3/28: Atlanta Film Festival Experimental Films
hosted by Contraband Cinema

$10. At Landmark Midtown Art Cinema @ 7:45pm

Contraband Cinema goes to the Atlanta Film Festival to host the Experimental Shorts program. Including films by Contraband past participants Anna Spence and Michael Betancourt are new works by Ching Yi Tseng, Daniéle Wilmouth, Anna Geyer, Gleb Osatinski, Lewis Smithingham, MK12, Randall Okita, Laurie Tsou and Joel Tauber.

Tickets available here.

724 14Th St
Directed by Ching Yi Tseng

724 14TH ST contains my super 8 diary footage from 2007 to 2009 during the time I lived in San Francisco. I am using a small camera to know about the city I live in and while shooting, I am also editing. The images I shoot and combine reveal my thoughts about constructing images and constructing the idea of home. These moving images, and the sounds they create, make a sense of spatial reality. This sensation comes from fragment and moment, which disappear quickly the next second. However, rhythm integrates these fragments into a whole, which disintegrate again.

Fanfare for Marching Band
Directed by Daniele Wilmouth

It is inside the waiting rooms and lobbies, the bustling markets, train stations and passageways, where travelers break stride for a moment, converge and then separate toward their unique destinations. It is in these ripe intersections, these everyday happenstances and accidental collisions, where adventure and tiny revolutions are born. The ordinary is potentially extraordinary, the static is suddenly ecstatic. During these fleeting moments of possibility and self-awareness, all that is left to do is stop, pause, listen.... and see what happens.

Goodbye Pig
Directed by Anna Geyer

An homage to 'pigfill' aka slug - a found footage film constructed almost entirely of decayed/abused fill. Reprinted via the optical printer as the original footage continued its demise.

Pisces of an Uncouncious Mind
Directed by Gleb Ostainski

In one world there is a Man who is hanging perpetually in the air, being physically suspended between the ocean and earth. Whenever he wants to get out, he is pulled back to the ocean where he doesn't belong. A part of him is being transformed into a fish that dreadfully pulls the Man back to the water. The Man faces a choice of survival and chooses to risk his arm. In another world, the Man is felling stuck in his life. He is seeking for help, but he is scared to overcome a mysterious psychological barrier that he needs to pass.

silence. ATTACK| Let's Get Ostracized The ATTACK.silence
Directed by Anna Spence

silence. ATTACK| Let's Get Ostracized The ATTACK.silence is a unique experiment involving the forceful birth of collaborative audial and visual endeavors while deliberately bypassing industry norms of raising the originators involved to a higher stature than the creations, themselves. The ATTACK.silence was initiated on July 15th, 2011 with the issuing of LET'S GET 0STRAC1ZED (written by J. Trafford / M. Renfield / S. Wymer) with an accompanying visual translation directed by Atlanta-based film artist Anna Spence via Subspine Records.

Memorylapse
Directed by Anna Spence
Disks of Newton
Directed by Michael Betancourt

Disks of Newton is a short animated movie that draws its visual inspiration from the paintings of the American Synchromists of the 1910s.

One
Directed by Michael Betancourt
My Mother the Flatiron
Directed by Lewis Smithingham

My film experiments with the physical structure and limitations of motion picture photography. I investigate the space between the persistence of vision and blurry unintelligible form and how the contrast between these can be used to create mood and emotion. This film illustrates the loss i felt when my mother died on my father's birthday in 2009. My mother was a ballet dancer until the illness that ultimately killed her forced her to stop. When I was a child she tell me stories about how much she loved the Flatiron building. The accompanying music is my aunt singing my mother's favorite song, 'Volver, Volver' which translates to 'Return, Return'.

Follow the Sun!
Directed by MK12

"FOR ENJOY! While we have a few minutes before the next show, why not treat your family to something special at our refreshment stand? We have all kinds of tasty treats -- a hot, delicious pizza for dad, ice-cold refreshments for mom, fresh popcorn for junior, and Milk Bombs for sis! Tempt your taste buds today with our wide selection of sweets and all-American beef products! But hurry -- the show is about to begin! Just 'FOLLOW THE SUN' down to the refreshment stand! Popcorn for all! Hell's on it's way! How you are fallen from heaven,O Day Star, son of Dawn!- Isaiah 14:12 Come on take a stroll come down to the snack bar why not have a real good time there for snacks and enjoy for all eternity!"

S.W.I.M.
Directed by Matt Brunson

Blindness and suffocation are set adrift in a sea of color.

No Contract
Directed by Randall Okita

No Contract is a visceral video that combines elements of performance, sculptural cinema and documentary to explore themes of urgency, isolation and escape, as well as the notions of torment and renewal, desire and destruction.

Hew
Directed by Laurie Tsou

In a contemporary drama based on Camille Claude's life, an extremely gifted sculptor spends her youth in the shadows of a married man almost twice her age. However, after a turbulent and misguided termination of a pregnancy, she defines her true self like the immaculate art pieces she sculpts.

Pumping
Directed by Joel Tauber

"Pumping" is an investigation of the early history of trains in Los Angeles and that history's intersection with water and oil resources. Looking at the history of the Southern Pacific Railroad which was largely responsible for transforming Los Angeles from a small town into a giant metropolis, the exhibition traces the two crucial resources for this development: water and oil. Throughout the project, Joel Tauber ponders the fragility and temporality of the city's foundation.