AGITATE CHICAGO brings together Chicago-born avant-garde artists with an international group of filmmakers who now call Cook County home. Chicago has long been an overlooked hub for the avant-garde, but this program gives a snapshot into a flourishing local scene, creating work that plays freely with media and form while inventing new languages, non-dogmatic in their approach to documentary and narrative cinemas. Moments of overwhelming trance and noise are punctuated by deeply personal cinema, direct and emotive. The surreal and uncanny juxtaposes with verité, in what is a fitting portrait to Chicago itself, underpinned by aching personal expression and vulnerability. AGITATE CHICAGO showcases some of the best talent in our local scene, as the avant-garde continues to push the boundaries of experimental cinema.
Program:
Do Not Feed the Pigeons by Brian Zahm
at the bamboo green by Xiaolu Wang
Godspeed by Sonnie Wooden
Forgetting French #1 by Alicia Mujynya
A Place to Rest Syncopated by Oona Taper
camera roll 3 by Charles Cadkin
No More Tears by Jay Villalobos
Exit Metropolis by Alice Avery
Studies on the Negative Architectures of the Digital Sickness by M. Woods (with live sound)
Programmed by M. Woods
Total runtime: 71 min
Going on it’s third year, Peripheries Experimental Film & Video Festival is a yearly, non-competitive experimental showcase, which serves to highlight contemporary works of experimental film, as well as screening significant historical works for the purpose of expanding awareness and appreciation for the experimental mode of filmmaking and its contemporary practitioners, both international and domestic.
