Fourth Annual Psychedelic Film and Music Festival Screenings Announced

The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival has announced the program for its fourth annual event, with a lineup of music videos and science fiction, horror, and fantasy films. Featuring 88 official selections, virtual screenings will be held from December 9-10, with in-person events at the Producers Club Theaters in Midtown Manhattan from December 11-12. Passes are available here.

The mission of the festival is to raise awareness about the psychedelic experience through media and meditative practices, with an emphasis on exploring the mechanisms of creativity and self-expression.

“The festival uses the impact of film and music to help attendees understand that we live in an interconnected ecosystem,” said Daniel Abella, the founder and director of the festival. “Through a large-scale look at how psychedelic culture improves people’s lives, everyone can work towards better relations with themselves, others, the planet, and their creator.” The event will showcase films that cinematically explore psychedelic experiences through abstract imagery, saturated colors, hyperreal dialogue and surrealistic landscapes.

This year’s event consists of 10 features, 78 shorts, and spans 27 countries. “We have a very diverse lineup, and some of our most excellent official selections are based in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy,” said Abella. 

The schedule follows the jump.

The program will feature eight premieres, with Wonderland Recoil bowing to audiences worldwide on Saturday, December 11th. The film, directed by Shaun Rana, follows a woman who finds a new psychedelic drug that forces her to confront her inner demons.

The series Translove Airwaves, directed by Matt Levin will also hold its World Premiere, and will screen its third episode that takes viewers through a celestial and psychedelic trip.

The festival includes the East Coast Premieres of –

  • Scott Bateman’s 5000 Space Aliens, which utilizes computer-manipulated found footage
  • Alejandro Maly’s “rockumentary” Acid Mothers Temple and Reynols — Live and Beyond about the collaboration between the titular indie bands
  • Luis Robledo and Vanni Mangoni’s The Song That Calls You Home, a mystical exploration of the indigenous Shipibo people in the Amazon
  • Mathias Averty’s documentary We Are the New Chimeras, about a festival that celebrates Black Metal music
  • A groundbreaking psychedelic journey Descending The Mountain by Maartje Nevejan
  • The mind-bending vignette style film Underneath: An Anthology of Terror by John Nicol, Andre Becker, and Cory Ivanchuk

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2021:

Virtual Event (https://www.psychedelicfilmandmusicfestival.com)

Block 1: Down The Rabbit Hole

Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm EST

Sideview (2021)

  • Director: Tosh Leykum
  • Run Time/Country: 10 min, Germany
  • Synopsis: The actress Kaori Matsuo enters into different dream worlds. It is a journey into her own interior. No straightforward view, it is a side glance unexplainable, irritating, psychedelic worlds in which dreams mingle.

Insolite (Unususal) (2021)

  • Director: Quentin Lestienne
  • Run Time/Country: 3 min, France
  • Synopsis: Insolite is a character shut in a room. He’s looking to escape from his daily life.

Close Up (2021)

  • Director: Nick Gatsby
  • Run Time/Country: 15 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Join Lucy as she embarks on a spiritual journey to Mars in this psychedelic short full of excitement, mischief, and music. 

Motorik Innervisions

  • Artist/Director: Pierre Ajavon
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, France
  • Synopsis: Driven by a Motorik rhythm, the electronic sounds of the Moog modular synthesizer take us to the heart of inner visions.

Aurora (2021)

  • Artist: OLGA Vocal Ensemble Netherlands
  • Director: James Baramy
  • Run Time/Country: 3 min, USA/Netherlands
  • Synopsis: An experimental rotoscoped animation.

The Dance of Samsara (2021)

  • Director: Frank Bennett, Sita Bennett
  • Run Time/Country: 28 min, Australia
  • Synopsis: The wheel of Samsara spins. Through multiple lives we travel, forgetting what came before, unaware of this repetitive cycle to which we are bound. What if there was a dance that opened a doorway to the infinite possibility that lay beyond?

