Still from Triboro
The 2023 United States Super 8 Film & DV Festival (which is part of the Spring 2023 New Jersey Film Festival) will be screening all three of its programs online for 24 hours. Two are on Saturday, February 18 and one Sunday, February 19, 2023. There will also be two in-person screenings at 5PM on Saturday and at 5PM on Sunday in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Now in its 35th year, the United States Super 8mm Film & Digital Video Festival is the largest and longest running juried festival of its kind in North America. The festival encourages any genre (including animation, documentary, personal, narrative, and experimental) made on Super 8mm/8mm film, Hi 8mm/8mm, or digital video.. For more info and to buy tickets go to this link: https://watch.eventive.org/newjerseyfilmfestivalspring2023
Here is the 2023 United States Super 8mm Film & Digital Video Festival Schedule:
Day 1-Program 1-Saturday, February 18 - Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 5PM!
Emoticon – Padrick Ritch (Boston, Massachusetts) An experimental film examining the impact and influence of media. 2022; 2 min.
Achilles – Adam Morris (Southend-on-sea, England) Even the legendary Achilles has moments of self-doubt. Achilles explores the Achilles syndrome, known as the fear of failure. An experimental micro drama shot on Super 8mm film with no editing. 2022, 3 min.
Teething Problems - Kristian Fitsall (London, England) Tired of her housemate stealing her toiletries, Darcy takes a twisted revenge in this darkly comic parody of a 'How To' video. A dark, absurd comedy micro short shot on Super 8mm film with no editing. 2022, 3 min.
Exponentials - Khalil Charif and Cristina Amiran (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Through different languages, this experimental work uses sound and visual poetry, presenting images with a non-linear flow of words in a context of exponential equations, making integrated use of the word, the meaning of the word, and the sound of the word. 2021; 3 min.
broken home movies - Heidi Van Horne (Buda, Texas) A B&W experimental, avant-garde short film reflecting on the choice of motherhood. 2022; 4 min.
Reclamation - Jennifer M Hardacker (Forest Grove, Oregon) A stark, experimental film. A mood. Exploring our fears of Armageddon, our lived isolation, and the haunting beauty of nature's persistence. 2022; 4 min.
From Above - John Heins (Broomfield, Colorado) A woman encounters a UFO which ejects some material, including an odd crystal. She fashions it into a necklace which leads to a strange turn of events. 2022; 4 min.
Triboro – Nate Dorr (Brooklyn, New York) A trip behind and beneath the street-level skin of the city on the hidden paths of industrial history and once-and-future transit. The Triboro Line is a 24-mile freight rail spanning New York City from the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to Co-Op City in the Bronx. Once largely a passenger line, then serving only reduced intermittent industrial use for decades, the rails have again become the focus of efforts to restore crosstown commuter service to the lower eleven miles of track. Spanning seasons, hours, and changing weather in gliding tracking shots composed of thousands of still photographs, Triboro collapses time and space just as new transit options, inscribed into the ever-changing urban landscape, bring distant parts of the boroughs closer together. (Caution: contains flicker effects) 2021; 7 min.
The Winter Fern – Gwen Gottlieb (Alpine, New Jersey) When a woman in 18th century Colonial America can no longer endure her husband's abuse she will stop at nothing to save her daughter from his wrath. 2022; 9 min.
Once I passed – Martin Gerigk (Krefeld, Germany) A lovely collage animation film based on Walt Whitman’s poem Once I Passed Through a Populous City which features the collage work of Serbian artist Nikola Gocić. 2022; 10 min.
Egypt – Erik Jacobsen (San Francisco, California) Egypt is a travel documentary written and narrated by Erik Jacobsen. It features photos from his two trips to Egypt, local indigenous music, and fascinating historical facts from research into this amazing and long, lived civilization. It includes some of the most iconic artistic works and monumental structures of ancient Egypt. 2022; 10 min.
