T H E  U N S E E N  F E S T I V A L

Working with new definitions of experimental film during two weeks of nightly screenings, OFF Cinema presents The Unseen Festival, exploring notions of the resistant, the excluded, and the unacknowledged. Film changes the world by filtering it through art: but it’s at its best when it refuses the documentary impulse of direct representation. The festival invokes a full spectrum of how filmic representation comes to be, from stark abstraction through documentary itself, silent film and sound art. A major aspect of the festival is its exploration of the interaction of film and writing, leading off each evening with a brief reading by writers whose work in many ways parallels on-screen experience. For two weeks, then, we enter the realm of the unseen, with nightly programs featuring an extraordinary range of experimental filmmakers, writers, and musicians. Filmmaker Amir George will be in residence at Counterpath throughout the festival, and many of the evenings will have featured filmmakers in attendance.

The festival is curated by Jacob Barreras and Libi Striegl. Click here for the list of participants.

Tickets are $7 for each evening, with full access passes $70. We hope you’ll also join us for a benefit screening on Monday, September 18.

Full schedule:

Benefit Screening, Monday, Sept. 18

Benefit!
7:30–10pm
With a reading featuring Stephen Graham Jones and Edwin Torres!
We hope you’ll help us raise crucial funds to support this year’s Unseen Festival and to build a strong foundation for next year’s fest by attending our benefit screening. We’ll have catered food and screen standout short films from the festival program, each of them Denver premieres. Tickets are $100 and include a full access pass to the festival (a $70 value). Tickets without the pass are just $30. Students are pay-what-you-can. We hope to see you there and any support is welcome!

Program 1, Thursday, Sept. 21

Opening Night
7:30–10pm
Music by DJ Musa Starseed
Filmmaker in person: Blair McClendon.
Preceded by a reading curated by Joan Dickinson, featuring Sarah Boyer and Clark Davis.
João Vieira Torres, Ghost Children
Carolina Charry Quintero, BLUA
Blair McClendon, America for Americans

Program 2, Friday, Sept. 22

Better Made Progress: The Films of Amir George
7:30–10pm
Filmmaker in person: Amir George.
Preceded by a reading curated by Ella Longpre, featuring Tameca Coleman.
TRW
El Quatro
Mae’s Journal
Vicissitude
Just a Place
Shades of Shadows
Moments of Intention
Black Gold
The Encompassed Wisdom of the Inevitable Manifestation
Decadent Asylum

Program 3, Saturday, Sept. 23

of mermaids, mountains, and machines
7:30–9:30pm
This program focuses on emerging filmmakers whose works look at ritual, meditation, touch and feeling, hypnotic murmurations and finally euphoria. The program combines both 16mm film and HD video along with live performance to invoke hallucinatory feelings and kaleidoscopic visions; with films by Fern Silva, Dakota Nanton (artist in attendance), Christin Turner (artist in attendance), and an expanded cinema performance by Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie.
Filmmakers in person: Christin Turner and Dakota Nanton.
Preceded by a reading curated by Selah Saterstrom, featuring Steven Dunn, Mathias Svalina, and Serena Chopra.
Dakota Nanton, Oh, Ophelia
Fern Silva, Wayward Fronds
Fern Silva, The Watchmen
Christin Turner, What Happens to the Mountain
Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie, Dot Matrix

Program 4, Sunday, Sept. 24

Artists of The Unseen Festival in Conversation
Preceded by a reading curated by Sommer Browning, featuring Maureen Owen and Miriam Suzanne.
5–7pm
A conversational evening with artists, filmmakers and writers of The Unseen Festival. Join us for an evening of casual conversation and a community pot-luck supper.
With Amir George, Christin Turner, Dakota Nanton, Andrew Busti, Jacob Barreras, Libi Striegl, and others.

Program 5, Monday, Sept. 25

Program 11, Sunday, Oct. 1