Shorts 4: Shifting Frames

A film by Vasilios Papaioannu

In an underground garage, a voice message becomes the testament of a love left in limbo, while fleeting images allude to the moment that led to it.

2025 | 3 mins | Greece, Italy, US | B&W, Color | Art, Experimental

About the Filmmaker

Vasilios Papaioannu is a filmmaker, photographer and mixed media artist currently based in Washington, DC. In his work Papaioannu explores the fleeting dreamscapes of reality using noise, movement and disturbance. He hybridizes different modes of filmmaking, unifying variegated media, primarily 16mm film, digital video and archival footage. His works have been shown in various venues around the world, such as Crossroads at SFMOMA, Anthology Film Archives, Athens International Film + Video Festival, Cork International Film Festival, Festifreak, Analogica, Cámara Lúcida, Engauge Film Festival, EXiS, L’ Alternativa, Antimatter [media art], Montreal Underground Film Festival, Revelation Perth Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform. Papaioannu holds an MA in Communication, Text Semiotics and Cinema from the University of Siena in Italy and an MFA in Film and Cinematography from Syracuse University in New York. Papaioannu is currently an Assistant Professor at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Howard University.

A film by Shawn Antoine II

Set beneath a surreal green sky on a distant, crumbling world, the film captures the last survivors of a dying civilization—women who perform a synchronized ritual dance to summon an ethereal extraterrestrial presence from another realm.

2025 | 9 mins | US | Color | Art, Experimental, Dance

About the Filmmaker

Shawn Antoine II is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer from Harlem, NY, whose work celebrates the resilience and beauty of the Black diaspora. With over 15 short films to his credit, Shawn’s notable works include Kingdome (2024), which screened at 25 film festivals and accumulated over 50,000 views on YouTube, and Showtime (2020), which aired on Fox Soul and Aspire TV, earning selections at 58 film festivals. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern University, continuing to create impactful stories that inspire and inform.

A film by Tom Bell

A portrait of Maine artist Mitchell Rasor’s wintertime salt marsh drawings. Filmed in the Spears Farm Estuary Preserve on the Royal River in Yarmouth, the film is a finely observed and evocative meditation on landscape, memory, and one man’s obsession with capturing nature’s fleeting essence on paper. Featuring an original score by Lee Ranaldo.

2025 | 15 mins | US | Color | Documentary, Portrait, Art, Environmental

A film by David Rodriguez

Inspired by Bill Brown and Thomas Comerford’s ‘Chicago Detroit Split’ (2005), Ochlockonee Split deploys unslit double 8mm film to traverse the span of Ochlockonee Bay on Florida’s gulf coast. A sonic collage of local field recordings and a handheld, malfunctioning camera capture a fragmented portrait of the estuary at low tide–where the boundaries between land & sea, life & death, growth & decay, and our own sense of spatial orientation dissolve in the brackish water held between dueling images.

2025 | 4 mins | US | B&W | Experimental, Documentary, Art

About the Filmmaker

Dave Rodriguez (he/him) is an media artist originally from Miami, FL and currently based in Bloomington, IN. His single-channel video, 16mm film, and live expanded cinema work has been screened/performed in festivals and galleries across Europe and the Americas including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], FLEX Film/Video Festival, Cosmic Rays, Mono No Aware, Strangloscope, FONLAD, Onion City Film Festival, Odds & Ends Experimental Film Festival, the Florida Film Festival, and others. His writing has been published in Found Footage Magazine, Islandia Journal, and The Miami Rail.

A film by Michael Curtis Johnson

Where’s T?

2025 | 13 mins | US | Color | Experimental, Portrait

The filmmakers are expected to be in attendance for a post-film discussion.

About the Filmmaker

Johnson’s film Savage Youth was selected for the Venice La Biennale College – Cinema program and had its premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival. His first feature film Hunky Dory won top awards at the Slamdance, Atlanta, Nashville, and the American Film Festival. In all, his feature films and shorts have screened and won awards at over 75 international film festivals. He was chosen for The Gotham Film Lab and Berlinale Talents. He is an alumnus of the directing program of the American Film Institute Conservatory, and he is the founding chair of the University of North Alabama’s Department of Cinematic Arts & Theatre.

A film by Lorraine Sovern

A personal documentary questioning the ways in which family imposed narratives force us into roles that we spend our lives either rebelling against or conforming to.

2024 | 10 mins | US | Color | Documentary, Portrait, Personal essay

The filmmakers are expected to be in attendance for a post-film discussion.

About the Filmmaker

Voted one of Orlando Magazine’s Women of the Year 2024, Lorraine Sovern is an award winning filmmaker and recent graduate of the University of Central Florida with an MFA in Film. Over the years, she’s been heavily involved in programming for Florida Film Festival, Brouhaha Film & Video Showcase, and the Central Florida Film Slam which she’s been leading since 2019. She also serves as a judge for BizarroLand Film Festival. Shifting from her background in screenwriting and narrative production, she currently specializes in experimental documentary with a focus on personal essay.

A film by Michal Vojtech, Ariel de la Garza Davidoff

In order to find her pet cat, a young toilet attendant has to sell her feet pics to a deranged river hunchback and find her way to a shadow puppet theatre adaptation of her life.

2024 | 15 mins | UK, Czech Republic | Color | Drama, Comedy, Experimental

About the Filmmakers

Michal Vojtech and Ariel De La Garza are recent graduates of the University of Cambridge’s “Writing for Performance” master’s course. They are a Czech-Mexican team of writer-directors who envision their projects continuous with magical realism and 20th century European cinema. In December, they produced their short film debut MEOW!, an absurd drama finalized in May 2024. In May, Michal and Ariel’s film Love Bites was selected for the 2024 edition of the Straight 8 film festival which screened at the BFI IMAX in London earlier this year. This August, they also premiered absurdist comedy-horror play Corpse Flower at the Edinburgh Fringe, celebrated as a “Hidden Gem” by the Fringe Review Magazine. Michal and Ariel are working on their second short film, the folklore horror Ash Wednesday, currently in post-production.

A film by Brandon Colvin

Young Deirdre and her clan of druids eke out an itinerant existence in the forest. When the threat of Christianizing forces grows more imminent, a holy sacrifice is made that changes Deirdre’s life forever.

2024 | 15 mins | US | Color | Animated, Fantasy, Drama

About the Filmmaker

Brandon Colvin is a writer, director, and producer from Kentucky. His previous films include the features Frames (2012), Sabbatical (2014), A Dim Valley (2020), and The World Drops Dead (2024). He is an Assistant Professor of film production at The University of Alabama.