Law of Attractions

Pixels bleed like a rose thorn lodged in a lion’s side.”Why aren’t you answering my letters?” “Because I am trying to forget you, and when one tries to forget, one does not write letters,” says Pablo in Pedro Almodóvar’s La ley del deseo. If I love you too much, I plunge into destruction, the other side of the pleasure principle. A toss of the coin. The movies in this program stage the violent and unpredictable stirrings of desire across many levels of the small-file image. Like Cupid’s well-aimed arrow, tense melodrama unfolds on the levels of pixels, gestures, silhouettes, and music and takes us out of our comfort zone into an experience of conflict. These movies linger like a haunting refrain.—RP

Allison Tanenhaus, Via Vibre (series of 33)
USA, series length 4:35, series size 55 MB (we had to show them all!)

We at Small File want to stuff Tanenhaus’s movies into our mouths all at once like colorful candy! Pastel sine waves, evoking analog interference, compete for deliciousness with vaguely vaginal mirrored forms. Stripes ooze, bitrot pullulates, Demoscene shares its crispy treats, and data visualization takes a well-deserved holiday! With deep art-historical creds from Victor Vasarely to Shigeko Kubota, this anti-NFT abstraction expands to fill our salivating brains.—LM

Christopher Carruth, why wonder
Canada, 2021, 2:08, 4.6 MB, processing time 2:27

Everyone’s favorite philosopher Kermit the Frog, a model for us environmentalists, maintains their* existential dignity even while being buffeted by Javascript errors. (*Gender Liberation for Kermit Now!) —LM

Radek Przedpełski, Molecular Assassins
Poland/Éire, 2021, 1:13, 5.1 MB, processing time 1 minute

Sonic tension is slowly released as waves of textured pixels endlessly caress the screen. The twinkling heavens, or some kind of deep tissue?—JM

Anabela Costa, FLIES
France, 2021, 1:00, 4MB

Can’t resist the law of attraction. The film’s glandular sections, binaurally vibrating with patches of carnivorous spatial sound and fluorescent colour, lure the viewer into a sweet and deadly trap. The art of anamorphosis as whispered by a sundew.—RP

Maria Alejandra Bello Martinez, untitled
2:10, 6.7 MB

The inner, and driving, kaleidoscope of your third ear.—FY

Noor Abouchehade, A Study of Home Shadows
Canada, 2020, 2:30, 2.5 MB

An evening of hand puppetry cycles through sensuous pixels.—FY

Sonja van Kerkhoff, Deus Ex Machina
Aotearoa New Zealand, 2021,  0:47, 4.94 MB, processing time 3:30

The curious and affirmative touch that can only preach mutation.—FY

Cat Hart, Correspondence
Canada, 2021, 3:46, 5 MB

Hart’s exquisitely crafted small-file romance lingers like a haunting refrain where desire smiles in the tender, expectant gesture of tying your shoelaces and ultimately takes the shape of a pixelated aura as the protagonist journeys to a post a letter. A ritual in suspended time that would make Maya Deren proud. Still I say to myself, “Get ahold of yourself! Can’t you see that it never can be?”—RP

Sevil Baghban Karimi, Befalls
Canada, 2021, 5:00, 4.8 MB, processing time 2:00

[nudity and explicit sex] Visceral and at times violent visions intrude upon the liminal space of intimacy. Baghban Karimi’s masterly editing discloses what lies beyond the pleasure principle.—JM