Double back for (RE)VISITATIONS, a program centered on visits, returns, ancestry, and lineage. The works in this program take up a number of experimental documentary approaches in order to visit upon recovered footage and canonical film, loved ones and photo shoots, letters and graves.

Content Warning: discussion of death and/or dying, images of war
Lineup

Adrift Potentials | Leonardo Pirondi | Brazil/US | 2024 | 12 min

A speculative attempt to reconstruct an unfinished Brazilian film shot and half-assembled during the military dictatorship of the 1970s. The results comprise a floating diary of radio recordings, voice interviews, and empty rooms that contemplates the country’s colonial past.

refrigerator hum | Jade Wong | US | 2025 | 15 min | Chicago Festival Premiere

Filmmaker, mother, and grandmother converse, exploring care, shared knowledge, and images of food-making around their family restaurant. Memory is reanimated through varied image formats: 35mm portraits on oscillating lenticular prints, laserjet prints of 35mm film transferred onto 16mm loops, and photographic prints on polystyrene.

That split-up place | Inés Pintor Sierra, Pablo Santidrián | Spain | 2024 | 8 min | Chicago Festival Premiere

A docu-fictional coming-of-age story about two boys who are best friends separated by highway construction and the social structures of their eventual adult lives. The narration is constructed from loving phone calls and letters read aloud, which convey a pervasive nostalgia the men ultimately call into question.

Oh Paulo | Cam Archer | US | 2024 | 16 min | World Festival Premiere

Riveting firsthand contemplation of image-making, aging, and interpersonal intensity as told through the filmmaker-photographer’s impressionistic recollection of his young muses’ beautiful gestures and projected interiority.

at the bamboo green 在竹翠苑 | Xiaolu Wang | China/US | 2024 | 11 min

The filmmaker’s visit to their grandmother’s grave in Hui Muslim tradition at the foot of China’s Helan Mountains. Shot on cellphone in one continuous take, the film accentuates an in-between: visiting from America, the space of chant, and a tension generated by the camera’s presence.

I Was There, Part II | Chi Jang Yin | US/Japan | 2024 | 10 min

Combining newly uncovered 16mm footage of the bombed landscape of Hiroshima from United States Army archives with contemporary images of the city, the film recounts a dream of mother, daughter, responsibility, and survival.

Un Âne | Sirah Foighel Brutmann, eitan efrat | Belgium | 2023 | 13 min | Chicago Festival Premiere

A retreading of the desert journey captured in Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015) calls into question the nameless abstraction with which Akerman blanketed the Israeli-occupied Palestinian landscape, and attempts to politically dialogue with the filmmaker in the wake of her suicide.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Andersonville, Cam Archer, Chi Jang Yin, Chicago, Chicago Filmmakers, eitan efrat, Inés Pintor Sierra, Jade Wong, Leonardo Pirondi, OCFF 2025: (RE)VISITATIONS, Onion City Experimental Film Festival, Pablo Santidrián, Sirah Foighel Brutmann, Xiaolu Wang