Projections presents an international selection of film and video work that expands upon our notions of what the moving image can do and be. Drawing on a broad range of innovative modes and techniques, including experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into documentary realms, and contemporary art practices, Projections brings together a diverse offering of short, medium, and feature-length work by some of today’s most essential and groundbreaking filmmakers and artists.
Projections is curated by Dennis Lim (FSLC Director of Programming) and Aily Nash (independent curator). Shelby Shaw and Dan Sullivan are Program Assistants. Projections is presented by MUBI.
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Daniel Schmidt and Gabriel Abrantes on October 4 & 5
This dazzlingly original feature from longtime collaborators Daniel Schmidt and Gabriel Abrantes about a chiseled fĂştbol star who flees the public eye is a perversely pleasurable sendup of Brexit, genetic science, and the ongoing refugee crises.
Q&A with James Benning on October 7
Composed of 65 beautifully framed shots of provincial life and suburban domesticity, Benning’s 16mm-shot travelogue of the Midwestern United States advanced notions of structuralist cinema while forming a visual tapestry of the American heartland in all its rugged glory.
North American Premiere · Q&A with Ted Fendt on October 5 (joined by actor Calvin Engime) & 7
A group of young intellectuals partake in playful rounds of academic sparring in Fendt’s second feature, an über-cinephilic treatise on language, literature, and theology.
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Jodie Mack on October 6 & 7
American animator Jodie Mack’s first feature is a color-coordinated, rhythmically tuned fantasia for the senses. Filmed over five years and in as many countries, this all-analog travelogue finds thousands of textiles and printed designs dancing across locations from Mexico to Morocco to India.
North American Premiere · Q&As with Albert Serra on October 5 & 6
Albert Serra’s follow-up to his magisterial The Death of Louis XIV is another forensic documentation of the Sun King’s final breaths. Featuring LluĂs Serrat in a filmed performance of a 2017 installation, Roi Soleil boldly crossbreeds performance art and observational cinema.
North American Premiere
GarcĂa’s first feature explores the intersection of politics, psychoanalysis, and performance, nimbly interweaving narrative and nonfiction devices to arrive at something wholly distinct from either.
North American Premiere
Comprised of a series of portrait shots of mostly anonymous individuals, Tsai Ming-liang’s latest digital experiment shrewdly deemphasizes language while reducing context to a bare minimum, and features a soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Q&A with Ericka Beckman on October 6
Whimsically examining issues of self-image, gender, and female sexuality, Beckman’s surrealist odysseys employ universal narrative threads as allegorical building blocks for ambitiously staged productions
U.S. Premiere · Q&A with Jeremy Shaw on October 7
Shaw’s vérité-style trilogy imagines a dystopian—and increasingly familiar—social order in which marginalized societies strive against extinction.
Q&A with James Edmunds, Janie Geiser, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Nazli Dinçel, and Katherin McInnis on October 5
This program features A Return by James Edmonds, Valeria Street by Janie Geiser, Mahogany Too by Akosua Adoma Owusu, Between Relating and Use by Nazli Dinçel, Trees Down Here by Ben Rivers, Eye of a Needle by Katherin McInnis, and Wishing Well by Sylvia Schedelbauer.
Q&A with Alan Segal, Zachary Epcar, and Ross Meckfessel on October 6
This program features Key, washer, coin by Alan Segal, Words, Planets by Laida Lertxundi, Life After Love by Zachary Epcar, I Hope I'm Loud When I'm Dead by Beatrice Gibson, and The Air of the Earth in Your Lungs by Ross Meckfessel.
Q&A with Sky Hopinka, Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, and Laura Huertas Millán on October 7
This program features Fainting Spells by Sky Hopinka, Chooka by Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, and Ryan Ferko, Ada Kaleh by Helena Wittmann, and The Labyrinth by Laura Huertas Millán.
Q&A with Courtney Stephens, Mary Helena Clark, and Jarred Alterman on October 6
This program features Mixed Signals by Courtney Stephens, Luminous Shadow by Mariana CalĂł and Francisco Queimadela, The Glass Note by Mary Helena Clark, and Walled Unwalled by Lawrence Abu Hamdan.
Q&A with Andrew Norman Wilson and Steve Reinke on October 5
This program features Kodak by Andrew Norman Wilson and What Weakens the Flesh Is the Flesh Itself by Steve Reinke and James Richards.
U.S. Premiere · Free & Open to the Public!
Hundreds of feet in the air, a drone approaches a row of skyscrapers along Hong Kong’s affluent southern coast. The target: giant holes in the buildings’ facades kept clear for the passage of mythological dragons.
North American Premiere · Free & Open to the Public!
Part architectural film, part ASMR exercise, this observational study of Walter Gropius's famed shoe warehouse, The Fagus Factory, is a meditation in every sense.
