Calling all film enthusiasts! Join us for a day of short films at BCA HQ! BCA is proud to partner with Bronx World Film to host this event on Saturday, August 24th, from 12:30 PM to 8:00 PM. Drop in anytime to enjoy a curated marquee of works by young filmmakers of color, women, and Bronx creators.
RSVP Here:
Screening Schedule
12:30 PM - Opening remarks by MC Andreya Matthew and Performance by Matt Sanchez
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM - Suited For All Ages
Be Mine, Seed
(SCR Valeria Cobos/Michael Baruch Pacheco/DIR Michael Baruch Pacheco, HONDURAS, 2019. 4 minutes).
This is the story of a nut seed, which experiences a destructive cycle that little by little deteriorates it, causing it to end up in the ground, to bloom and repeat the cycle again, wishing that his next life will be less cruel. (NYC Premiere)
Quilla – You Belong
(SCR/DIR s/n and Quilla, USA, 2023, 3 minutes. Music video.)
How Méliès Flew to the Moon
(SCR/DIR Alena Kulikova, RUSSIA, 2019, 5 minutes. Animation.)
Méliès watches the moon. He is in love and inspired by her and his only dream is to fly to the moon. One day, a cosmic collision occurs in the sky. (US premiere)
Specchio Falso
(SCR/DIR Alessia Buiatti, ITALY, 2024, 9 minutes. Webseries episode.)
Invaders: Angie’s Logs
(SCR/DIR Mark Cabaroy, USA, 2019, 13 minutes. Sci-fi)
Tales from the Galaxy: Return Home
(SCR/DIR Matej Žitković, CROATIA, 2024. Sci-fi. 18 minutes).
On a remote planet far from Earth, there are people who were abducted and left there. After seven years, they have a chance to return home, but they are not the only ones who want to return. (World Premiere. Rated G)
Ethiopian Living Room_Retrofuture_1970's_2070's
(SCR/DIR Watson Hartsoe, USA, 2023, 2 minutes. AI, experimental)
Combines time, tradition, and technology in one immersive space. Created with advanced AI tools like Luma AI, DALL·E 3, RunwayML Gen-1, and MusicLM, this project showcases a living room where Ethiopian heritage and future possibilities fuse in a visual and auditory celebration of culture, offering a retrofuturistic experience that captures a 1970s Ethiopian household filtered through the lens of future media. By blending historical style with synthetic media innovation, viewers connect with the past by imagining the future. Accessible on any internet-enabled device, it invites visitors to embark on a journey through time from the comfort of their own home. (New York City premiere)
The Lost: existence before essence
(SCR/DIR s/n, USA, 2024, 11 minutes, Experimental.)
This interdisciplinary art group works with video, sound, animation, photography and locative media. Members Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts crossed paths in 2007 as graduate students at Virginia Commonwealth University, and have been creating collaborative work since 2008. Their works have been exhibited and screened internationally in festivals, galleries and museums including Hong Kong Art Fair, Pekin Fine Arts, DAS Weekend and the Freies Museum in Berlin. In 2014 they were finalists for the MacArthur Grant in Documentary Film, in 2015 won the William A. Minor Grant and in 2016 the Pollination Seed Grant.
Hasta la Vista
(SCR/DIR Alessia Buiatti, ITALY, 2024, 10 minutes. Documentary.)
From the webseries TUNAS (Tutta un’altra storia) filmed at Instituto Comprensivo Tina Merlin in Belluno, winner of the 2022-2023 Cinema and Image award of the Ministry of Culture, Teaching and Merit. 102 fifth-graders participate actively in the project. (US Premiere)
2:15 PM - 2:25 PM: Q&A with Filmmakers
Mark Cabaroy, Jennida Chase, Alessia Buiatti
2:25 PM - 2:30 PM: Break
2:30 PM - 3:45 PM - Suited For All Ages
Venetian Horizon
(SCR/DIR Nataša Prosenc Stearns, SLOVENIA, 2024, 2 minutes.)
