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Junk Dump Film Festival 2024: Day One

Saturday, Jul 27, 2024 at 7:30 pm

Location: Redstone Theater

Museum of the Moving Image and Junk Dump Magazine will present Junk Dump’s fourth annual short film festival. Junk Dump Magazine is a not-for-profit arts organization that produces a semi-annual print publication and events like Junk Dump Film Festival, which highlights emerging and underrepresented filmmakers working at the intersection of video art and storytelling. The festival presents a curated program of narrative, animated, and experimental short films made by artists using unique processes to tell singular and engaging stories.

This year’s selection was curated by guest judges from two New York-based production companies. Guest judges Maya Moravec and Izzie Nadah represent One & Other Productions, a company bringing multiculturalism and new media into market-savvy, high-quality, next-generation films. Short films produced by One & Other have been featured at the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner, Tribeca, New York Film Week, and over 20 other prestigious festivals and events worldwide. Guest judges Yoni Azulay and Zach Rineer represent Bluestone Pictures, an independent production company based in New York City. Since its establishment in 2020, Bluestone Pictures has developed and produced 15+ narrative projects. Bluestone’s films No Dye and Idle Speed have been exhibited at prestigious film festivals such as Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner, Philadelphia Film Festival, and Woodstock Film Festival.

Day one programming will include the selection of ten films, including documentary, animated, and experimental shorts. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and a reception in the lobby.

Screening run time approx. 80 min.

Films include:

Mail Myself to You
Dir. Imogen Pranger. 2024, 16 mins. U.S. This experimental animated documentary explores the legacy and future of the Oberlin College Mail Art Collection and the medium of mail art as a whole. The film asks what it truly means to send art and find community through the mail, and how we can preserve the memory of art that resists convention.

Wanderer
Dir. Steph Prizhitomsky. 2023, 11 mins. U.S. A road trip follows the director’s mother moving north to leave the country for the first time in 28 years, recounting her travels through the Soviet Union throughout the late 20th century.

The Carrot Peddler’s Lament
Dir. Benji Tucker. 2023, 4 mins. U.S.

Kai Hali’a (Sea of Memory)
Dir. Angelique Kalani Axelrode. 2023, 8 mins. U.S. In a realm of abstracted and embodied memory, a diasporic Kanaka traces a genealogy of identity through kūpuna (ancestors), ‘āina (land), and ke kai (ocean). An intricate ʻupena (net) of both intangible and tangible threads of reality, intertwined with visceral feelings that intimately connect us with our kūpuna and the ʻāina, the art of remembering brings us back to our core.

typhoon diary 风球日记
Dir Grace Zhang. 2024, 6 mins. U.S. The film travels through various dream states to explore the narrator’s personal connection to rain as a dissociative and liberating force.

Dead Horse
Dir. Victoria Costa. 2022, 4 mins. U.S. Hiding in deep Brooklyn is a beach filled with antique artifacts disposed of during the early 20th century into Dead Horse Bay. The documentary reflects on the passage of time as well as the sense of wonder in finding such objects, exploring an innate fascination with the past and the longing for answers in a poetic and existentialist manner.

Karlovo Náměstí, July 15
Dir. Rowan Gould-Bayba. 2023, 17 mins. U.S. As day turns to night, we observe the flow of people in one of Prague’s central squares. What do we see if we keep looking? What human stories and truths emerge?

Ant Hotel
Dir. Yu-Hsuan Teng. 2022, 9 mins. Taiwan. Somewhere amidst this rain-soaked city, there is a tiny hotel with one counter staff member. On this day, three sets of guests come by, along with some annoying ants that never go away.

Echoing, it doesn’t stop
Dir. Ejun Mary Hong, 2024, 3 mins. Canada. In a haunting blend of stop-motion puppet and sand animation, this film creates a visual symphony from a poignant poem by Serhiy Zhadan, capturing Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and delivering a profound portrayal of survival, sacrifice, and the enduring echoes of hope.

F#
Dir. Fae Ordaz, Marta Abrams, Asher Kaye. 2024, 2 mins. U.S. A short silhouette animation based on the haiku “F#” from the collection Blind Boone’s Apparitions by Tyehimba Jess.

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.