April 18 & 19: Co-Presentations with Images Festival

Only That Which Lingers
Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
Tuesday, April 18th at 12:00 PM

This lunchtime program includes the following films:

First Months of Freedom, Kriss Li |CANADA | 2021 | DIGITAL | 9 MIN | ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES

Cat, a transgender woman in Tennessee, has been institutionalized since she was four years old but got off parole in 2020. The piece was composed from phone videos, Skype calls, archival material, and footage that a friend shot a few years before.

Rencontre avec Robert Dole, François Harvey | CANADA | 2021 | DIGITAL | 16 MIN | FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

This experimental short film gives the floor to Robert Dole, who shares his story and exposes his vision of schizophrenia. The theme of mental illness echoes in a cinematographic treatment that explores the materiality of film and magnetic tapes to find points of meeting and detachment, spaces resonating with the fall and redemption of Robert Dole.

Cidade Eclética (Eclectic City), Luísa Cruz | BRAZIL/CANADA | 2019 | DIGITAL | 17 MIN | PORTUGUESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

When I first stumbled upon the Universal Spiritual Eclectic Fraternity, a religious community in Santo Antônio do Descoberto, Brazil, I was struck by its history and photogeneity. Rodrigo, a young member of the Fraternity, guides me through its pink and white streets, its temples, its homes, his friends, his family. What does it mean to belong to Eclectic City?The screening will be available on imagesfestival.com at the scheduled the date and time. A link will also be shared with registered participants via email before the event.

The Ghost in the Machine
Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
April 18, 16:00 pm
Content Warning: Suggestion of sexual violence and mention of death by suicide

This lunchtime program includes the following films:

Alexa Echoes, Amanda Turner Pohan | CANADIAN PREMIERE | USA | 2021 | DIGITAL VIDEO | 31 MIN | ENGLISH

Alexa Echoes recasts the relationship between cultural movements and commercial technologies through the history of women’s devocalization and disembodiment. It begins with mythical Greek figures, such as Echo, and leads up to Amazon’s smart speaker and digital voice-based assistant Alexa.

WENN DIE WELT ZU ENDE GEHT, WERDE ICH DICH GE- LIEBT HABEN / When the World Comes to an End, I Will Have Loved You, Gloria Gammer | CANADIAN PREMIERE | AUSTRIA | 2022 | DIGITAL VIDEO | 15 MIN | ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES

Following a climate catastrophe, Andy uploads themself into the digital afterworld. Even though they have a hard time adapting to the digital world, the omnipresent super-intelligence insists that paradise is right here. The film was mainly shot in the metaverse Second Life.

Cosas que nunca van a morir (Things That Won’t Die), Manuela Gutiérrez Arrieta | CANADIAN PREMIERE | SPAIN | 2022 | DIGITAL VIDEO | 14 MIN | SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

After finding videos she uploaded to YouTube when she was a child, Manuela attempts to follow the trail she herself left on the internet. Along the way, she comes across things that even she did not remember about herself. This is a film about childhood, consent, and the way we look at ourselves.

The Endless, Yvette Granata | CANADIAN PREMIERE | USA | 2022 | DIGITAL VIDEO | 11 MIN | NO DIALOGUE

The Endless is a speculative sensory ethnography film generated from AI models in the act of interpreting humans and vice versa. Alien landscapes and 3D models are con- structed through the eyes of a machine roaming through an unknown human-machine culture.

Afro Algorithms, Anatola Araba | CANADIAN PREMIERE | USA | 2022 | DIGITAL VIDEO | 14 MIN | ENGLISH

This 3D-animated short film in the Afrofuturist genre explores the topics of AI and bias. In a distant future, a bot named Aero is inaugurated as the world’s first AI ruler. But Aero soon learns that important worldviews are missing from her databank, including the experiences of the historically marginalized and oppressed.

Echoes in My Mouth, Orit Ben Shitrit | NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE | USA | 2022 | DIGITAL VIDEO | 7 MIN | ENGLISH WITH SUBTITLES

When artificial intelligence arrives at machine conscious- ness, and human memories and traumas can be rewritten or removed, four humans struggle to reach a memory bank in a remote cave. They follow an enchanting siren as they travel into a mysterious world.

HYSTERESIS, Robert Seidel | CANADIAN PREMIERE | GERMANY | 2021 | DIGITAL VIDEO | 5 MIN | NO DIALOGUE

HYSTERESIS intimately weaves a transformative fabric between Robert Seidel’s projections of abstract drawings and queer performer Tsuki’s vigorous choreography. Using machine learning to mediate these lagged re-presentations, the film intentionally corrupts the AI’s strategies to unveil a frenetic, delicate, flamboyant visual language of hysteria and hysteresis in this historical moment.

The screening will be available on imagesfestival.com at the scheduled the date and time . A link will also be shared with registered participants via email before the event.

Image descriptions: Cidade Eclética (Eclectic City), Luísa Cruz (2019). Video still. AND Activate NDN Consciousness, Natalie King (2019). Video Still.

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