Created during a residency at the City of Santa Monica Camera Obscura Lab in a studio with giant glass windows overlooking the ocean. The non-stop presence of the horizon with its infinite varieties inspired her to start recording it every day. The Horizons are part of the ongoing Haiku Videos series, which originates in daily unstaged recordings. Like in Haiku poetry, Haiku videos are based on directly observed everyday occurrences and created spontaneously, when a real-life circumstance gives rise to an idea. Like scientific research, the outcome of this process is not yet known. It is being articulated during the act of artistic creation. (World premiere)
Moment in the Sun
(SCR/DIR Nataša Prosenc Stearns, SLOVENIA, 2019, 3 minutes. Cinematic poem.)
Shot in Venice, California during the sunset hours, this is part of my Haiku videos series, which originate in daily unstaged recordings. Like in Haiku poetry, the images of Haiku videos are based on directly observed everyday occurrences and created spontaneously, when a real-life circumstance gives rise to an idea. (New York City premiere)
The Stream XIII
(SCR/DIR Hiroya Sakurai. JAPAN, 2024, color, experimental. 5 minutes)
This is segment thirteen in my series "The Stream,” in which I express the transformation of landscapes from interactions between humans and nature, shot on reclaimed land near Kyoto. In the 16th century, samurai and feudal overlord Toyotomi Hiyedoshi, known as “the Second Unifier of Japan,” built a castle on a nearby mountain to view the shallow lake that stood here 80 years ago. I focus on the wind streaming through corn and reed fields cultivated by humans. For sound effects, I use a wind chime consisting of an iron bell with a weight hanging from a string inside. When the wind blows, the pressure makes the weight ring. This sound and the rippling of the fields convey the wind’s invisible presence. (New York City premiere)
Rough Tide
(SCR/DIR Pâmela Peregrino. BRAZIL, 2023, color, animation, drama. 7 minutes.)
She, who connects everyone by her waters, observes and operates the changes resulting from global warming. The people by the sea are the first to feel its upheavals and mood swings. She knows that humans are moving to stop these changes. Just as she knows that they are repeating an old saga: a few prevailing over the great rest, deepening the problems created by themselves.
The Cat and the Haunting Gospel
(SCR/DIR Angelina Voskopoulou. GREECE, 2024, color, animation. 7 minutes)
Gospel music invokes spirituality and soul expression, figuring front and center in the civil rights movement with stirring messages of equality, justice, and freedom, emphasizing strength in unity and solidarity in the face of social challenges. Cats stand for mystery and independence, a "psychic" presence. Changing political landscapes require us to take on their adaptability and flexibility, their enigmatic nature in the face of complexity and ambiguity.
Over Double Horizon
(SCR/DIR Nataša Prosenc Stearns, SLOVENIA, 2023. 1 minute.)
Created during a residency at the City of Santa Monica Camera Obscura Lab in a studio with giant glass windows overlooking the ocean. The non-stop presence of the horizon with its infinite varieties inspired her to start recording it every day. The Horizons are part of the ongoing Haiku Videos series, which originates in daily unstaged recordings. Like in Haiku poetry, Haiku videos are based on directly observed everyday occurrences and created spontaneously, when a real-life circumstance gives rise to an idea. Like scientific research, the outcome of this process is not yet known. It is being articulated during the act of artistic creation. (New York City premiere)
Farmer’s Life
(SCR/DIR Vibol Sungkriem, USA, 2024, 15 minutes. Documentary.)
After forty years, Bronx-based filmmaker Vibol Sungkriem returns to his homeland of Cambodia in 2024 forty years after he and his family fled the killing fields to join what was at the time the largest Cambodian emigré community in the US, in the Fordham district of The Bronx. A glimpse into the life of farmers in Battambang, a story of survival in an uncertain future. (New York City premiere)
Sapient_2.021
(DIR/SCR Amenda Tate, USA, 2022, 22 minutes. Experimental)
Dance, robotics, and visual art explore what it means to be human in a tech-saturated world. Part collaborative art documentary. part screen dance, it draws inspiration from science fiction combining Tate’s motion-controlled painting robot (Manibus) with dance and visual art to examine ideas surrounding labor, control, empathy, and human rights. The film commemorates the 100th anniversary of the word “robot” (Slavic root “robota,” or “forced labor”) introduced to the English language through the play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Czech playwright Karel Capek. How have our views regarding robotics changed over the past century as our relationship to and dependence upon machines evolved? How have our views on humanity and objectification changed? How do we define humanity, and how does labor fit into the equation?
