Shorts Program 3: Touching at the 28th annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival will include works by Linnea Nugent, Carleen Maur, Cameron Gibson, Frédéric Moffet, Sasha Waters Freyer, and Dani Restack (formerly Leventhal) & Sheilah Restack (formerly Wilson).

Intimacy is explored both in personal relationships and through the camera in these six works. How does sexuality affect our bodies, our spaces, and our philosophies?

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YOUR TEETH, MY TIME (Linnea Nugent, 2017, 3 min, US)
Through the manipulation of super 8 and digital, Your Teeth, My Time is a short exploration of a small daily experience based in reality. It is a playfully poetic encounter that moves through and reveals the harsh and intimate motions of brushing one’s teeth.

DYKE IN SIGHT (Carleen Maur, 2018, 4 min, US)
A Dyke-femme’s love letter to regional landscapes, language boundaries and f***ing.

SIT, STAY (Cameron Gibson, 2017, 12 min, Japan/US)
Sit, Stay is an experimental documentary in which, for lovers and tourists alike, the means of connection are more alienating than effective. The characters submit to various forms of mediation: tour guides, cell phones, nostalgia, fantasy… Comforting narratives quickly fall apart under the weight of it all.

FEVER FREAKS (Frédéric Moffet, 2017, 8 min, Canada/US)
A detective is hired to find the original copy of a lost ancient book. The book recounts the tale of a plague. A form of radiation, unknown at the present time, activates a virus. The virus affects the sexual and fear centers in the brain and nervous system; fear is converted into sexual frenzies which are reconverted back into fear, the feedback leading in many cases to a fatal conclusion. Fever Freaks manipulates and re-edits individual frames from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1974 film Arabian Nights to illustrate a passage of William S. Burroughs’ 1981 book Cities of the Red Night.

DRAGONS & SERAPHIM (Sasha Waters Freyer, 2017, 14 min, US)
A lyrical experimental inquiry into ancient flowers and animal desire on the brink of adolescence. dragons & seraphim fuses original film footage of three generations of family shot on a hand-cranked Bolex camera, with 16mm nature films and the home movies of strangers. The past rises up–a mirage, but I can’t bury it deep enough. Fever season of magic and madness: it’s their turn now, our willing sacrifice. Sound design by Stephen Vitiello; poem “Childless” by Michael Morse.

STRANGELY ORDINARY THIS DEVOTION (Dani Restack and Sheilah Restack, 2017, 26 min, US)
Strangely Ordinary This Devotion is a visceral exploration of feral domesticity, queer desire, and fantasy in a world under the threat of climate change. Utilizing and exploding archetypes, the film offers a radical approach to collaboration and the conception of family. The filmmakers collect and arrange images and moments that are at once peculiar and banal, precious and disturbing, creating resonance and contrast through experimental modes of storytelling.

TRT: 68 minutes; All Digital Projection

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PROGRAMMING:

Opening Night: Ouroboros
https://www.facebook.com/events/1597733373607736/

Program 1: Growing
https://www.facebook.com/events/406953959726051/

Shorts Program 2: Moving
https://www.facebook.com/events/2054621001481266/

Shorts Program 4: Thinking
https://www.facebook.com/events/151379545546358/

Incense, Sweaters & Ice
https://www.facebook.com/events/169321673704183/

Shorts Program 5: Sensing
https://www.facebook.com/events/194453984479723/

Shorts Program 6: Listening
https://www.facebook.com/events/2140454019516086/

Shorts Program 7: Looking
https://www.facebook.com/events/412164299229013/

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A Production of Chicago Filmmakers:

Onion City is one of the premiere international festivals exclusively devoted to experimental film and video.

Onion City was founded in the 1980s by the Experimental Film Coalition and run by them for many years. Chicago Filmmakers assumed responsibility for the festival in 2001, and expanded the size and opened it up to video work as well as film. It is generally 8-10 programs over four days and features roughly 60-70 works from around the world. Aside from the competition programs, there are occasional special presentations of new or old films of note or guest presentations. Screenings take place at Chicago Filmmakers and other venues around mid-June.

The mission of Onion City is to provide local and regional audiences with an opportunity to view a wide variety of contemporary experimental works, focused on artistic excellence but also with an eye towards representing differing styles, forms, and nationalities.

Chicago Filmmakers is a not-for-profit media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. Chicago Filmmakers’ twofold mission is to serve independent film and digital video artists by supporting the creation and dissemination of new media arts works and to serve Chicago audiences by screening artistically innovative, socially relevant, and diverse films and videos.

Chicago Filmmakers nurtures the development of aspiring filmmakers of all ages by offering classes, workshops, and summer camps; empowers artists to create new work through production grants, equipment access, fiscal sponsorship, and other services and resources; and encourages the professional advancement of media artists through seminars, panel discussions, lectures, rough-cut and open screenings, as well as networking events and other opportunities for artistic exchange. Chicago Filmmakers develops diverse audiences through its year-round weekly film and video exhibition programs and its two annual film festivals, Reeling the Chicago LGBTQ International Film Festival and The Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival.

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Tags: Cameron Gibson, Carleen Maur, Chicago, Chicago Filmmakers, Dani Restack, Edgewater, Frédéric Moffet, Illinois, Linnea Nugent, Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival, Sasha Waters Freyer, Sheilah Restack, Shorts Program 3, Touching