PROGRAM 

This screening is composed of films and videos that embrace life, documented as it occurs. These filmmakers delve into family archives, remember love, and reflect on the importance of friendship, motherhood, home, solidarity... in socio-political systems that are not always friendly to them.

Onion City Experimental Film Festival Streaming Online

Online programs will be made available for streaming the day following all In-Person competition programs. The link to view this program will be emailed to the email address used to purchase the streaming pass.

As/Is | Natasha Woods | United States, 2022, 11 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

A micro portrait, a moving-image zine, a family archive. Investigating threads of an intergenerational experience. The maker inserts herself through the invitation of having her subjects point the camera/mic back at her, embracing the dysfunction, and accepting her position in the family as it presently exists. ​​​​​​

There, Where She Is Not | Sarah Ballard | United States, 2022, 7 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

Echoes of a time in my grandmother's life that she no longer remembers—a fractured memory recollected through proxy figures Frances Farmer and Marguerite Duras—a mirror is a placeless place.

Why Do Ants go Back to their Nests? | Alex Lo | Canada, 2022, 12 mins (US Festival Premiere)

An auto-fictional experimental film about the relationship between homeland (Hong Kong) and self.

Where the Friend’s Home? | Amina Maher | Iran, 2022, 11 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

In the process of honest self-exploration, two friends share the most private moments and break silences, seeking to confront unspoken desires.

Solidarity | Fernanda Pessoa | Brazil, 2022, 9 mins (US Festival Premiere)

In 2021, hundreds of thousands of people took over the streets in Brazil, in the midst of a pandemic, to protest against the Bolsonaro government. Inspired by Joyce Wieland's 1973 film of the same name, SOLIDARITY portrays these manifestations by focusing on the expressiveness of human hands rather than Wieland's feet. Gestures of affection, resistance, protection, joy or repression are revealed in these images made in super 8mm Ektachrome. With 2022 being a year of presidential elections in Brazil and the possibility of ending Bolsonaro's government, these images are an important record of this moment.

Looking for Love (And Job) | Yue Nakayama | US, 2021, 19 mins

A twisted Little Mermaid story in which a protagonist merman washes up on the shore of the Pacific Coast in search of Love. The Merman, the alien species, encounters and interacts with different species in the new habitat. The work explores migration, job security, and the power and gender structure of contemporary society using a variety of everyday anecdotes.

The Sky’s In There | Dani Leventhal ReStack, Sheilah Wilson ReStack | United States, 2022, 11 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

This latest work from the ReStacks pulls the experience of becoming mother (both through fostering and bio) through the lens of personal lives that are always, also, steeped in a world where systemic racism, classism, and heteronormativity influence and shape. Using documentary footage, a journey into a cave, a dream recounted, and formal strategies of color, sound, and movement, the ReStacks push experiences and ideas together to see what it can yield or reveal. THE SKY’S IN THERE proposes a fragmented meditation on the capacity of relation to bring about transformation.

Content Warning: This program contains nudity.

Featured image from THERE, WHERE SHE IS NOT by Sarah Ballard.