This Radiant World: Recent and Retrospective Experimental Films is a four-program series of exceptional experimental films from the last few years, complemented by several newly restored and preserved retrospective works. Many of the films comment directly or indirectly on the anxieties and uncertainty of the past two years; others serve as joyful and playful counterpoints. Together, they demonstrate the continuing richness of experimental cinema, the history of which is exemplified by this selection of lesser-known works that are overdue for rediscovery and reappraisal. 

These visually rich works cover a range of emotional terrains in their search for meaning in a confusing and chaotic world, some looking at the past, others at our unpredictable present. Celebrated collage animator Lawrence Jordan’s Belle du Jour continues his trademark quasi-surreal assemblage of found images. Also working in collage animation, Chicagoan Lisa Barcy creates a mysterious and anxious world populated by cut-out paper dolls in Ephemeral Orphanage. Hand-processed images of nature combine with a droning score and an indecipherable incantatory voice in Charlotte Clermont’s tactile and mesmerizing Lucina Annulata, while composer Olivia Block fashions a score for footage she shot of a happened-upon scene of fire and ice in Axiolite (for Anna Kavan). Michael Robinson’s Polycephaly in D threads a cryptic narrative about connection and disconnection through a web of dissociative images, overwhelming and disturbing in their insistence, and Moon Veils is a simple and delicate dance of light by the Mexican group Colectivo Los Ingrávidos. Swirls of decaying emulsion aid two secret lovers in the midst of a costume ball in Bill Morrison’s Her Violet Kiss, and Eve Heller’s Singing in Oblivion combines footage shot in an overgrown Jewish cemetery in Vienna with images printed from found negative glass slides of anonymous individuals. Abandoned threads of history intersect—an ode to those lost and a celebration of lives once lived. Co-curated by Julia Gibbs and Patrick Friel. (digital and 16mm, 80 min.) 

Full Program

• Belle du Jour (Lawrence Jordan, 2021, 10 min, 16mm)
• The Ephemeral Orphanage (Lisa Barcy, 2020, 15 min, digital video)
• Her Violet Kiss (Bill Morrison, 2021, 5 min, digital video)
• Lucina Annulata (Charlotte Clermont, 2021, 4 min, digital video)
• Axiolite (for Anna Kavan) (Olivia Block, 2021, 6 min, digital video)
• Polycephaly in D (Michael Robinson, 2021, 23 min, digital video)
• Moon Veils (Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, 2021, 4 min, digital video)
• Singing in Oblivion (Eve Heller, 2021, 13 min, digital video)

Masks and proof of vaccination are required for entry for this in-person event at the Logan Center. Learn more at arts.uchicago.edu/visitlogancenter.