Welcome to spring. Much of this season is a meditation on connections to and perceptions of the world around us. We begin by asking how we might connect with the natural world and two striking figures come forward as examples: in his feature Two Years at Sea, Ben Rivers re-introduces us to Jake, who enjoys solitude in the landscape of the Scottish Highlands; and the modern dancer Sybil Shearer, whose mystic dances en plein air were intimately documented by artistic collaborator Helen Balfour Morrison. But we also wonder how images connect us to our collective past and bring us into the present. Several programs propose an answer: the work of visiting French filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Pèriot draws on archival materials to create time-collages as gripping commentary on some uncomfortable truths; in the experimental films of Takashi Ito is a 1980s futurist vision of analog phantasmagoria from which we see flashes of contemporary Japanese horror cinema; and Canadian filmmaker Caroline Martel brings her new documentary, Wavemakers, about the history of an intriguing electronic musical instrument, the ondes Martenot, invented during the interwar period. What about perceptions of the future? Visiting artist Michael Robinson offers a dystopic yet strangely alluring vision in his new video, Circle in the Sand. And as for alternate realities? In Morgan Fisher’s Screening Room is an almost impossible point-of-view, and our animated shorts program Weird Worlds proposes a journey into surreal territory.
We hope you will join us and our collaborators this season.
