Prismatic Ground is a New York City film festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film, co-hosted by Maysles Documentary Center and media partner Screen Slate. 2022 marks the second ever and first hybrid edition of the festival, with physical events taking place at Maysles, the Museum of the Moving Image, and Anthology Film Archives. The majority of films will simultaneously be available free, worldwide on-demand during the festival dates at http://www.prismaticground.com. New Yorkers are encouraged to attend in person; each program will feature live filmmaker Q&As.
Note: “wave” tickets are purchased as a whole, but patrons are free to come and go during the noted breaks. Once sold out, a limited number of tickets for each program will be available on a first-come basis at the door, and seats that are vacated after breaks will be re-sold. All “waves” screen at Maysles Documentary Center.
wave 11: the blessings of liberty is screening in the cinema on 5/8 for $15/$7 reduced.
Enthusiasm (in person only, 16mm) (OJOBOCA, 8 min.)
“A magical sacrifice of cats to the infernal spirits…”
Condition/Decondition (Jason Osder, 8 min.)
Mysterious wartime navel films reveal early military phycological operations.
One Survives by Hiding (Esy Casey, 6 min.)
Reveberations of US military occupation through three generations of women in the Philippines and US, contemplated through wartime archives and the silent atrocities behind smiles in family pictures.
We Cannot Love What We Do Not Know (Alex Johnston, Kelly Sears, 3 min.)
A chilling phantasmagoric journey into the paranoid soulless soul of right wing historical propaganda.
All the Things You Leave Behind (in person only) (Chanasorn Chaikitiporn, 18 min.)
All the Things You Leave Behind interrogates the effects of America's influence on Thai people and society.
Dreams Under Confinement (Christopher Harris, 3 min.)
Surveillance mapping and police scanner audio combine to form a frenetic urban portrait of the carceral state.
Signal and Noise (Katie Mathews, Jess Shane, 13 min.)
In 2015, poet Jordan Scott set out to record the ambient sounds of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center as a means of bypassing its strict media censorship rules. Today, former detainee, Mansoor Adayfi, recalls how sound shaped his experiences there.