Blue Velvet Blues (2021)

  • Artist: Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso UFO
  • Director: Odd Magnus Grimeland
  • Run Time/Country: 24 min, Norway
  • Synopsis: Blue Velvet Blues is a documentation of the old and abandoned sanatorium at Harastølen in Western Norway, with music from the psychedelic Japanese band Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso UFO. A montage of stills and film tells the story of the decaying mountain sanatorium in a visual reflection that fits the music’s suggestive melancholy. The work is a part of the ongoing and infinite project Acid Mothers Temple meets VISUALISTA.

Block 2: The Search For Transcendence

Time: 9:00pm – 11:00pm EST

Bufo Alvarius – The Underground Secret (2017)

  • Director: Filip Zaruba
  • Run Time/Country: 78 min, Czech Republic
  • Synopsis: A radical testimony of the strongest known natural psychedelic, tryptamine 5-MeO-DMT produced by Bufo Alvarius, a toad of the Sonoran desert.

Otonashi (2021)

  • Director: Martin Gerigk
  • Run Time/Country: 10 min, Germany
  • Synopsis: Otonashi is a philosophical voyage through inner and outer experiences of human existence and audiovisual meditation of futuristic transmutations about the Japanese Hannya Shingy?.

Dance of the Veils (2020)

  • Artist: John T. Trautman
  • Run Time/Country: 27 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Dance of the Veils is a mashup of the song of the same title by Vold Book with an edited version of the 1923 public domain silent film “Salome.”

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2021:

Virtual Event (https://www.psychedelicfilmandmusicfestival.com)

Block 1: The Psychedelic Spectrum

Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm EST

Heads (2021)

  • Artist: The Line aka Brian Dillon
  • Director: Alexander Kuribayashi
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, UK
  • Synopsis: A horror story about a paranoid and bitter member of a Faculty’s Golf Society who yearns for acceptance but sabotages himself.

Truth About Hastings (2020)

  • Director: Dan Schneidkraut
  • Run Time/Country: 10 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Strange things are afoot in Hastings, Nebraska.

One Soul For Two (2021)

  • Director: Georgiy Smirnov
  • Run Time/Country: 28 min, Russian Federation
  • Synopsis: The young sculptor Danila is accused of a terrible crime. An attempt to understand what has happened and look inside your subconscious leads to mysterious events that turn upside down the young man’s worldview along with his life itself.

Solo Punk (2019)

  • Director: Rozalyn Mattocks
  • Run Time/Country: 8 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A woman isolated in a bunker struggles to decipher reality from her mind’s eye.

Mother’s Day (2018)

  • Director: Elizabeth Tabish
  • Run Time/Country: 22 min, USA
  • Synopsis: California, 1968. Jane has the perfect life. A loving husband, a darling daughter and hands down, the grooviest home in the neighborhood. But all that is no match for the painful memories of Jane’s childhood as they emerge on the eve of Mother’s Day.

Identity (2019)

  • Director: Panos Pappas, Despina Charalampous
  • Run Time/Country: 15 min, Greece
  • Synopsis: A woman discovers with horror that her face has changed; well, if this situation occurs at the passport control of an airport, she really has a big problem.

The Warning (2020)

  • Director: Miguel Gomez-Canales
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, Spain
  • Synopsis: The year 2020. A woman receives a message from the Virgin Mary.

Geneva Jacuzzi’s Casket (2021)

  • Artist: Geneva Jacuzzi
  • Director: Chris Friend
  • Run Time/Country: 8 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Kate Shaw is massively frustrated. She has several shipments of experimental Emote Cartridges past due for delivery to the World Wellness Watch, the current one-world government. Kate is going to miss the deadline. Execution is likely.

Block 2: Altered States

Time: 9:00pm – 11:00pm EST

1985 After “Let’s Make a Sandwich” by Pat O’Neill (2020)

  • Director: William Thinnes
  • Run Time/Country: 1 min, USA

Blue (2021)

  • Director: Ann Marie Bouchard
  • Run Time/Country: 3 min, Canada
  • Synopsis: One hundred feet of clear 16mm, using mostly blue paint & inks, playing with the persistence of vision by drawing on one of two frames only. Music improvised on the images.

