Join us at the inaugural screening for Mills Folly Microcinema, a new monthly showcase of experimental film and video presented by Arts + Literature Laboratory.
The July screening runs approximately one hour and will feature acclaimed films from the festival and microcinema circuit. As a bonus, local filmmaker Erik Gunneson will share a new video portrait, Five Down, and participate in a Q&A session following the screening.
Details about upcoming Mills Folly Microcinema screenings will be announced during the event. Admission to this kickoff screening is free, but donations towards future programming welcomed and appreciated.
Mills Folly Microcinema is programmed by James Kreul from Madison Film Forum. Complete program notes will be posted at madfilm.org.
165708 | Josephine Massarella | Canada | 2017 | 6:37
Winner of the Award for Best Experimental Film at the 2018 Ann Arbor Film Festival, 165708 employs in-camera techniques and chemical manipulation of processed film to produce an eidetic study of temporal elasticity. Techniques include flicker, time-lapse, light painting, stop motion, tinting, and toning. Combined with cycles of alternating exposed frames, these methods imbue the work with a rhythmic magnetism, apparent both in the tempo and the aesthetic of the images. A dynamic original score by the acclaimed composer Graham Stewart accompanies the film.
Sadly, we learned of the passing of Josephine Massarella on June 22, 2018. We dedicate our inaugural Mills Folly Microcinema screening to her.
Trans/Figure/Ground | Lauren Cook | US | 2016 | 5:30
Painted 16mm film undergoes a monstrous transformation becoming neither analog nor digital. A film about uncanny valleys and the space between. Past screenings include: Antimatter Media Fest, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, and Other Cinema in San Francisco. Lauren Cook is an Associate Professor of Cinema at University of Hartford.
Something From Nothing | Peaches | US | 2016 | 2:31
All animation and sound in Something From Nothing was created by scratching into the film with a boxcutter. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based David “Peaches” Goodrich has an affinity for 16mm film, brown inks, analog printing processes, and experimentation. His film, animation, video, paintings, drawings, installations, and music have been seen throughout New England and the continental United States.
Onward Lossless Follows | Michael Robinson | US | 2017| 17:00
A password-protected love affair, a little vapor on Venus, and a horse with no name ride out in search of a better world. Against the mounting darkness, a willing abduction offers a stab at tomorrow. Onward Lossless Follows world premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, and had its US premiere at the 55th New York Film Festival. In the Brooklyn Rail, Z.W. Lewis describes it as a film in which “stock videos show women celebrating in front of their laptops, horses fly, and an unsettling meet-up burgeons into a relationship full of love and loss. It’s par for the course for Robinson’s remixing of footage that’s plenty ‘off’ all on its own, but, under Robinson’s control, points to just how weird our collective culture can be.”
Five Down | Erik Gunneson | US | 2018 | 30:00 (Filmmaker in Attendance)
An ongoing, evolving portrait of filmmaker Gunneson’s daughter, Hazel, shot candidly with a smartphone camera over the course of her five years. Join the filmmaker for a discussion of long-term, long-form video portraiture and the use of smartphone cameras beyond viral videos. Gunneson teaches film production courses in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
What will be screened at Mills Folly Microcinema?
Mills Folly Microcinema will showcase nationally recognized experimental film and video art work from the festival and microcinema circuit. We will also network with regional filmmakers and organizations in Milwaukee (Microlights), Minneapolis (Cellular Cinema), and Chicago (Nightingale Cinema) to bring filmmakers and guest programmers to Madison for screenings. And we will incubate local experimental filmmaking by providing screen time at open shows (the video equivalent of an open mic).
What is “Mills Folly”?
The name for Mills Folly Microcinema was inspired by the nickname for Park Place mansion at 2709 Sommers Avenue, originally called “Elmside” by its first owner Simeon Mills in 1863. As explained at Historic Madison, Inc., “Townspeople called it “Mills Folly,” since it was located so far east that no one could conceive of such a long daily commute to town.”
Just as Mills pursued the outer fringe in 1863, Mills Folly Microcinema will explore new frontiers in 2018 and beyond. Also, experimental programming might seem to be sheer folly in today’s media landscape, but that just reinforces the serious need for an experimental film and video series in Madison.
Mills Folly Microcinema is funded in part by a grant from the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board.
