uncanny, and the ethereal. She experiments with analog film, direct animation, and soundscape composition in an ongoing attempt to question the capacity and possibility of the moving image.
Dir. Lauren Marie Dake
Strange Horizons is an impressionistic travel film about traversing the unknown. Using home movies on 16mm from the 1960's, the artist responds to the material through collage, painting and abstraction directly onto film. It is a meditation on chaos, self reflection, and the urge to escape.
Lauren Marie Dake is an interdisciplinary artist from Seattle and an MFA candidate in the MassArt Film program. Her practice centers on notions of escape, dystopia, the uncanny, and the ethereal. She experiments with analog film, direct animation, and soundscape composition in an ongoing attempt to question the capacity and possibility of the moving image.
Crybaby
Dir. Elif Öner
Elif is going abroad for her master's degree and her friends throw a surprise farewell party for her. Unexpected tensions arise at the party and Elif starts to see demons that no one else sees but herself. She is all alone with her demons in the crowd.
Elif Öner was born and raised in Istanbul in 1999. She graduated from Istanbul Bilgi University, Cinema and Television BA in 2021. She studied her master’s degree in University of Reading, MA Creative Enterprise: Film Pathway, and graduated in 2023.
Dir. Elif Öner
Elif is going abroad for her master's degree and her friends throw a surprise farewell party for her. Unexpected tensions arise at the party and Elif starts to see demons that no one else sees but herself. She is all alone with her demons in the crowd.
Elif Öner was born and raised in Istanbul in 1999. She graduated from Istanbul Bilgi University, Cinema and Television BA in 2021. She studied her master’s degree in University of Reading, MA Creative Enterprise: Film Pathway, and graduated in 2023.
Sogno Rosso (Red Dream)
Dir. Coco Roy
After being visited by 3 witches in a fever dream , a woman descends into a dreamscape blurring her reality with faded memories.
Coco Roy is a leo born under a full moon. She is a local filmmaker and musician. Her films are heavily influenced by the occult , tarot and the dream world.
Dir. Coco Roy
After being visited by 3 witches in a fever dream , a woman descends into a dreamscape blurring her reality with faded memories.
Coco Roy is a leo born under a full moon. She is a local filmmaker and musician. Her films are heavily influenced by the occult , tarot and the dream world.
The Game
Dir. Inga Sunagatullina
Beloved Sonya and Grisha decide to rob granny. Strength and youth are on their side, but the elderly woman has a few tricks up her sleeve.
She was born in the village of Sakkulovo, Chelyabinsk region, in 1997. After moving to Moscow in 2016, she enrolled in the Pedagogical University while alsoworking as a freelance model and actress. To improve her skills, she took acting classes. She left the university to pursue a career in theater, studying for a year before entering the Moscow Film School in 2020 to study directing undermasters Alexei Popogrebsky and Pavel Bardin. She continues to live and work in Moscow, creating her own path in the film industry.
Dir. Inga Sunagatullina
Beloved Sonya and Grisha decide to rob granny. Strength and youth are on their side, but the elderly woman has a few tricks up her sleeve.
She was born in the village of Sakkulovo, Chelyabinsk region, in 1997. After moving to Moscow in 2016, she enrolled in the Pedagogical University while alsoworking as a freelance model and actress. To improve her skills, she took acting classes. She left the university to pursue a career in theater, studying for a year before entering the Moscow Film School in 2020 to study directing undermasters Alexei Popogrebsky and Pavel Bardin. She continues to live and work in Moscow, creating her own path in the film industry.
Reversal
Dir. Diane Nerwen
REVERSAL combines images and sounds from movies released or broadcast in 1973, the year the Supreme Court decided Roe v Wade. In the strange new reality ushered in by the Dobbs decision, the slogan "We won't go back" is recalled with bitter irony. This collage piece evokes the spectre of regression and repression that has followed the Court's decision.
With their storytelling grounded in reality, Simone uses surrealism as their lens. As a 2021 EMMY Award winning Camera Operator and former 2022 ROTATE Fellow, at YouTube and Wieden + Kennedy, Simone continues to push boundaries. She directed and was cinematographer for projects for McDonald’s, Red Bull, Anheuser-Busch Global and Bustle x HIlton, as well as for artists like Jazmine Sullivan, Tone Stith, Adi Oasis and Jamila Woods. As a creative director, Simone has worked with Mcdonald's, Nike, Duracell, and the 2021 BET AWARDS. Cross-pollinating her creative versatility, Simone applies her multi-disciplinary technical experience to her directorial and creative work as a current 2022 BlackStar Philadelphia Filmmaker Fellowship, Directorial Fellow.