Perpetual Becoming (2021)

  • Director: Bill Kinder
  • Run Time/Country: 10 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Can a film create a state of devotional meditation? “Listen to the voice of being…” in the Sierra Nevada. An enchanting electronic score immerses the viewer in a voyage of reverence.

Paint on Paint #1 (2021)

  • Director: Vasco Diogo
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, Portugal
  • Synopsis: This film used dripping techniques that emulate abstract expressionist painting and the work of Stan Brakhage, in order to produce insights about ourselves and the world we live in.

La Cumbia En El Desierto (2018)

  • Director: Sergio Solares
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, Mexico
  • Synopsis: A psychedelic journey for redemption.

Mammoth: Meditation (2021)

  • Director: Matt Check
  • Run Time/Country: 1 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A 3D animated short that dives inside the mind of Mammoth the Sunflower struggling to keep his thoughts under control while meditating.

Three Films (2020)

  • Director: Ivan Weiss
  • Run Time/Country: 16 min, USA/UK/Japan/Portugal/Poland
  • Synopsis: Framed around three performances – two live shows and one studio cut – “Three Films” is a patchwork video sculpture, a meditation on the creative process.

Heartburn (2016)

  • Director: Craig Hall
  • Run Time/Country: 6 min, Canada
  • Synopsis: A non-narrative video art piece generated through live editing of multiple pre-shot layers of footage for a large screen video performance.

Firewall (2019)

  • Director: Mark Calderbank
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, UK
  • Synopsis: A unique artistic collaboration with the Sleaford Mods. It is a work of art, music and film, using the Sleaford Mods’ song Firewall (Eton Alive, 2019) with British artist Chris Gollon’s imagery.

Dreams Are Fabricated (2021)

  • Director: Meg Case
  • Run Time/Country: 3 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A commercial hype reel shredding the magic of the mechanism by which the dominant myth defends itself from deconstruction through the fabrication of dreams while simultaneously reproducing itself, duplicating, spreading, feeding, and manifesting into a structured ideology; this is a stretching of these ingredients across a digital canvas.

Christmas in Hawaii (2019)

  • Director: Mariel Noir
  • Run Time/Country: 5 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Comedic music video for song by Jimmy Francis. A parody of the song “White Christmas” also inspired by an event from my childhood where my mother promised going to Hawaii for Christmas and then it didn’t happen.

Formless Form (2021)

  • Director: Ben Ridgway
  • Run Time/Country: 2 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Our world. Our lives. Both inner and outer are in a state of change. Sometimes imperceptible yet always knowable.

Trouble Blues (2021)

  • Director: Justin Jalien Gerard
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, USA
  • Synopsis: The second official video from the rock band KMI. Here we see them hurtling through outer space in a spaceship. They decide to land on planet earth and play a live show in NYC’s Bryant Park.

Fabric Softener (2021)

  • Director: Chris Yates
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, USA
  • Synopsis: While on a long hike, CHRIS gives advice to his close friend, BLACC, who is frustrated with his relationship. As they traverse down the path the two men come upon an item that feels out of place. Torn on what to do, one of the men decides to take it, forever changing his life.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2021:

Producers Club Theaters (358 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036)

Block 1: Feature Presentation

Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm EST

5000 Space Aliens (2021) — EAST COAST PREMIERE

  • Director: Scott Bateman
  • Run Time/Country: 84 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Meet 5000 space aliens in 5000 seconds in this fun and totally bonkers animated film that uses computer-manipulated found footage and collage.

Block 2: Psychedelic Dimensions

Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm EST

Noise (2021)

  • Director: Marcelo Mayen
  • Run Time/Country: 6 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A short film about America’s obsession with novelty.

Bach Is Blue (2021)

  • Director: Jasmin Morrison
  • Run Time/Country: 1 min, UK
  • Synopsis: Kate can’t speak or move. She’s trapped in her body. And, yet, she exists in a liminal space full of color, one where Bach is blue.

