Prismatic Ground Presents

Prismatic Ground Presents

31 Episodes

One of the most exciting and adventurous film festivals to emerge in recent years, Prismatic Ground brings together aesthetically innovative, politically radical work at the intersection of experimental and documentary cinema. This selection of shorts from the festival’s first four editions offers an eclectic cross section of vital works by filmmakers whose approach to image-making eschews traditional narrative in favor of abstraction and sensation, showing how avant-garde techniques can be deployed to illuminate profound personal experiences as well as violent histories of colonialism, oppression, and dispossession. The latest additions from the festival’s 2024 edition confront topics as varied as community, resistance, family, landscape, history, myth, and memory with rigorous attention to form and galvanizing emotional power. The fifth edition of Prismatic Ground runs from April 30–May 4, 2025.

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Prismatic Ground Presents

31 Episodes

  • Declarations of Love
    29:15
    Declarations of Love
    Episode 1

    Declarations of Love

    Episode 1

    Directed by Tiff Rekem • 2022 • United States

    A fragmentary rumination on an aging father figure and his nearness to the gender-reveal-party fire that scorched the San Bernardino foothills in 2020.

  • Heron 1954–2002
    04:14
    Heron 1954–2002
    Episode 2

    Heron 1954–2002

    Episode 2

    Directed by Alexis McCrimmon • 2022 • United States

    HERON 1954–2002 is a visual eulogy that taps into the phenomena of makeshift memorials and small gestures of mourning. Honoring the life of a loved one who died due to an accidental opioid overdose, the film materializes the process of overdue ...

  • Maman Brigitte
    02:51
    Maman Brigitte
    Episode 3

    Maman Brigitte

    Episode 3

    Directed by Ayanna Dozier • 2022 • United States

    MAMAN BRIGITTE stitches together the intimacy of a private ritual involving the Voudou loa Maman Brigitte (who governst the barrier between the living and the dead) with the sounds of the body (spitting, running, vomiting, etc.). These “interior” ...

  • Oliver Sees Indigo
    13:13
    Oliver Sees Indigo
    Episode 4

    Oliver Sees Indigo

    Episode 4

    Directed by Ryan Clancy • 2022 • United States

    This film enacts an attempt to regain attachment following a period of heroin addiction, near-death experiences, and oxytocin deficiency. The camera shifts between moments of fragile devotion as it searches for a higher power in threads of shared su...

  • Three Songs Without Z.
    36:17
    Three Songs Without Z.
    Episode 5

    Three Songs Without Z.

    Episode 5

    Directed by Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne • 2022 • United States
    Starring Zakaria Almoutlak

    A portrait of Zakaria Almoutlak, a sculptor and media activist from Homs, Syria, who fled the civil war in 2015.

  • We Knew How Beautiful They Were, These Islands
    20:37
    We Knew How Beautiful They Were, These Islands
    Episode 6

    We Knew How Beautiful They Were, These Islands

    Episode 6

    Directed by Younes Ben Slimane • 2021 • France, Tunisia

    At night, a stranger digs graves, buries the dead, and watches over them. In the dark, he reveals the personal belongings of the deceased to us. These objects, separated from their owners, bear their scars and story, while others melt until...

  • Two Sons and a River of Blood
    10:33
    Two Sons and a River of Blood
    Episode 7

    Two Sons and a River of Blood

    Episode 7

    Directed by Amber Bemak and Angelo Madsen Minax • 2021 • Mexico

    The self-made family unit of two dykes and a trans man imagine a kind of erotic magic that will allow for procreation based solely on desire.

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