The Onion City late night program returns once again this year as FUGUE STATES, a lineup of works that embrace spells of confusion, somnambulant visions, and twists of memory. Each work in this program plays with speculation and suspense, mapping uneven nodes in an overall warped sense of humor that unfurls to reveal bizarre and sorrowful kernels of truth.

Content Warning: flashing light, military training with simulated hostages
Lineup

Aufsicht | Natalia del Mar Kašik | Austria | 2024 | 5 min | World Festival Premiere

Translated to “supervision” in English, a witty examination of the conceptual art world through the lens of a gallery attendant’s fidgety boredom on duty in the confines of the white cube.

Personally I Find It Rude to Be Boring | Derek Spencer | US | 2024 | 9 min

A voyeuristic long take tracks the alley scene osmosis outside an underground LA rave as a social swarm grows. There will be laughing, hugging, chatting, arguing, sipping, smoking, strutting, shimmying, kissing, twirling, clashing, yelling, joking, riffing, puking, punching, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, then stumbling on home.

The Muppet | Dan Black | US | 2024 | 5 min | US Festival Premiere

A haunted remix of the FOX TV show Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test (2023), in which celebrities receive hellish military training under the watchful eye of elite Special Forces operatives. In episode two, Tara Reid is plunged into freezing water and asked to remember what the acronym MUPPET stands for.

Space_invaders.exe | Malaz Usta | Netherlands | 2024 | 11 min | US Festival Premiere

Meandering through an eclectic montage of found footage culled from archival film, newsreels, and video games, the filmmaker parodically recalls his own confusion when asked unanswerable questions about being a displaced Syrian now living in the Netherlands.

Foot to Ground | Christopher Thompson | US | 2024 | 9 min | Chicago Festival Premiere

Taking its title from the literal translation of pied-à-terre, the film mythologizes a boring bacchanalia for Manhattan’s post-residential luxury apartments. Real estate walkthroughs are threatened by apocalypse and interrupted by acid-wash events as sci-fi narration evokes plate tectonics, cave dwelling yesteryears, and resurgent modernist fantasies.

…And You Had Tourette’s | Luis Figueroa Caunedo | US | 2024 | 7 min | Chicago Festival Premiere

A beautiful nightmare surreally approximating the slippages and confusions of an international student’s assimilation into American youth culture.

A Message From Humboldt | Matt Feldman | US | 2024 | 7 min | Chicago Festival Premiere

A 16mm in-camera experiment that kaleidoscopically beams its way through the dark of a Milwaukee apartment, descending into walls, pipes, whispers, and the old haunt of days past.

Dreams of My Father | Jonathan Seungjoon Lee | South Korea/US/Netherlands | 2024 | 15 min | US Festival Premiere

A familial yet eerie dialogue around spirituality, dreams, and transformation between son, brother, and father who share in a curiosity about filmmaking.

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Tags: Andersonville, Chicago, Chicago Filmmakers, Christopher Thompson, Dan Black, Derek Spencer, Jonathan Seungjoon Lee, Luis Figueroa Caunedo, Malaz Usta, Matt Feldman, Natalia del Mar Kašik, OCFF 2025: FUGUE STATES, Onion City Experimental Film Festival