Dir. Diane Nerwen
REVERSAL combines images and sounds from movies released or broadcast in 1973, the year the Supreme Court decided Roe v Wade. In the strange new reality ushered in by the Dobbs decision, the slogan "We won't go back" is recalled with bitter irony. This collage piece evokes the spectre of regression and repression that has followed the Court's decision.
With their storytelling grounded in reality, Simone uses surrealism as their lens. As a 2021 EMMY Award winning Camera Operator and former 2022 ROTATE Fellow, at YouTube and Wieden + Kennedy, Simone continues to push boundaries. She directed and was cinematographer for projects for McDonald’s, Red Bull, Anheuser-Busch Global and Bustle x HIlton, as well as for artists like Jazmine Sullivan, Tone Stith, Adi Oasis and Jamila Woods. As a creative director, Simone has worked with Mcdonald's, Nike, Duracell, and the 2021 BET AWARDS. Cross-pollinating her creative versatility, Simone applies her multi-disciplinary technical experience to her directorial and creative work as a current 2022 BlackStar Philadelphia Filmmaker Fellowship, Directorial Fellow.
Buurthuis 2
Dir. Josefin Arnell
A real-estate developer who is a Vampire wants to convert the local community house into a luxury spa. The city man gets nervous. The Vampire calls a friend: the Wizard, who casts a spell on the neighborhood to smoke out the residents. Soon the neighbors organize resistance. Buurthuis 2 is a fantasy film realized with the community center De Witte Boei in Amsterdam’s Wittenburg neighborhood. Visitors and staff take on the roles of vampires, wizards, and zombies. Anchored by a Dutch fairytale about the pitfalls of preposterous wealth, the plot and characters were developed in scriptwriting workshops together with the artist.
The film draws from and reflects on the historic social ideals of community centers in the Netherlands, that used to serve as a tool to educate the lower classes. What does it mean to be a “good” citizen in the context of increasing wealth disparity, housing shortages, and welfare cuts?
Josefin Arnell (1984, Sweden) lives and works in Amsterdam. The work by Josefin Arnell defines a loaded visual language combining anger, desire, disgust and pleasure. Her films and works present complex realities, socially marginalized characters and absurd fictionalization. Her film work extends to performance, installation, objects, poetry or drawings. Through storytelling loosely narratives are often centered around characters that try to navigate in contemporary infrastructures with impossible demands. In 2015 and 2016 she participated in the residency program at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. In 2018 she won the Theodora Niemeijer Prijs for emerging female artists in the Netherlands. In 2023 she was nominated for the art prize Prix de Rome Netherlands with a presentation at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In addition to her solo work, she is involved in multiple collaborations and together with Max Göran she forms the artist duo HellFun. Places where her work has been shown include: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; WIELS, Brussels; Cell Project Space, London; Index, Stockholm; UKS, Oslo; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; Athens Biennale; Moscow International Biennale for Young Art; Auto Italia, London; Kunsthalle Münster, Rencontres Internationales, Paris/Berlin and IDFA International Documentary Film festival Amsterdam.
Dir. Josefin Arnell
A real-estate developer who is a Vampire wants to convert the local community house into a luxury spa. The city man gets nervous. The Vampire calls a friend: the Wizard, who casts a spell on the neighborhood to smoke out the residents. Soon the neighbors organize resistance. Buurthuis 2 is a fantasy film realized with the community center De Witte Boei in Amsterdam’s Wittenburg neighborhood. Visitors and staff take on the roles of vampires, wizards, and zombies. Anchored by a Dutch fairytale about the pitfalls of preposterous wealth, the plot and characters were developed in scriptwriting workshops together with the artist.
The film draws from and reflects on the historic social ideals of community centers in the Netherlands, that used to serve as a tool to educate the lower classes. What does it mean to be a “good” citizen in the context of increasing wealth disparity, housing shortages, and welfare cuts?
Josefin Arnell (1984, Sweden) lives and works in Amsterdam. The work by Josefin Arnell defines a loaded visual language combining anger, desire, disgust and pleasure. Her films and works present complex realities, socially marginalized characters and absurd fictionalization. Her film work extends to performance, installation, objects, poetry or drawings. Through storytelling loosely narratives are often centered around characters that try to navigate in contemporary infrastructures with impossible demands. In 2015 and 2016 she participated in the residency program at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. In 2018 she won the Theodora Niemeijer Prijs for emerging female artists in the Netherlands. In 2023 she was nominated for the art prize Prix de Rome Netherlands with a presentation at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In addition to her solo work, she is involved in multiple collaborations and together with Max Göran she forms the artist duo HellFun. Places where her work has been shown include: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; WIELS, Brussels; Cell Project Space, London; Index, Stockholm; UKS, Oslo; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; Athens Biennale; Moscow International Biennale for Young Art; Auto Italia, London; Kunsthalle Münster, Rencontres Internationales, Paris/Berlin and IDFA International Documentary Film festival Amsterdam.