Kissing Gaia (2021)

  • Director: Jerry Toth
  • Run Time/Country: 11 min, Ecuador
  • Synopsis: A short experimental film about the wild harvest and ecstatic consumption of a sacred psychedelic cactus. Shot in Ecuador under the influence of San Pedro.

Overdowd (2021)

  • Director: Roderick Henry
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Newbie ate a little too much o’ the green.

Weed Art Process (2019)

  • Director: Serge Goldwicht
  • Run Time/Country: 1 min, Belgium
  • Synopsis: This is the story of a magic seed. Through pure art, the seed frees the power of imagination.

Floating Woman (2021)

  • Director: Laura Newman, Sister Leona
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A group of friends run away to the woods, creating psychedelic art and exploring the power of orgasm to heal and free her mind.

We Are Not Here (2021)

  • Director: Kasper Quintanilla
  • Run Time/Country: 7 min, Norway
  • Synopsis: After recently finding herself in the afterlife, a young woman and her new companion are moving freely through time and space while being invisible. But this sense of freedom is challenged by the fact that they’re not able to touch each other.

The Long Strange Trip Backyard (2021)

  • Director: Coby Rich
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, USA
  • Synopsis: When a down on his luck stoner gets a hold of some magic mushrooms he experiences a wild trip he’ll never forget.

Copper Lines (2021)

  • Director/Artists: Banjii & Mayuri
  • Run Time/Country: 6 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Banjii & Mayuri is a band that released their debut single “Copper Lines” from their upcoming album “Uncommon Love Story” on August 14th, 2020 on all streaming platforms.

Mammoth: Meditation (2021)

  • Director: Matt Check
  • Run Time/Country: 1 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A 3D animated short that dives inside the mind of Mammoth the Sunflower struggling to keep his thoughts under control while meditating.

Block 3: Journey To The Far Side of Your Mind

Time: 2:00pm – 3:45pm EST

Your Perspective (2021)

  • Director: Ben Vokes
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, UK
  • Synopsis: Reflections on life and death.

Men In White (2021)

  • Director: Richie Harrington
  • Run Time/Country: 25 min, USA
  • Synopsis: When Mikey, a dimwitted drug-dealer with a heart of gold, overdoses and dies, The Men in White show up to take him to the afterlife. However, they might have something more sinister up their sleeves. 

Endless White Space (2020)

  • Director: Joanna Alicja Stotko
  • Run Time/Country: 7 min, Germany
  • Synopsis: A narrative on the desire to break free from the construction of the “I,” after experiencing the own presence out of body. An extended quarantine project, with soundscapes heavily influenced by the album Time Machines by Coil.

Canvas (2021)

  • Director: Srisha Chakraborti
  • Run Time/Country: 3 min, India
  • Synopsis: A figure comes out of a blank space and undergoes changes, as the changes start to grow more rapid, more violent and more erratic, the figure slashes its belly, revealing its final form. In the end the “Canvas of Life” will never be as empty as it starts out. 

Codex Entropia (2021)

  • Director: Richard Pell
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, USA
  • Synopsis: An ancient civilization develops complex computing technologies using only well-trained animals. Told through a psychedelic found-footage slideshow sourced entirely from 100+ year old stereoscopic photographs. Seen here in its intended anaglyph format.

We Are More Than We Know (2021)

  • Director: Justin Tyner
  • Run Time/Country: 8 min, USA
  • Synopsis: The power of an individual’s creative freedom is explored in a hidden surreal world where creative energy is brought to life using stained glass visuals, poetry and dance.

Kingdom Come (2021)

  • Director: Buddy Love
  • Run Time/Country: 14 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A ranch hand abuses a substance that allows him to create a reality where his brother is still alive.

7 Prayers (2020)

  • Director: Todd Carter 
  • Run Time/Country: 8 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A Hyperreal musical.

Enchantment Beneath The Waves (2021)

  • Director: Frank A. DiMauro
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Undersea footage of exotic marine life shot in the Indian and Pacific Ocean, as well as rare footage of a Komoda Dragon swimming in the ocean, set to electronic music by Frank DiMauro aka Frank Tomorrow.

