Chicago Underground Film Festival, the world’s longest-running annual underground film festival, returns with its 30th edition at The Harper Theater and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. Running from Wednesday, Sept. 13 through Sunday, Sept. 17, this year’s lineup of boundary-pushing films features shorts from 14 California Institute of the Arts faculty, alums and students.
School of Film/Video faculty Charlotte Pryce will be screening her work “and so it came about (A Tale of Consequential Dormancy).” The 13-minute allegorical film chronicles the phase of animal dormancy in response to adversity. Inspired by and made during the pandemic’s “global dormancy,” the mythological tale draws from and retells such natural processes.
Current Film/Video student Leonardo Pirondi (Film/Video BFA 2022, MFA 2025) screens his four-minute short film “Welcome Home (Seja Bem-Vindo ao Lar).” Exploring a house haunted by its creators, the room welcomes you to ‘The New Frontier’ and plays with the idea of the uncanny and unhomely.
A film from Sri Lanka and China, Rajee Samarasinghe’s (Film/Video MFA 2016) short “Lotus-Eyed Girl” inspects the impacts of colonialism on human desire. The eerie ambiance is paired with a collaging of pomegranates, rural and urban landscapes, family history, mandalas, death, longing, and Indian writer Bilhana’s 11th century love poem “Caurapañcāśikā.”
“De-composition” is a three-minute short film by Laura Kraning (Film/Video MFA 2010), described as a textural macro collage of a Rust Belt landscape. Set to the sound of the New York Central rail line, the film collages photos of Buffalo, New York, to chronicle material decay and metallic decomposition.
Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu’s (Film/Video MFA 2015) short film “In Littleness” is an eight-minute study of the medium of miniature. Zooming in on daily life, Liu explores childhood and the every day through an eight-millimeter size scale.
“Train Song” is a three-minute black and white film by Yanbin Zhao (Film/Video MFA 2023) that uses reflective material to distort images of a railroad and bring forth the unseen spirits of the rail landscape. The film is set near a monument honoring Chinese migrant workers near a railroad in Canyon County, California.
Described as an explosion of color and a tortured object, Joshua Gen Solondz’s (Film/Video MFA 2016) film “NE CORRIDOR” turns three years of documentation into a seven-minute film. The footage collages gurgling paint, jagged splices, errant sprocket holes, and puzzling images to evoke and honor the work of late filmmaker Luther Price.
A collaboration between director Charlotte Hong (Film/Video MFA) and producer Giuliana Foulkes (Film/Video MFA 2018), “SMRT Piece” is a video-experimental animation triptych set between Singapore and Los Angeles. The four-minute film explores public transit, queer bodies, risk, missing home, seeing vs. being seen, movie magic, drawing as an abstract intellectual exercise, Agnes V., and snuggling with a lover.
Elizabeth M. Webb’s (Film/Video MFA 2016) short film “Proximity Study (Sight Lines)” captures the docks of the Brooklyn waterfront as an ode to her longshoreman grandfather. Trying to measure closeness despite temporal distance, the six-minute 16mm film documents the docks and Webb rowing in the channel between the camera and the subject.
Exploring systems, possibilities, and grief in the mountains, “Motor Motor Blue” by Greg Jenkins (Film/Video MFA 2023) is described as “austere and ethereal.” In 15 minutes, the film frames the sounds and rhythms of a community in grief through family histories, phantom landscapes, and racecars.
Melissa Ferrari’s (Film/Video MFA 2019) 40-minute film “Relict: A Phantasmagoria (2020/2023)” is an experimental documentary utilizing antique magic lanterns and hand-drawn animation. The film adapts lore, CGI, audio interviews, documentary excerpts, thermal imaging, animation, and more to explore the zeitgeist of pseudoscience, fake news, religion, belief, perception, and documentary ethics in contemporary cryptozoology.
“Fictions” is a 22-minute film by manuela de laborde (Film/Video MFA 2016), a product of a residency with the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen’s Conditional Cinema Program. Inspired by the spell “ficciones,” the film captures the gardening and growth of plant life in ceramic sculptures through four super-8 cameras. This imagery imagining sculptures as possible containers of heart is accompanied by the sounds of Camila de Laborde.
