Join us on Sunday, September 29, 7:30pm, at Counterpath (7935 East 14th Ave., Denver) for night 10 and closing night of the Unseen Festival 2019!

Reading

Emma Arlington M. specializes in cross-genre hybridities. As a vocal advocate for challenging the boxes creative artists are put in, she pushes boundaries by refusing to adhere to traditionality of genre, language or the confines of the page within her work. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, with a focus on poetry and memoir, from Goddard College. Her writing can be found in print in The Pitkin Review and The Champagne Room Journal. Emma Arlington M. writes most often about bodies; their intricacies, intimacies, and intersections. Her current project, [the curation of a body], is a hyrbid work which uses poetry, photography, and prose to create a memoir-esque journey of a body searching for its footing as mental illness takes root. The narrator navigates her way through time and space, from birth to young adulthood, to discover that acceptance is a lifetime project where she is constantly re-finding her way back into her own body and mind. 

Dance

Michele Bernier / Alberta Shulman

Film

Oneiric Premonition #1 – Emily Van Loan – USA – 2019 – 15 min – LIVE EXPANDED CINEMA – FILMMAKER IN PERSON!

“In 2017, I dreamt I made a filmic installation. I saw these four panels of canvas, arranged to allow for three projections. I saw a saccharine sweet, slightly incoherent motivational quote, and the silhouette of a woman, who I came to know as myself. In an effort to remain inspired, I sit as the silhouetted woman, and bring myself into a space of quiet meditation among the gentle hum of the projectors. I hope that I may fall into a dream, pregnant with a new creative affair.” – EVL

Emily Van Loan (b. 1994) is a diaristic experimental filmmaker and artist interested in vulnerability, emotional intimacy, and self-disclosure. She is pursuing an MFA in Filmmaking at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she works on films, installations, and performances that incorporate her own autobiography, and attempt to create a connection between herself and her audience, as well as connections within an audience.

The Note – Siavash Eydani – Iran – 2018 – 4 min

The man wakes up and finds himself on the bed in the sea …

Siavash Eydani. 1985 Born, Shiraz – Iran. 2017 BA Visual Communication. 2019 MA photography. “When I was 17, faced to photography with a Zenit SLR Camera. And One year After that, I set up my own darkroom to do photography in serious ways. Interesting to variety of Culture and Roots of History , made a reason for me to travel around Iran to do photography and make movie with this concept. Most of these travels are with bicycle and hiking. A kind of documentary that shows relations between human, history and environment is my ideal. My works maybe is a rope between photography and cinema.” – SE

Ascensor – Adrian Garcia Gomez – USA – 2019 – 8 min

Ascensor is an exploration of grief, longing and mysticism through a queer lens.  It documents a syncretic ritual that culls from the magical reverberations in Mexican culture to process the unexpected loss of a dear friend.  The repetition of the ritual eventually leads to the transcendence of physical space, transforming unrelenting ache into shining resilience.

Adrian Garcia Gomez is an interdisciplinary artist working in film/video, photography and illustration.  His artwork, which is largely autobiographical and often performative, explores the intersections of race, immigration, gender, spirituality and sexuality. His short experimental films, photographs and drawings have been exhibited around the world.  He currently lives and works in Geneva.

The Cliff of the Blind – Blas Payri – France/Spain – 2017 – 5 min

The wandering of a sightless woman guided by the contact of the others. This films evoques separation and reunification and the strength that comes out of union.

Blas Payri is a sound artist and a video/screendance artist. He is professor of sound design, film music, video art and music perception at the audiovisual communication department of Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain. 

VideOvide Hermaphrodite – Samuel Bester – France – 2019 – 10 min

Based on Hermaphrodite from Book IV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses translated by Marie Cosnay.

A Franco-German born in Geneva, Samuel Bester was studying in the school of Decorative Arts of Strasbourg in 1992 when he became aware, with the complicity of Jean-François Guiton, of the importance that video will take in his life and in his artistic research. Meetings with Sarkis, Robert Cahen, Jochen Gerz and Harun Farocki nourished his approach. At the edge of different styles, his films are of documentary and experimental inspiration.

Human Geography – Anna Estelles – Spain/Indonesia- 2019 – 3 min

A trip through the topography of human bodies that evoke landscapes.

Director, Actress and Movement Researcher, Visual Artist. Founder & Director of Akar Studio & Akar Dance Theatre.

“I have worked in films, TV and theater, also as choreographer, art director.

Seven years ago I moved to Indonesia to study Traditional Dance and I decided to establish my company in Java. I got involved in traditional art & culture, looking for new movement languages and other inspiration sources. Nowadays, I’m focused on collaborating with different artists and disciplines, getting deep in my own style as scene director, visual artist , video artist and movement researcher.

I currently live between Spain and Indonesia.” – AE

Between Medusa and the Abyss – Felicity Palma – USA/Italy – 2019 – 12 min

Notions of belonging and the ethics of travel are questioned through female rite and ritual, pointing at the pervasive and contradictory presence of history and myth in present-day Sicily.

BIO

Felicity E. Palma is a visual artist who works in a range of time-based media, including 16mm, VHS, and medium and large format still photography, and incorporates performance and installation elements to her work. Drawing from her personal history with illness and disability, and her identity as a second-generation immigrant, her various projects have focused on the tensions between human mobility and stasis, myth-making and ritual, and time and memory – always with a feminist lens.Born and raised in California to a Sicilian father and Croatian mother, Felicity is currently based in Durham, NC. She holds an MA in European and Mediterranean Studies from New York University and an MFA in Experimental & Documentary Art from Duke University. She is the recipient of multiple awards, grants, and fellowships, including the Flaherty Film Fellowship, the Anne Scott Firor Research Award in Women’s Studies, the Kenan Institute for Ethics Graduate Arts Fellowship, the Duke Bass Connections Fellowship for Documenting Durham’s Health Disparities, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for the Italian language.

La Soga del Muerto – Dakota Nanton – USA/Bolivia – 2019 – 32 min – FILMMAKER IN PERSON!

An encounter with the shamans of the Amazon Rainforest’s Beni River Valley becomes a personal search for forgiveness and transcendence.

Dakota Nanton is an experimental animator based out of Boulder, Colorado. His artwork and films draw inspiration from such diverse areas as comic books, folklore, science fiction, religious imagery and art history. Borrowing from the images and iconographies of the past, and mixing old techniques with new, he explores the complexities and contradictions of living in the modern world. His work has been exhibited all around the world and is held in permanent collections in the United States, Canada, Italy, Australia, Egypt and New Zealand.