Iain Banks Appreciation Society, 2021

  • Director Charlie V. Rose
  • UK, 15 min
  • Logan sets out into the wild, from a remote Scottish afterparty, in search of the kind of adventure that has been missing from his life since he moved to London.

North by Freaking West (2018)

  • Director: Chris Kotsovos
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, USA
  • Synopsis: In collaboration with iconoclastic composer Ron Jones (Star Trek: The Next Generation), a loving tribute to films of Alfred Hitchcock and the musical genius of Bernard Herman.

Big Fat Spider Lady (2021)

  • Director/Composer: House of Weirdos
  • Run Time/Country: 5 min, USA
  • Synopsis: In this music video by House of Weirdos, we are witness to the bizarre story of three brothers from The Bronx, the youngest suspecting some strange, nocturnal visits by the song’s namesake.

Block 4: Documentary Presentation

Time: 3:45pm – 5:00pm EST

Acid Mothers Temple and Reynols — Live and Beyond (2021) — EAST COAST PREMIERE

  • Director: Alejandro Maly
  • Run Time/Country: 75 min, Argentina
  • Synopsis: Live and Beyond is a rockumentary about these two great underground and psychedelic bands together, Acid Mothers Temple and Reynols. They met in 2017 in Buenos Aires and played in a live concert, recorded an album and made a magical jam.Interviews and live performances of the bands.

Block 5: Documentary Presentation

Time: 5:00pm – 7:00pm EST

The Song That Calls You Home (2020) — EAST COAST PREMIERE

  • Director: Luis Robledo, Vanni Mangoni
  • Run Time/Country: 73 min, USA/Canada/Costa Rica/Italy/Peru
  • Synopsis: This is a personal, scientific and mystical exploration of Amazonian curanderismo with focus on Ayahuasca and Master Plants, their healing and visionary properties and risks, along with the wondrous world of the Shipibo people and song.

Block 6: The Psychedelic Mirror

Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm EST

This Is What It Feels Like (2021)

  • Director: Matt Dahl
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Upbeat dream pop/electronica dance music married to a quirky, animated video.

Translove Airwaves – Episode 3: “Nobody Gets Fat Eating Music” (2021) — WORLD PREMIERE

  • Director: Matt Levin
  • Cinematographer: Jim Saah
  • Run Time/Country: 26 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Join artist, author, space rock legend and appreciator of Icelandic “window weather”, Will Carruthers, via a certain psychedelic painting he did for our host, Matt Levin, as he takes us on a celestial trip through his career in music, painting, and writing. Will sat for an interview with music critic Dom Gourlay at the 2016 Liverpool Psych Festival and shares some of his recollections and wild stories of working with Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, Brian Jonestown Massacre and more.

The Dark Forest (2021)

  • Director: Martin Del Carpio
  • Run Time/Country: 10 min, USA
  • Synopsis: The Dark Forest’ transmutes its author’s innermost life into an admirable piece of introspective cinema. Opening with Dante Alighieri’s quote which inspired the title, it takes the viewer on a short, yet transcendent journey through the bushes of symbols and trees of thoughts, in the company of a lovely (and cunning?) forest spirit.

The Invisible Mirror (2021)

  • Director: Luigi Rizzo
  • Run Time/Country: 5 min, UK
  • Synopsis: At night while something has happened in the house of an old lady, a young girl dresses to go to a party. Through the dance and the music, suddenly youth and age merge together in an ephemeral and dynamic moment, ultimately connected.

Dissolution (2021)

  • Director: Luis Solarat
  • Run Time/Country: 30 min, USA/Peru
  • Synopsis: Dissolution is a documentary of the director’s journey into the Amazon at the time the world collapsed due to COVID.

Lens-Muse (2020)

  • Director: Adam Holoubek
  • Run Time/Country: 13 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A poet walks through Times Square. experiencing the expanse of his waking world and the sacred space of his subconscious muse, expressed in four realms.

