"A lament by Mikaela Bellamy"
A vent in the form of an experimental short film, Lip Balm is about finding ways to cope with what can feel like the lowest moments of one's life.
Social & External
Unknown Role
Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.
A lonely artist creates a film by himself in his backyard for his own entertainment.
Filmmaker and new media artist Tong Xie’s debut short probes the unease, confusion, and obsession experienced by the body as it crosses the urban physiognomy. Set amidst the shadowy loneliness of Paris at night, Absolutely No Sexual Favors je pense à toi 吾想汝顯 depicts the psychological and corporeal marginality of queer identity and desire through perpetually displaced figures.
In the heart of the Caribbean, a mother and daughter confront a malevolent curse erasing identities of all the island's women, propelling them on a daring quest to reclaim their rich cultural heritage and triumph over the encroaching darkness.
Julia becomes worried about her boyfriend Holt when he explores the dark urban legend of a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after viewing. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a "movie within the movie" that no one has ever seen before.
A face-to-face confrontation with Guerrilla death squads in El Salvador, napalm bombings in Vietnam, the drugging of a monkey, a dolphin slaughter, a train disaster in India, Cambodian lepers, a death museum, a driver high on PCP and a boxer going down for his “final” count.
Shot in a series of long-takes over several days, the film follows a flower shop attendant (played by Devereaux, then actually employed at a small flower shop by the beach) in fragmented detail. The order of scenes resists chronology: moments recur, shift, or vanish, creating not the passage of a single day but the jumble of many, refracted into a meditation on routine and its quiet abstractions.
A graphic portrayal of the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life.
A folk singer in 17th-century Kerala discovers a mansion. Inside, he encounters an enigmatic cook and a powerful master, setting in motion a chain of events that changes his life.
Marcus, an average young man awakens to find his apartment under quarantine and completely isolated from the outside world. Ominous messages about toxins and evacuations plaster each screen of his various electronic devices, leaving his next door neighbor as the only person he has contact with. Scared, and with few resources, the two try to navigate there way through the indefinite wait - staving off hunger, boredom, and paranoia.
A mythic motorcycle tale of father and son, this is the story of Manuel Galloway, also known as "the King of Cali", the president of a motorcycle club whose members are all African-American men, mostly white-collar workers who exchange their suits and ties at night and on weekends for leather outfits and motorcycle helmets.
Alinur, a student filmmaker, tries to make a film about the apocalypse for his capstone project. The movie itself happens to be about a mercenary named M who inadvertently causes an apocalypse. As he tries to “create” the destruction of this supposed apocalypse through utilizing technical gimmicks that he has enforced onto the production of the film, this supposed effort also creeps in as a force that starts to “destroy” him, piece by piece. The outcome of it tests the sincerity of not only the film itself but also of the performative efforts that Alinur has made as a filmmaker—even this test might not be as sincere as it seems.
The inner mind of Aaliyah Petra, a young black dancer fighting to withstand the immense pressure of being her family and community's “Moneybaby.” Aaliyah battles through the overwhelming pressure to succeed, discovers her own resilience, and realizes the true meaning of Black Excellence.
Rafael is a 20 year old who lives in the past, remembering it through old recordings.
A young boy with a dream, a drum and blood try to be a exceptional drummer.
Two years after she escaped a violent attack on her family, 16-year-old Becky attempts to rebuild her life in the care of an older woman -- a kindred spirit named Elena. However, when a violent group known as the Noble Men break into their home, attack them and take their beloved dog, Becky must return to her old ways to protect herself and her loved ones.
Moving Matter is the culmination of a material-led process with artists from dance, costume design and film that began with a study of old kitchen flooring about to be discarded. This flax-based material enters our orbit in the 1950s, where a measured homelife and prescribed domesticity offered a reassuring antidote to bomb scares, political turmoil, and paranormativity. Stability topples as the flooring becomes entangled in the lives of those who don the material as garments and shelters. This film was made through Moving Matter, a long-term research-creation project that offers a methodology for rethinking the dynamism between raw materials, garments, and the body. Moving Matter steers the locus of choreography and wearable design away from human hierarchy to instead support truer collaboration amongst all moving materials, both human and non-human, in this case… linoleum.
A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?
As a young woman walks home alone one night, a chance encounter with a missing dog incites the reclamation of her body and self — as she learns to bite as tough as her bark.
20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.
A mentally ill patient is questioned to see if he is fit for release.
When troubled teen Milo, who has a fascination with vampire lore, meets the equally alienated Sophie, the two form a bond that begins to blur Milo's fantasy into reality.
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.
Clinging to a smooth, curved surface high above a sentient abyss, a woman tries to cover the few feet back to safety without losing purchase and falling to her death.
When his family is murdered, a deaf-mute named Boy escapes to the jungle and is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.
An outwardly normal schoolteacher preys on suicidal women to slake his overwhelming thirst for human blood.
A college student moonlighting as a chauffeur picks up two mysterious women for a night of party-hopping across LA. But when he uncovers their bloodthirsty intentions—and their dangerous, shadowy underworld—he must fight to stay alive.
A lone astronaut testing the first faster-than-light spacecraft travels farther than he imagined possible.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
Aboard a small escape pod, four survivors try to discover what caused the destruction of their spaceship.
A masked maniac terrorizes the same small community where a murderer known as the Phantom Killer struck decades earlier.
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
After an attack leaves him in limbo -- invisible to the living and also near death -- a teenager discovers the only person who might be able help him is his attacker.
A young woman seeking self-improvement enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist but, after a handful of intense sessions, discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.
Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are—or how they got there. In the shadow of a dark internet conspiracy theory, ruthless elitists gather at a remote location to hunt humans for sport. But their master plan is about to be derailed when one of the hunted turns the tables on her pursuers.
In late-90s suburbia, a lonely teenager meets a girl at school who introduces him to a mysterious late-night T.V. show — a vision of a supernatural world pulsing beneath their own. As time goes on, however, questions begin to arise about why the show sometimes seems more real than their own lives. In the pale glow of the television, their view of reality begins to crack.
After fleeing his psychotic father, a young teen and his mom seek refuge in a remote farmhouse, only to face a pack of ferocious dogs and the sinister spirits that haunt the property.