PROGRAM

It’s not easy being everywhere at once. The films in A HICCUP OF UBIQUITY feature street racers, amateur photographers, rappers, and artists searching for ways to exist between an oversaturated digital landscape and an ever-eroding physical world. Merging experimental film tropes with vernacular forms of viral image making, the filmmakers recognize that in the attention economy the struggle for relevance is a struggle for survival.

Stay with the Body | Kayla Anderson | United States, 2019, 17 mins

A video about the proliferation of images and the disappearance of bodies. For locations not captured by Google Street View, people can upload their own photos to the map. Through the Google Panorama app, volunteers are instructed to choreograph their own bodies out of the frame with the goal of producing an “objective” disembodied image, but sometimes clues remain. 

Every Method of Being in The World Looks Wrong But Feels Spectacular | Charlotte Zhang | United States, 2021, 9 mins

An elliptical adaptation of the filmmaker’s own 38-page libretto, an unnamed narrator recounts the fallout of an online romance scam and the ecstatic exploits of a street racer and drifter of mythic proportions; parallel tragedies which are connected through the consequences of naming and ordering, and the ambivalent pleasures of the endlessly modifiable body.

In Praise of Shadows | Joshua Gen Solondz | United States, 2021, 4 mins

On December 10th, 2020 I dreamt that I saw a film consisting of mostly leader with my voice repeatedly stating the greeting "Buenos Dias" but with the room reverberation shifting in dimension with each utterance. Then there was a brief shot of flowers in a window. It cuts back to black, then my voice says "Buenos Noches" and the reverb becomes that of an impossibly enormous space.

Estuary | Ross Meckfessel | United States, 2021, 12 mins

When you question the very nature of your physical reality it becomes much easier to see the cracks in the system. ESTUARY charts the emotional landscape of a time in flux. Inspired by the proliferation of computer generated social media influencers and the growing desire to document and manipulate every square inch of our external and internal landscapes, the film considers the ramifications of a world where all aspects of life are curated and malleable. As time goes on all lines blur into vector dots.

Easy Go | Grace Mitchell | United States, 2021, 7 mins

Depression, fetish and friendship. A shapeshifting portrait of healing bodies & eroding landscape.

Hail Mary | Sasha Phyars-Burgess | United States, 2021, 22 mins

A photographic and video lament on race, class, and space in one of Chicago’s westernmost neighborhoods – Austin. Beginning in the late 1960s, Austin experienced dramatic demographic changes due to white flight, redlining, and economic disinvestment. Both an expression of what is on the surface and what emerges when one takes a moment to look deeply, this project aims to capture the ongoing effects of these changes in the everyday lives of Austin residents. Through a mixture of straight photographs, in-camera aberrations, developmental mistakes, and recorded footage, the work aims to center the subjectivity of these residents by garnering awareness of a community whose narrative has been lost and evacuated of nuance.

Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema

In-person screenings are held at Chicago Filmmakers firehouse cinema located at 1326 W Hollywood Ave in the Edgewater neighborhood. Please be sure to arrive 15 minutes prior to showtime and be ready to present your order confirmation number for admission. Proof of full vaccination or a negative Covid-19 PCR test result is required to attend all screenings and events.