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 12: industrial capitalism and the world is screening in the cinema on 5/8 for $15/$7 reduced. 

The North Sea (16mm) (Chris Kennedy, 8 min.)

“As Benjamin had predicted, nothing brings the promise of happiness encoded at the birth of a technological form to light as effectively as the fall into obsolescence of its final stages of development.” – Rosalind Krauss


Under the paving stones, the beach (Amanda Katz, 16 min.)

On Brooklyn's East River waterfront, a new park built on tenuous ground, a new residence converted from a formerly industrial shell, a promise of lives of convenience. A film that circles around rhythms of labor and leisure. 


Ruisdael Clouds (James Thacher, 1 min.)

The clouds in Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscape paintings appear both massively imposing and ephemerally vaporous. 


Last Will and Testament (Frank Heath, 16 min.)

Pondering recent trips through the Suez Canal and to Onkalo, Finland (soon to be the world’s most secure nuclear waste site) a man consults an estate lawyer to discuss an eccentric plan for his mortal remains.

BREAK

12:30PM

Blue Room (Merete Mueller, 12 min.)

In two US prisons, participants in a mental health experiment watch nature videos on loop, prompting them to reflect on isolation and wilderness.


Self-portrait (in person only) (Joële Walinga, 68 min.)

A tapestry of footage collected from surveillance cameras over the last four years, Self-Portrait moves from moment to moment around the world, beginning with the frozen storminess of winter, to the melt of spring, the lush heat of summer, and finally the decay and cooling of autumn: the dawn of winter.


goodbye, ghost (Evan Schwartz, 6 min.)

A personal essay on bipolar disorder, created before I knew I had it."