"The dream of creating a living being by means other than natural reproduction has been a preoccupation of man from time immemorial."-André BazinThe puppet inhabits another world, one populated by dolls, robots, painted figures, discarded objects, and animated insects, yet one which is never entirely separate from our own. Its scale is usually miniature, engendering a fascination with the creations themselves. This program of recent puppet films abounds with work in which the diminutive world of puppets offers a stage on which scaled-down, but overdetermined, versions of human relations are played out. Chris Sullivan's epic Consuming Spirits is structured around a journey led awry by chance and cryptic signs, while in Janie Geiser's Immer Zu, oblique messages from the past unfurl. Michael Sommers creates haunting and mysterious tableaux in Goat Song, subtitled "The state of profound disappointment." Fae Yamaguchi's A Complex Situation constructs a digressive narrative in which no one relates the same version of events. The Invention of Daylight by Justin Curtis, Spike Milliken, and Jeff Nerman, and Necromancy by Steve Dye- all local filmmakers-create miniature worlds that look anew at the act of perception.-Kathy Geritz