Treebirth (2021)

  • Director: Michael Ben Abu
  • Run Time/Country: 3 min, Israel
  • Synopsis: An olive tree shatters into pieces, falls apart, and comes together again. The tree implodes, deconstructs into fragments and particles flying into an eerie space. 

Astral Plain Drifter (2021)

  • Director: Mike Caravella, Joe di Gennaro
  • Run Time/Country: 9 min, USA
  • Synopsis: An existential journey to find motivation for his languishing band sent Drifter on a new course. Sometime before yesterday…or after tomorrow, he receives the beacon that his Ex-Girlfriend is in peril. Prepared by his trusty Sidekick, he ventures off into the yonder, where his Antagonist awaits.

Block 7: Feature Presentation

Time: 9:00pm – 10:30pm EST

Wonderland Recoil (2021) — WORLD PREMIERE

  • Director: Shaun Rana
  • Run Time/Country: 93 min, Denmark
  • Synopsis: In the future it’s possible to print custom made drugs & psychedelics in your home. Alice is stuck in her life, and is desperately looking for an escape. She finds a brand new psychedelic drug called Nirvana – designed to warp your reality. Alice takes it, arrives in Wonderland as her alter ego Ecila and gets lost in Wonderland, where she has to face her demons and nightmares.

Block 8: Feature Presentation

Time: 10:30pm – 11:20pm EST

We Are the New Chimeras (2020) — EAST COAST PREMIERE

  • Director: Mathias Averty
  • Run Time/Country: 50 min, France
  • Synopsis: To celebrate the coming summer and say goodbye to the dark days of winter, they leave their cities in droves to worship forgotten gods in the heart of Brittany. This documentary recounts the last edition of the “Feux de Beltane” (Beltane Fire Festival), a secret celebration meant for Black Metal fans, through a portrait of six festival-goers.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2021:

Producers Club Theaters (358 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036)

Block 1: The Inner Journey

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm EST

Join Daniel Abella, author of the debut book, “The Theater of the Mind: A Breakthrough Treatment for Overcoming PTSD, Phobia and Trauma,” as he explores through the cinematic journey and interconnectivity between the outer world and inner world. He draws parallels from films, art, music, and news to demonstrate that we all have a powerful psychedelic feature in our mind that we can open at will. Abella’s book will be available for purchase. For more information about the book, visit https://www.luxaeternum.com.

Block 2: Altered States

Time: 12:00pm – 2:00pm EST

2020 (2020)

  • Director: Tom Bessoir, Joshua Pines
  • Run Time/Country: 20 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A film for 2020, a year to remember. 2020 explores different colors to create a flicker film. Music by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.

Hardcore Halbert (2020)

  • Director: Riley Lynch
  • Run Time/Country: 12 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Halbert is a sad young lad trying to tend to an ailing ficus plant. Despite his vigorous watering regimen, the ficus will not grow. One day, heavy metal music drifts over his neighbor’s fence, causing a new leaf to sprout from the sapling. Halbert quickly picks up the music as a new passion. His mother, however, wants him to stop wasting time on his ever-rotating wheel of hobbies, and to focus on his future.

Aging Rockers (2018)

  • Director: Jim Serbent
  • Run Time/Country: 7 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Aging Rockers V2.0, a darkly humorous tribute to aging rockers everywhere and to those musical luminaries who have left us.

Prism (2021)

  • Director: Emma Blaise Doty
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, USA
  • Synopsis: “Prism” acts as the container for a multimedia, abstract, experimental experience. In this film, we will go on a journey through the full spectrum of light and color. The themes of the landscapes portraying these colors are inspired by the 7 chakra points.

GLF-LSD (2019)

  • Director: Jordan Baseman
  • Run Time/Country: 13 min, UK
  • Synopsis: GLF LSD is narrated by Alan Wakeman, an early member of the Gay Liberation Front. Alan discussed the connection between the GLF and LSD as an essential part of becoming. We hear Alan describe his experiences with LSD – we learn about his personal realizations and his discoveries. Visually the film is comprised of multiple super-impositions, layered 16mm material and physical, handmade special effects.

Jala Suite: deep air (2020)

  • Director: Jing Wang, Harvey Goldman
  • Run Time/Country: 7 min, USA
  • Synopsis: The “visual music” collaborations of Jing Wang and Harvey Goldman attempt to produce a synesthesia like experience. The audience is encouraged to “see” the music and “hear” the visuals. The imagery and audio components are constructed without hierarchy, a true melding of sound and image.

Karoshi (2021)

  • Director: Geerten Harmen
  • Run Time/Country: 19 min, Netherlands
  • Synopsis: In the world of Karoshi we follow the hard and dull life of a young car mechanic named Lucas Rêves. He has given up on all of his ambitions, until one day a mysterious figure arrives in his garage. After this figure hits a woman in front of his garage with his car, Lucas gets the chance to make his dream of becoming a surgeon into reality.

Coalescence (2021)

  • Director: João Pedro Oliveira
  • Run Time/Country: 11 min, Portugal
  • Synopsis: Coalescence is the process of joining or merging of elements to form one mass or whole. In this visual music piece, both visual materials and music join and separate themselves in distinct units, forming shapes and sounds that are the combination of elements joined together.

Dazzle Ships (2021)

  • Director: Solomon Burbridge
  • Executive Producer: Todd Haynes 
  • Run Time/Country: 19 min, USA
  • Synopsis: In Dazzle Ships, the performers and their desire to feel loved are set in an internal feedback loop where the weapon of psychic disturbance becomes a tool of self awakening. The result is a genuine reflection of the fewest who are exposed. The magic of the obscure and ephemeral.

Cronico (2021)

  • Director: Claudia Calderon
  • Run Time/Country: 3 min, Puerto Rico
  • Synopsis: During the 2020 worldwide quarantine, a young hip hop singer finds solace in marijuana. Crónico is a collage animation music video that explores the daily rituals of a man during these uncertain pandemic times, combined with fantasies that help him escape reality and even reimagine his own history

Florabundus (2021)

  • Director: Big Top Collective
  • Run Time/Country: 1 min, USA
  • Synopsis: An experimental digital video made using images of our sculptures and is part of new series of short experimental digital videos called Dream Storm.

Dustria (2020)

  • Director: Alison Tanenhaus
  • Run Time/Country: 5 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A candy-colored, slightly sinister, otherworldly meditation on industrial waste and atmospheric decay. Presented in the form of a hypnotic music video for Boston electronic synth duo The Square Root of Negative Two.

IXION #2 “The Eye Candy” (2021)

  • Director: Joey Bargsten
  • Run Time/Country: 7 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Joey Bargsten’s fake stereoscopic film for his VR project “The Other: A Maze,” IXION #2 “The EyeCandy” features identical side-by-side videos of abstract imagery produced by his own motion-reactive visual synthesis based on the legendary Rutt-Etra analog video synthesizer of the 1970’s.

Block 3: Documentary Presentation

Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm EST

Descending The Mountain (2021) — EAST COAST PREMIERE

  • Director: Maartje Nevejan
  • Run Time/Country: 78 min, Germany/Switzerland
  • Synopsis: Descending the Mountain takes us on a journey of mystical revelations, experienced through meditation and psilocybin. To understand how psychedelics reveal the nature of consciousness, psychiatrist Franz and Zen master Vanja guide experienced meditators – who have never used psychedelics before – through a ground-breaking scientific experiment on the majestic Swiss Mount Rigi.

Block 4: Psychedelic, Eerie, and Uncanny Shorts

Time: 4:00pm – 6:15pm EST

Genghis Tron – Dream Weapon (2021)

  • Director: Matthew Newman
  • Run Time/Country: 5 min, USA
  • Synopsis: This is the official video for the song Dream Weapon by the band Genghis Tron. Someone finds their lucky potential ladder, constructs it and says goodbye to this place.

Truth About Hastings (2020)

  • Director: Dan Schneidkraut
  • Run Time/Country: 10 min, USA
  • Synopsis: Strange things are afoot in Hastings, Nebraska.

One Soul For Two (2021)

  • Director: Georgiy Smirnov
  • Run Time/Country: 28 min, Russian Federation
  • Synopsis: The young sculptor Danila is accused of a terrible crime. An attempt to understand what has happened and look inside your subconscious leads to mysterious events that turn upside down the young man’s worldview along with his life itself.

Solo Punk (2019)

  • Director: Rozalyn Mattocks
  • Run Time/Country: 8 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A woman isolated in a bunker struggles to decipher reality from her mind’s eye.

Mother’s Day (2018)

  • Director: Elizabeth Tabish
  • Run Time/Country: 22 min, USA
  • Synopsis: California, 1968. Jane has the perfect life. A loving husband, a darling daughter and hands down, the grooviest home in the neighborhood. But all that is no match for the painful memories of Jane’s childhood as they emerge on the eve of Mother’s Day.

Echo Ultra (2021)

  • Director: Alex Trierweiler
  • Run Time/Country: 20 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A scientist guides a lost pilot through a dangerous and mind-bending ordeal.

The 12th Man (2021)

  • Director: Vishal Sridhar
  • Run Time/Country: 12 min, USA
  • Synopsis: As the weather conditions become increasingly unexplainable, Donnie is stuck at home after losing his job. He gets into a banter with his only friend “SAM” the AI from his phone. The banter takes a different and unexpected turn when heavy lightning strikes.

The Unorthodox Series: The Pilot (2020)

  • Director: Laura Barbato
  • Run Time/Country: 17 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A one-of-a-kind, chilling yet symbolic storytelling adventure captured from the first-person point of view. In episode one “Castles In The Sky,” enter the mind of one of the most prolific, cold-blooded killers as he falls asleep while reclined in a barbershop chair. The 1920s have never looked as horrifying as when his subconscious reveals his deep contempt for others, his darkest vices, and deepest fears. In episode two “As You Are,” the year is 1991. Music, cigarettes, drugs, and depression — the rockstar life is certainly not for the weak. We will enter the mind of a beautifully tormented man, after a night of drug-induced shenanigans.

The Warning (2020)

  • Director: Miguel Gomez-Canales
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, Spain
  • Synopsis: The year 2020. A woman receives a message from the Virgin Mary.

It’s Not The End of the World (2021)

  • Director: Marielle Tepper
  • Run Time/Country: 4 min, Czech Republic
  • Synopsis: What will happen to us? What happens when humanity becomes extinct? A new art video by artist Marielle Tepper shows us how the world may look before and after its end. 

Block 5: Feature Presentation

Time: 6:15pm – 7:30pm EST

Underneath: An Anthology of Terror (2021) — EAST COAST PREMIERE

  • Director: John Nicol, Andre Becker, Cory Ivanchuk
  • Run Time/Country: 76 min, Canada
  • Synopsis: An anthology in the vein of “Creepshow,” comprised of five chapters, an epilogue, and several mind-bending vignettes that are all bound together by something unnatural and sinister.

Block 6: Feature Presentation

Time: 7:30pm – 9:15pm EST

Corpse (2018)

  • Director: Christopher Ernst
  • Run Time/Country: 83 min, USA
  • Synopsis: A forbidden book which induces madness in those who read it. An experimental film based on the classic weird fiction anthology, “The King in Yellow” by Robert W. Chambers.

Block 7: Feature Presentation

Time: 9:20pm – 11:00pm EST

The Berlin Bride (2019)

  • Director: Michael Bartlett
  • Run Time/Country: 73 min, Germany/USA
  • Synopsis: A near-silent tale inspired by the silent film era, the writings of Poe and the German fantasist E.T.A Hoffmann. Two oddball Berliners discover individually the parts of a department store mannequin in a city park occupied by nude sunbathers. Under the mannequin’s spell, and with harrowing consequence, the men come to terms with their disjointed mate. A cautionary tale of unrequited sexuality and blurring gender identity. A surreal vision of sexual evolution and misguided passion.

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[Based on a press release.]