Peace
(SCR/DIR Tom Gatley, UK, 2022, 3 minutes. Drama.)
Hanoi Circus, 1972. In the year of Nixon's Christmas bombings, a performer prepares her routine at the circus. Captured by an American photographer, this image becomes a symbol of peace when the war ends in 1975.
Shy
(SCR/DIR Arut Tantasirin, THAILAND, 2023, 4 minutes. Musical Video.)
During his morning ritual, Warble the Bird encounters someone, and from there it all becomes a moment of delightful connection.
3:45pm - 3:55pm: Q&A with Filmmakers
Vibol Sungkriem, Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Amenda Tate
3:55pm - 4:00pm: Break
4:00pm - 5:30pm - PG-Rated
Thrills of Power
(SCR/DIR Meri Dishnica, ALBANIA, 2021, 5 minutes. Cinematic poem.)
Cornered
(SCR Sérgio Malheiros/Edmilson Filho, DIR Sérgio Malheiros. BRAZIL, 2022, color, thriller. 11 minutes.)
When presidential decree 9.845 allowed civilians to purchase firearms, Brazil’s people finally felt they could protect themselves from violence. Months later, the decree changes the life of an Evangelical couple, when he, a pastor and recovering alcoholic, catches his wife in bed with two young men. One is a state senator’s son. Now, the battered woman and two young men must beg for their lives. This is a perfect thriller in which nothing is as it seems. (In Portuguese with English subtitles)
But Alice Doesn’t Know All of This?!
(SCR/DIR Alessandro Carrieri, ITALY, 2023, 14 minutes. Drama.)
A woman is forced to retrace her tormented childhood and her ghosts of the past. Through a process of rebirth she finds herself and reunites with herself as a child.
Silence IV
(SCR/DIR Anna Grigorian, ARMENIA/ CANADA, 2023, 02 minutes. Experimental video art)
“silence / drop by drop /on the walls.” Second in a new series of video-bites shot on cellphone. Created in April, 2023 during the nine-month blockade of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Between alarming and scary news from home and the calm reality of every-day life abroad, the artist tries to make sense of the two through art. Playing with lights on interior surfaces works through the conflicts between her immediate surroundings and split identity. (Rated PG)
Jaguar Dancer
(SCR/DIR Edgar Pavia, MEXICO, 2023, 20 minutes. Documentary). (PG-Rated)
Saúl, a young bricklayer from Chilpancingo, Mexico, dreams of dancing in Los Tlacololeros dance, but lack of money and family problems prevent him from doing so. The brother of the girl he likes invites him to belong to his criminal group. (In Spanish and English with English subtitles. NYC premiere)
What’s Grief?
(SCR/DIR Ángel-Manuel Torres, Jr. USA, 2024, 35 minutes. (PG-Rated)
5:30pm - 5:55pm Q & A with Directors
Ángel-Manuel Torres, Producer Pierre Guillet, Meri Dishnica, Alessandro Carrieri, Edgar Pavia
5:55pm - 6:00pm: Break
6:00pm - 7:50pm - Suited For All Ages
Eisenstein and Calavera
(SCR/DIR Alena Kulikova, RUSSIA, 2024, 5 minutes. Animation.)
The film is based on the film ¡Que viva México!, from the novella Maguey. Eisenstein is watching the film footage. Unexpectedly, his film character turns into a revived Calavera and steals his film. In pursuit of his film, Eisenstein finds himself in an episode of it. (New York City premiere)
Take Your Space
(SCR/DIR Karolina Álvarez, CZECH REPUBLIC, 2023, 102 minutes. Documentary).
The first feature-length documentary on Mexican graffiti and urban art was created independent and free in its expression over five years without financial support, based on coexistence of the Mexican community of Mexican urban artists extending to the other branches of hiphop and skateboarding, familiarizing us with the movement’s development from beginnings to the present with a focus on its essence of rebellion and resistance. It presents urban arts as a path of freedom and independence for the individual, facing down the capitalist system and its attempt to invade our lives and behaviour, and Mexican counterculture in high relief in relation to the resistance of native cultures. (In Spanish and English with English subtitles. NYC premiere)
7:50pm - 8:00pm: Q&A with Filmmaker
Karolina Álvarez.
RSVP Here:
