A Brief Word About "Experiments in Cinema 18" (Patreon)

Due to final grades and other day-job obligations, I didn't get as much time to spend with the online Experiments in Cinema festival as I might have liked. Richard Herskowitz asked me if I had any recommendations or insights, and honestly, I don't. I quickly sampled about 2/3 of the program, and most films didn't compel me to watch them completely. Having said that, I discovered Alex Fields' recommendations a bit late in the game, and so there are two films they mentioned that I managed to squirrel away for later viewing. More on that later.

As for the seven films I did watch in their entirety, I can say that I have forgotten a few of them already. Of those that merit mention, How to Microwave a Cauliflower (in 3 easy steps) (Patrick Tarrant, 2022) gets points for sheer weirdness. I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what the steps were, but by the end of the film, the titular vegetable (or its image, anyway) is vibrating like it's on the verge of exploding. The super-nuked cauliflower might now outlast the lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss. 

I have followed Dana Berman Duff's conceptual films for awhile now, and Catalogue Vol. 4 (Dana Berman Duff, 2018) is one of her weaker entries. Pictures of light fixtures from catalogues, presented without comment, in what seems to want to be an exercise in structuralism / consumer critique but doesn't quite gel. I did not like Fragile (Sasha Waters, 2022) very much, but I'll say this. The film pulls no punches. Essentially a document of bitter professional jealousy, Waters complains that as a "Midwestern hockey mom," her work is not fashionable and is ignored by Rotterdam, Locarno, and Dennis Lim. Yes, she names names. We've all felt like Waters at one time or another, but most of us recognized that sour grapes is (are?) a bad look.

I've seen a handful of films by Michael Betancourt, and never been particularly interested. His Unseen Film Substitution (Michael Betancourt, 2022) is the nicest thing I've seen from him, partly because it's so negligible. It's literally a 30-second title card asking the viewer to think of a film they loved, in the space that would otherwise feature Betancourt's "screening." It's a cute one-liner that gets in and gets the job done. Only other film I want to mention is Waiting Room (Ashley MacKenzie, 2022), a film that shows promise. It's deeply inside the Canadian vernacular, with hand processing and color manipulation adding a material texture to personal memories -- very much in the Louise Bourque wheelhouse. But I'll be keeping an eye out for MacKenzie's future work.