Place in Eden – Ruth Weil (Tel Aviv, Israel) A young actress embarks on a turbulent journey with an autistic girl, breaching limitations of right and wrong, and discovering new aspects of her personality. In Hebrew, subtitled. 2022; 15 min.
A Potter’s Field – Zev Aaron (New York, New York) Documenting the suppressed and repressed death network of New York City's COVID-19 emergency, A Potter's Field uses natural and technological imagery and sound to reveal a taboo: pandemic corpses stored in refrigerated trailers are transported by truck and ferry to Hart Island, a beautiful natural landscape and mass grave run by Department of Correction (employees and) inmates enacting a process that has entombed one million New Yorkers in the largest single, spatially considered, gravesite in the world. Shot amidst a city lockdown, the film immanently creates a memento mori by avoiding the live human form and seizing in invisibility thousands of vir(tu)al pandemic corpses. 2022; 16 min.
Still from A Potter’s Field
Day 1-Program 2-Saturday, February 18 - Online for 24 Hours!
Sam Now – Reed Harkness (Seattle, Washington) Filmed over 25 years, two brothers go on a 2,000-mile road trip to solve a family mystery. Shooting on nearly every camera format imaginable, from hand-developed Super-8 film to Arri 4K, Sam Harkness and his older half-brother Reed use their creative world of fiction filmmaking to dive headfirst into dealing with the issue at hand: Sam’s mom is missing. Sam’s wetsuit and mask wearing alter ego, The Blue Panther, bounds into frame with youthful energy and a heroic spirit of adventure. But can The Blue Panther save the day? And are these fun-loving brothers actually ready for what lies ahead? Solving the mystery of his mom’s disappearance is only the beginning of their story. The documentary uses a hybrid narrative approach, drawing from a vast archive of fictional films, home videos, intimate family interviews and vérité scenes from over the decades. Sobering revelations blend with playful home movies and vibrant experimental filmmaking by brother and director Reed Harkness. The brothers take a spontaneous road trip in search of answers. We learn of Sam’s mother Jois’ complicated adoption history from Japan. We experience the ripple effects on the Harkness family including Sam’s brother Jared, father Randy and grandma Doris. And we are there with Sam coming of age from 11 to 36. Sam Now is about growth. The film balances heavy themes and emotional reckonings with buoyant energy and lighthearted spirit. The optimistic teenage Sam we get to know, with his heart set on finding his mom, grows into a man whose new hope is to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. 2022; 86 min.
Still from Spontaneous Artifacts
Day 2-Sunday, February 19 - Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 5PM!
How To Behave At A Party - Allison Radomski (Longmont, Colorado) Do you feel weird around other people? Are you anxious at social gatherings? Do you often find yourself trying to seem like a normal, happy person, and then coming up short? Look no further, my friend. Even though I've never, ever had those problems in my whole life, this short film is here to help. 2022; 2 min.
Scum Show - MaLo Sutra Fish and Marie-Laure Cros (Paris, France) This music video for OSEES's Scum Show was shot at Le Trianon in Paris during OSEES' show on June 29th 2022, on Tri-x Super8 with a Canon 514 XL-S and a GAF 415 XLM. The reels were hand processed at the Collective Lab L'Etna. The film was pre-edited and animated, colored, and special effects were also processed by hand; digitally edited. Long live Punk Spirit! 2022; 2 min.
Spontaneous Artifacts – David Finkelstein (Brooklyn, New York) Two actors improvise an extended dialog, examining the way that we record and organize our experiences, and the dangers inherent in creative expression. Their words inspire a series of complex, unfolding landscapes, meticulously rendered in 3D animation, and a multi-layered musical score. Like archeologists of the unconscious, their explorations unearth images from their imaginations, as well as from our shared, cultural legacies, giving rise to vistas filled with clocks, flying pizza pies, pyramids, tarot cards, and myriad other artifacts. By turns ecstatic, reflective, illuminating and elegiac, these visually sumptuous explorations draw the viewer into an inner landscape. 2022; 77 min.
