Balagan and the Film Study Center at Harvard proudly welcome Kevin Rice of the Colorado-based nonprofit organization, Process Reversal, to presents the third installment of a unique traveling film series – Frenkel Defects. This recurring series aims to explore what it means to work in – and exhibit on – photochemical film today by examining works from artists operating specifically within this practice. Often, this involves getting their hands dirty at every stage of the process from optical effects to developing, editing and contact printing, optical sound recording, and even the creation of the photosensitive emulsion itself... As a result (and as suggested by the series' title), creative aberrations make their way into the standard photochemical process, giving birth to a new, textural aesthetic that plays out on the surface of the film strip. More than ever before, film reminds us of its physicality; giving a new sense to Andrei Tarkovsky’s idea of “sculpting in time.”

Balagan is pleased to present – along with Ricardo De Lima and the ICA, Boston – a program of two expanded cinema performances that challenge the perception of film as a static and unchanging medium or mere document of past artistic efforts. By introducing chance elements, both in the filming and the exhibition (which pairs live improvised sound to multi-layered 16mm projections), the performers draft the audience into the role of active participants; Unexpected mental connections are drawn between the disparate elements, mined from the depths of our collective unconscious and manifested as veritable waking dreams.

Montreal continues to be a source of innovative experimental cinema that is rooted in hands-on, formally adventurous production -- thanks, in part, to the exuberant activities of the Double Negative filmmakers' collective. Co-presented with Bright Lights (Emerson), this program highlights a number of works from Double Negative members and their friends completed in the last several years.Guest Filmmakers Daïchi Saïto and Eduardo Menz will discuss the screening with the audience in a post-screening Q&A.

Screening time: 19:30. Tickets: $10 / $8 student and senior.

Rebounding from the sylvan charms of A Spell to Ward off the Darkness, we've decided to unveil this melancholy program centered on Waldeinsamkeit, or, woodland solitude. The forest has always sparked the imagination of the lonely traveler, promising encounters with tree-dwelling spirits, ferocious bandits, treacherous plantlife, and feline royalty... During Transcedentalist times, it grew into a benevolent zone of introspection and personal growth. And today, it has gained the status of vestige signifying humanity's lost innocence.

The presented films touch upon some of these ideas in direct or oblique ways, whether through exploring the endlessly compelling shapes of the forest, the evolution of a solitary space across time, or the human's place within. The lineup features a number of new international works that innovatively utilize experimental techniques like pinhole cinematography, screenprinting, layering of multiple exposures, and timelapse; as well as a couple rarely-seen classics -- and a few surprises.