• Shape of a Surface


General admission: $16; BAMPFA members, SFFILM members, UC Berkeley students: $13; Non-UC Berkeley students, 65+, disabled persons: $15. BAMPFA's second-feature discount does not apply to this program. Tickets are nonrefundable and may not be exchanged. SFFILM vouchers may not be redeemed in person at BAMPFA. On-site ticket sales are subject to limited availability.


The Shape of a Surface: Experimental Shorts



  • In Person
    arc

A program of works made in 16mm showcases the film medium itself, whether in images shot by the filmmakers or in found footage that is recontextualized. History is reframed in some, while in others windows, doors, and mirrors focus our attention on the beauty of the world and its reflection. Featuring films by arc, Stephanie Barber, Paul Clipson, Nazli Dincel, Jim Jennings, Pablo Mazzolo, Alee Peoples, and Jennifer Separzadeh. Curated by Kathy Geritz and Vanessa O’Neill, with Metha Rais-Nordentoft.

Films in this Screening

NN

Pablo Mazzolo, Argentina, 2017

"NN reanimates archival news footage from the time of the 1976 Argentine coup d’état. The film reflects on anonymity of subject; the specter of thousands of disappeared dissidents and civilians during the dictatorship in Argentina."—Pablo Mazzolo

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm transferred to DCP
  • 3 mins

Shape of a Surface

Nazli Dinçel, Turkey, 2017

"The ground holds accounts of once pagan, then Christian and now Muslim ruins of the city built for Aphrodite. As she takes revenge on Narcissus, mirrors reveal what is seen and surfaces, limbs dismantle and marble turns flesh."—Nazli Dincel

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 9 mins

Fashion Avenue

Jim Jennings, United States, 2008

Filmed in New York’s Garment District, Fashion Avenue uses mirrors to reflect something more beautiful than the world of glamour: The everyday lives of working people.—Karen Treanor

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • 16mm
  • 7 mins

Decoy

Alee Peoples, United States, 2017

"Decoy sees bridges and walls as binary opposites and relates them to imposters in this world. Humans strive for accuracy. You don’t always get what you wish for."—Alee Peoples

FILM DETAILS 
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  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 11 mins

The Forest Is Offended

Stephanie Barber, United States, 2017

"A film poem thinking about the physics of sound, the need sound has to vibrate and bounce off a molecule or atom to return to our ears; thinking about this physical property as a metaphor for spirituality or love."—Stephanie Barber

FILM DETAILS 
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  • B&W/Color
  • 16mm
  • 3 mins

Nu Dem

Jennifer Saparzadeh, United States, 2017

"Nu Dem traces Europe’s closed borders in the spring of 2016, arriving at an informal settlement between Greece and Macedonia. There, people wait and try to move forward in anxious, stagnant flux—confronting the dissonance between a vision of freedom and the fact of its denial."—Jennifer Saparzadeh

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm transferred to DCP
  • 9 mins

ascensions

arc, United States, 2017

"Image and afterimage. The crystalline impermanence of the phosphene. The scratch as wound of time, history inscribed within the image, revealing light. The frame as the infinite fragment of a world hovering outside of time. A window onto eternity."—arc

FILM DETAILS 
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  • Color
  • 16mm
  • Silent
  • 8 mins

Sphinx on the Seine

Paul Clipson, United States, 2009

Notions of time, space, and memory collide within a visual fabric of abstractions, landscapes, textures, superimpositions and graphic forms, to suggest the first enigmatic moments of dream-sleep.—PC Sound by Jefre Cantu-Ledesam 

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • 16mm
  • 8 mins

Chorus

Paul Clipson, United States, 2011

Three cities by night become one in this nocturnal journey through images and sounds in which space, color and light pass through the eye of the camera to create thoughts visualized before their conception. Filmed in San Francisco, New York and Rotterdam.—PC Music by Gregg Kowalsky 

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • 16mm
  • 6 mins