aDifferent Program 1 | invisible cities
5:00 PM | Friday, May 15th 2026 | Woodland Pattern
720 E Locust St | Milwaukee, WI, 53212
To Be A Day, Eva Claus, 8 min
Synopsis |
A window to the outside world, just like the camera's frame. Through this window, I watch the sunrise. To Be a Day captures the sun casting its light over a vast seascape on Fogo Island, Canada. Between sunrise and sunset, a series of white dots appear. These white circles reflect the moonlight, guiding fishermen as they walk across the pier to their sheds and boats in the early morning.
Artist Bio |
Born in Brussels in 1992, Eva Claus is an independent audio-visual artist working primarily with 16mm film. Her practice is driven by observations of un/expected encounters with landscapes and people, natural habitats, space, psyche, circularity and means of film itself. Claus´s uses an intuitive method of filmmaking and her films exhibit a contemplative form of watching.
Claus was educated at the Friedl Kubelka School for independent film in Vienna, Austria and she obtained her MFA in photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in Ghent. Her films have been shown at festivals such as Light Field San Francisco, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Vienna Shorts, Indie Lisboa, Short Waves, Go Short, Rencontre International Paris / Berlin, Istanbul International Film Festival, amongst others. She won the Public film prize at the 22nd Dresdner Schmalfilmtage, Germany. Was nominated for the Lichter Art Award and the Prix Médiatine. Parallel to her artistic practice she works as a film restoration assistant at The Temenos. Eva currently lives and works in Brussels.
The Collector and the Tamer of the Wind, Hannah Papacek Harper, 9 min 50 sec
Synopsis |
This short experimental documentary is a psychogeographical search where Hannah, the director, returns to Cadaques, a small Spanish village after 23 years. Through an exploration of her past, the elements and two important characters: The organ player and the local archivist, she finds her way to understanding this location and the traces made by those who inhabit it.
This film is a personal exploration of memory which also permits me to document two exceptional figures of a community in a sensitive way. I wanted to capture the place, Cadaqués, with texture and sensation because this feels to me like the nature of memory. This film was a way of looking for an artistic heritage from my parents but also at different ways of crystallising recollections.
Using a hand held camera I use for family films, as well as old photographs taken by my parents and maps of the location, I followed my impressions and collected my own data. I took photographs, videos, collected botanical and geological specimens and with them made this film as well as an artist book which is like a poetic roadmap to my thoughts and to this location.
My intention is not to make a portrait of one character, nor to give a linear account of my experience. I rather wish to give an organic testimony of how it feels to try and contain memory; creating through repetition.
I took the one thing I remembered above all: the organists fingers on the keys and composed from there. Like memory, this film is fragmented, at times drawn out, and at others cut short, leaving gaps in my recollections.
Artist Bio |
Graduated in Aesthetics and Cinema Practice, from the universities of La Sorbonne Pantheon, and La Universidad de Lima, in 2015, Hannah has been directing since 2019. Initially a Steadicamer, she started by telling stories through the moving image. Now both a writer and a director, she is developing several projects on the subject of ecology, intertwining science with art. The other side of her research is geared toward displacement, identity and transgeneration memory. Profoundly interested in communication, transmission and sensorial approaches to film, she continually searches for new empathetic ways to touch a general public. Her roots are in experimental video and from 2021 to 2023, two of her experimental short films, Just Listen To The Storm and Vegetative, travelled festivals worldwide.
what does it feel like to live inside of a pomegranate? Kamyar Mohsenin, 4 min 41 sec
Synopsis |
Artist Bio |
Kamyar Mohsenin (b. 1998) is an Iranian-American interdisciplinary artist, award-winning filmmaker, and educator based between the Bay Area and Seattle. Through newfound connections between the traditional and the contemporary, Kamyar's current art practice explores themes of identity, faith, migration, memory, family, and the natural world.
End, Rita Casdia, 2 min 35 sec
Synopsis |
“End” is an animated video, made on paper with red ink. The images, which flow one after the other, create inhospitable landscapes. These scenarios are the last destinations of a journey performed by small, gaunt and exhausted figures. End does not want to be the vision of a world that is coming to the end of its existence, but rather the rediscovered will of the human being to unite totally with the majestic and impetuous nature. Director's Notes The short animation titled End was born after seeing entire mountains on fire in my home territory (the province of Messina). This was the input that pushed me to stage the mountain landscape of the hinterland of eastern Sicily, an unexplored and sparsely inhabited place.
Artist Bio |
Rita Casdia, was born in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (ME) in 1977. She graduated Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Palermo in the 2000. Afterwards she moved to Milan, where she continued her study at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and achieved a specialization in Art and New Technologies (2006) and Academic second level degree in the teaching of Painting (2009). Festival and Video Review: 17.KURZFILMFESTIVAL, backup selection by Felipe César, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 39˚Festival du Nouveau Cinéma di Montreal, Il MOUSE E LA MATITA, curated by Bruno Di Marino, Pesaro Film Festival, Filmmaker Festival 35, Spazio Oberdan, Milano. XIII International Image Festival, Manizales, Colombia (special mention), VIDEOFORMES.2019, curated by VisualContainer, Clermont-Ferrand, France, 4th Athens Digital Arts Festival, VideoYearArtBook XIV Edition, Bologna, Cà Foscari Short Film Festival 10, The suspended glance, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia, Videograma Festival 2021, Galerìa Santa Fe, Bogotà, Colombia, Animaphix 2023, Villa Cattolica, Bagheria, Les Instants vidéo 36° édition, Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, Festival Animest.19, Institutul Cervantes, Bucharest, Romania, CosmiX IV: Festival International de Cinéma Expérimental, Cinema Saint André des Arts, Paris, Lives on fire, Millennium Film Workshop, New York.
The Stream XIV, Hiroya Sakurai, 8 min 17 sec
Synopsis |
I observed how the landscape transforms when the wind blows through the fields.By using a wind chime, I perceived the invisible presence of the wind through sound, and through the ripples of wind that arose in the fields, I also captured its presence visually.
Artist Bio |
Born in Yokohama, Japan.
Graduated from University of Tsukuba.
Emeritus Professor, Seian University of Art and Design.
Sakurai’s work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada and J.Paul Getty Trust.
Sakurai was awarded at “ Asolo Art Film Festival (2016)", Italy, "Tokyo Video Festival" and "Ann Arbor Film Festival" (2018).
Exhibitions include "Sydney Biennale (1982),"San Francisco International Film Festival" (2015) and "Stuttgarter Filmwinter"(2025)
Dream Trio, Abigail Hendrix, 9 min
Synopsis |
Who are we when we dream? This series of vignettes explores three dreams where the narrator has switched bodies, genders, and histories with another person.
Artist Bio |
Abigail Hendrix (she/they) is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Their artistic practice consists primarily of experimental films and audiovisual installations, stemming from their parallel interests in folklore and expanded cinema. Their vision has been shaped by studies in anthropology (BA, University of Washington) and film (MFA, Emerson College), with emphases on analog film, experimental media, and ethnography. Working primarily with 16mm, they use portraiture, still lives, abstract textures, and the natural world to portray their relationship with the transmutations of the human body.
You Do Not Exist, Dwayne LeBlanc, 8 min
Synopsis |
In the stillness of his yard, Booker watches the sky fill and empty with passing planes. As the world moves around him, he lingers, circling a memory whose edges blur with time
Artist Bio |
Dwayne LeBlanc is a Los Angeles based, first gen Caribbean-American filmmaker whose work explores themes of migration, visibility, and dual identities.
His debut narrative short film, Civic, was named one of The Best Movies of 2023 by The New Yorker. His sophomore film, Now, Hear Me Good,premiered in the Tiger Shorts Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and has screened worldwide at major international festivals. Both films have been distributed on Criterion Channel. LeBlanc’s most recent work, You Do Not Exist, premiered at IFFR and has since been programmed at Clermont-Ferrand, Slamdance and True/False Film Fes among others. This project completes his short film trilogy.
His work has been presented at venues including The Met, MoMA, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, NYU, and CalArts. LeBlanc is one of Filmmaker Magazine's '25 New Faces of Independent Film,' a 2024 Dolby Institute Fellow, a Berlinale Talents alum, a Zurich Film Festival Academy alum, and a 2025 MacDowell fellow. He is now focused on the development of his debut feature film.
An Impression of Everything, Millefiore Clarkes, 5 min 23 sec
