Mills Folly Microcinema will screen two videos made by Indigenous artists, Give It Back: Crimes Against Realty by the collective New Red Order, and Nosferasta: First Bite by Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer on Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 7:00pm. Suggested donation: $5.00. Doors open at 6:30pm.
Give It Back: Crimes Against Realty | New Red Order | USA | 2024 | 35 minutes
Swerving between branded content, documentary, and a decolonial episode of MTV 'Cribs', the film revolves around a tour of an apartment which has supposedly been "given back" - led by reformed Native American impersonator, and frequent New Red Order collaborator, Jim Fletcher, alongside profiles of real individuals involved with the voluntary return of land to Indigenous peoples, organizations, and tribes. The film continues New Red Order's ongoing research into instances of settlers returning land to Indigenous peoples, a practice that has been growing exponentially over the past decade. The film features examples of land return from the City of Oakland to the Sogorea Te' Land Trust; the City of Eureka, California to the Wiyot Tribe; Yale Union to the Native Artist and Cultures Foundation in Portland, Oregon; and Christine Sleeter's return of her inheritance to the Ute Indian Tribe in Utah.
New Red Order (NRO) is a public secret society facilitated by core contributors Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Adam Khalil (Ojibway), and Zack Khalil (Ojibway). Polys is a multi-disciplinary artist who examines negotiations toward the limits and viability of desires for Indigenous growth. He holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and was the recipient of a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Mentor Artist Fellowship. Adam Khalil is a filmmaker and artist whose practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of image making through humor, relation, and transgression. He received his B.A. from Bard College and is co-founder of COUSIN Collective. Zack Khalil is a filmmaker and artist whose work explores an Indigenous worldview and undermines traditional forms of historical authority through the excavation of alternative histories and the use of innovative documentary forms. He received his B.A. at Bard College in the Film and Electronic Arts Department, and is a UnionDocs Collaborative Fellow and Gates Millennium Scholar. Their work has appeared at Artists Space, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Lincoln Center, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Biennial 2019, Walker Arts Center, and Whitney Biennial 2019, among other institutions.
Nosferasta: First Bite | Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer | USA | 2021 | 34 minutes
Spanning 500 years of colonial destruction, Nosferasta tells the story of Oba, a Rastafarian vampire, and Christopher Columbus, Oba’s original biter, as they spread the colonial infection throughout the “new world.” Formally a vampire film and series of installations, the stylistically impressionistic Nosferasta examines the guilt of being complicit in imperial conquest, while also acknowledging the difficulty of unlearning centuries of vampiric conditioning. At its core Nosferasta asks, how can you decolonize what’s in your blood?
Adam Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist whose practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of image-making through humor, relation, and transgression. Khalil is a core contributor to New Red Order and a co-founder of COUSIN Collective as well as a frequent collaborator with Zack Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer and more. Khalil’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, Walker Arts Center, Lincoln Center, Tate Modern, HKW, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Toronto Biennial 2019 and Whitney Biennial 2019, among other institutions. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including but not limited to a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts 2021, Creative Capital Award, Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Jerome Artist Fellowship, Cinereach and the Gates Millennium Scholarship.
Bayley Sweitzer is a filmmaker living and working in Brooklyn. His practice revolves around repurposing narrative film form in order to convey radical political possibilities. His work has been shown at Film Society Lincoln Center (New York City), International Film Festival Rotterdam, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Museum of Modern Art (New York City), Tate Modern (London), Berlinale, Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City), the Sharjah Biennial, and numerous other galleries, museums, and film festivals. Sweitzer is the recipient of a 2021 Creative Capital Award, a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, and has received moving image commissions from the Park Avenue Armory (New York City), Gasworks (London), and Spike Island (Bristol).
ABOUT MILLS FOLLY MICROCINEMA
Mills Folly Microcinema showcases nationally recognized experimental film and video art from the festival and microcinema circuit. We network with regional filmmakers and organizations to bring filmmakers and guest programmers to Madison for screenings. And we incubate local experimental filmmaking by providing screen time at Project Projection events.
