Alternative Visions 2022

September 7–November 30, 2022

This year our annual series showcases current and historical experimental films by local filmmakers, as well as works by artists from Brazil, Canada, Iran, Poland, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom.

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  • Ana Vaz: Apiyemiyekî? 

  • Meghana Bisineer: The Stone

  • Mohammad Reza Aslani: Hassanlou Cup: Story of the One Who Asks

  • Yoko Ono, John Lennon: FLY

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Avant-Garde Films of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson

    • Wednesday, November 30 7 PM

    This program of early avant-garde films showcases work by Polish filmmakers Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, including their recently restored masterpiece, Europa, which was long thought to be lost. 

  • The Prison in Twelve Landscapes

    • Wednesday, November 16 7 PM
    Brett Story
    United States, 2016

    Story shows how the extractive carceral system reaches far beyond prison walls to affect the lives and livelihoods of disadvantaged Americans. Sidestepping drama and polemics, the documentary is nonetheless a damning collection of evidence for abolition.

    Introduced by Althea Wasow

  • Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada

    • Wednesday, November 9 7 PM

    Jim Shedden, coeditor of the recently published Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada, presents films by four Canadian filmmakers who changed his concept of cinema.

    Jim Shedden in Person

  • Fluxus Films: Selections from Fluxfilm Anthology

    • Sunday, November 6 5 PM

    Fluxfilm Anthology, which was compiled by George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus, is a document consisting of short films ranging from ten seconds to ten minutes in length.

  • I Didn’t See You There

    • Wednesday, November 2 7 PM
    Reid Davenport
    United States, 2022

    Davenport reflects on matters of visibility, family, and the freak show in his latest personal documentary, winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Directing Award for US Documentary.

    Reid Davenport and James LeBrecht in Conversation

  • Iranian Experimental Film: The Artistic Radicals

    • Wednesday, October 26 7 PM

    This program features rarely seen short works by pioneering Iranian filmmakers who brought creativity to commissions, industrials, and government films. 

    Prerecorded Introduction by Somayeh Khakshoor

  • The Festival of (In)appropriation 2022

    • Wednesday, October 19 7 PM

    This year’s Festival of (In)appropriation—an annual showcase for experimental found media—features an array of moving-image formats while probing the limits of audiovisual remix.

    Guest Curator Allyson Unzicker and Filmmakers Raed Rafei, TT Takemoto, Darren Wallace, and Misael José Oquendo in Conversation

  • Fluxus Films: Yoko Ono, Paul Sharits, and Others

    • Wednesday, October 12 7 PM

    This selection of Fluxus films—“the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s”—includes works by Sharits and Ono and John Lennon.

  • Luminous Procuress

    • Wednesday, October 5 7 PM
    Steven Arnold
    United States, 1971

    New Digital Restoration

    The legendary, gender-obliterating funfest unleashed by the cantankerous cross-dressing Cockettes shines on in this digital restoration.

    Peter Conheim, Steve Seid, and Harry Tsvi Strauch in Conversation

  • The Films of Ana Vaz

    • Wednesday, September 28 7 PM

    Cosponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies

    The experimental films of Brazilian filmmaker Vaz celebrate the medium’s possibility to engage the senses in surprising new ways by reconsidering the limits of our perception.

    Ana Vaz and Nicolás Pereda in Prerecorded Conversation

  • Serious Business Company and Bay Area Women Artists

    • Wednesday, September 21 7 PM

    This program of shorts features recent BAMPFA preservation prints of films by influential and undervalued Bay Area women filmmakers whose works were distributed by Serious Business Company, including Freude, Gunvor Nelson, and Dorothy Wiley.

    Introduced by Tanya Zimbardo; Dorothy Wiley, Antonella Bonfanti, and Jon Shibata in Coversation

  • The Films That Sang and Cried: Recent Bay Area Experimental Animation

    • Wednesday, September 14 7 PM

    This brief survey of recent experimental animation features films by new and established local film artists, from pixelated, live-action documentary to abstract hallucinations, all with songs, performances, and soundscapes.

    Meghana Bisineer, Lydia Greer, Allison Leigh Holt, Kathleen Quillian, Scott Stark, and Jeffrey Skoller in Conversation

  • Neptune Frost

    • Wednesday, September 7 7 PM
    Anisia Uzeyman, Saul Williams
    Rwanda, United States, 2021

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

    Replete with mind-altering visual and sonic imagery, this Afrofuturist mélange of music, poetry, and resistance is hypnotic and visionary in its depiction of a genderqueer community of hackers and techno poets. With Manu Luksch’s short Algo-Rhythm.