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 8: love as a cry of anguish is screening in the cinema on 5/7 for $15/$7 reduced.
The day lives briefly unscented (Brandon Wilson, 5 min.)
Each shot was created by covering and uncovering the lens with the hand. The footage was then arranged in a layered sequence so that images interact as they appear and disappear.
Declarations of Love (Tiff Rekem, 29 min.)
A fragmentary rumination on an aging father figure and his nearness to the gender-reveal party fire that scorched the San Bernardino foothills in 2020.
Heron 1954-2002 (Alexis McCrimmon, 4 min.)
Heron 1954 - 2002 is a visual eulogy that taps into the phenomena of makeshift memorials and small gestures of mourning. Honoring the life of a loved one who died due to an accidental opioid overdose, the film materializes the process of overdue bereavement by invoking a fragmented presence at the periphery of the mind.
Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser, 30 min.)
“Stretching and blurring the boundaries of video essay, experimental film and home movie, traces of a 1950s homemade melodrama by amateur filmmaker Joan Thurber Baldwin intermingle with a mournful homage to the author’s grandmother and her vacated home. A powerful mélange of cinematic and domestic spaces, past and present.” – Kevin B Lee
BREAK
2PM
Strangers (Rajee Samarasinghe , 11 min.)
This footage was shot shortly after the civil war in Sri Lanka on the occasion of my mother’s long-delayed reunion with Kamala, the aunt she lived with as a child. Kamala was living a life of solitude at this point and has now since passed away—this film is dedicated to her.
Untitled (in person only) (Joie Lee, 3 min.)
Untitled is an epistolary exploration of my mother’s untimely passing.
In the billowing night (Erika Etangsalé, 51 min.)
Jean-René is a retired workman who has lived in Mâcon, France, since emigrating from Reunion Island at the age of 17. Today, for the first time ever, the quiet man recounts his story to his daughter. His journey is interspersed with enigmatic dreams and pains that are rooted in the wounds of the French colonial past.