Lastly, Alix Blevins (Film/Video MFA 2023) screens a one-minute film titled “object permanence,” documenting the disappearance of objects.
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Alums and faculty from the California Institute of the Arts School of Film/Video are screening their films at film festivals around the globe throughout the fall. More than 18 CalArtians’ works have been selected for festival lineups taking place across Canada, Romania, the United Kingdom and the United States.
College of the Canyons Chancellor Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook received the rarely-awarded O – C (pronounced “oh bar see”) award from FivePoint at a community celebration event held to celebrate her 35 years of leadership at COC.
California State University, Northridge is the No. 2 public university in California and the No. 12 public university in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking.
Former California poet laureate Dana Gioia will explore “The Enchantment of Poetry” on Thursday, Oct. 5, as part of the Gohstand Reading Room Biennial Lecture Series at California State University, Northridge’s University Library.
Public television station KCET selected three California State University, Northridge student films, all directed by women of color, to take part in its Fine Cut Film Festival.
The city of Santa Clarita partners with MV Transportation for transit services. Over the past year, MV Transportation has been actively negotiating with the bus drivers' union. on Sept. 15, the union decided to authorize a strike. The city of Santa Clarita is not a participant in this labor contract disagreement.
The regular meeting of the William S. Hart Union High School District’s Governing Board will be held Wednesday, Oct. 4, beginning with closed session at 5:45 p.m., followed immediately by open session at 7 p.m.
The regular board meeting of the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency will be held 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 3 in the boardroom at the Rio Vista Water Treatment Plant, 27234 Bouquet Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, CA 91350.
The funeral services for Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer have been set for 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 5 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
Alums and faculty from the California Institute of the Arts School of Film/Video are screening their films at film festivals around the globe throughout the fall. More than 18 CalArtians’ works have been selected for festival lineups taking place across Canada, Romania, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Greater Los Angeles Vector Control District has reported the first case of West Nile Virus in the Santa Clarita Valley this season. Transmitted through mosquito bites, West Nile Virus is a health concern for people and animals.
Santa Clarita Volunteers is seeking volunteers for Light Up Main Street on Saturday, Nov. 18. Volunteers age 14 and older are being sought for a variety of positions at the annual holiday kickoff event in Old Town Newhall. Age requriements vary according to volunteer activity.
ALDI will open a second Santa Clarita Valley location on Thursday, Oct. 12 in the Canyon Center in Canyon Country. The new ALDI store will be located at 19361 Soledad Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, CA 91351. Canyon Center is located at the intersection of Soledad Canyon Road and Whites Canyon Road.
As the end of the year approaches, it will soon be time for indoor gatherings with friends and family. This is a particularly important time of year to get your annual flu vaccination.
Los Angeles County will launch the first of two community relief programs for households that have been impacted by odors stemming from the Chiquita Canyon Landfill on Monday, Oct. 2.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Missing Persons Unit investigators are asking for the public’s help locating At Risk Missing Person Maxwell Perkins Cornell.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who represented California in the Senate for more than 30 years, has died at 90 years old, her office announced Friday morning.
The Metro Board of Directors approved schedule changes, public safety resources and additional trains to the Metrolink Antelope Valley Line (AVL) Thursday.
The SCVEDC is excited to announce that it was recently honored for excellence in economic development by the International Economic Development Council in two distinct categories.
Interstate 5 in the Castaic area in northern Los Angeles County will be reduced from four lanes to two lanes in the northbound or southbound direction between 5 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 2-4, Caltrans announced Thursday.
College of the Canyons Chancellor Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook received the rarely-awarded O – C (pronounced “oh bar see”) award from FivePoint at a community celebration event held to celebrate her 35 years of leadership at COC.
Children’s Bureau is seeking foster families and now offers two virtual ways for individuals and/or couples to learn how to help children in foster care while reunifying with birth families or how to provide legal permanency by adoption.
The Zonta Club of Santa Clarita Valley is proud to announce that the club has won top honors within Zonta International’s Add Your Voice Campaign for installing the largest number of new members throughout the Zonta world in 2023.
California State University, Northridge is the No. 2 public university in California and the No. 12 public university in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking.
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