Fear of Floating (2024) by Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy
Sunday, August 31, 2025, 2:30 pm
CROSSROADS 2025 – program 6
hold me in your arms
Are these archives? Global transmissions from the troubled present open CROSSROADS day three. Snapshots of doubt, pain vulnerability, resistance and resilience culled from the world’s rotting image bank. Interrogations of reality: sardonic and ironic, cutting and inciting. Misinformation flipped on its head. Hands touching hands holding hands. Touching me touching you.
SCREENING:
space_invaders.exe (2024) by Malaz Usta (Syria); digital video, color, sound, 11 minutes. Exhibition file from Light Cone. The Mirage of Ultra-Realistic Hands (2024) by Guillaume Vallée (Quebec); digital video, color, sound, 14 minutes. Exhibition file from La Distributrice de Films. A Metamorphosis (2025) by Lin Htet Aung (Myanmar); digital video, color, sound, 17 minutes. Fear of Floating (2024) by Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy (Australia); 16mm, color, sound, 7 minutes. Man number 4 (2024) Miranda Pennell (UK); digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes. The Motherfucker’s Birthday (2024) by Saif Alsaegh (Iraq/US); digital video, color, sound, 7 minutes. TRT: 66 minutes
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CROSSROADS 2025
space_invaders.exe (2024) by Malaz Usta
Exiles are asked questions concerning their life, (plans) and reasons for (their choices). The film tries to communicate the feelings of the displaced when being confronted with such questions which are drawn from the director’s memory. A parody of misinformation and of broken systems, and an exploration of feelings of confusion, loneliness, and uncertainty. (Malaz Usta)
The Mirage of Ultra-Realistic Hands (2024) by Guillaume Vallée
The Mirage of Ultra-Realistic Hands delves into the intricate dynamics of male friendship. Through its analog narration, the work portrays the power struggles that take root in adolescence. The recurring motif of the hand explores the gestures intertwined with group relations: the hand that touches, caresses, grasps, manipulates or strikes. These actions elicit the coexistence of affection and control, the sense of belonging and the craving for validation. This film offers a glimpse into the ambivalence and paradoxes inherent in group masculinity. (Guillaume Vallée) US premiere
A Metamorphosis (2025) by Lin Htet Aung
In the houses, after parting, Mothers were made up of tears. Sons were transformed into empty glass cups. And the lullabies became a curse. The film examines the suffering and resilience of the Burmese people by using the distinct political elements that have floated for several years on the ocean of political opera under repetitive military dictatorships in Myanmar. (Lin Htet Aung) north american premiere
Fear of Floating (2024) by Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy
Humanity approaches in an ineluctable wave of uncertainty, hope and inevitability. A ferry crossing in Mumbai stands here for all such places and times of human expansion and human vulnerability. (Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy) bay area premiere
Man number 4 (2024) Miranda Pennell
Gaza, December 2023. A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker. (Miranda Pennell) bay area premiere
The Motherfucker's Birthday (2024) by Saif Alsaegh
The Motherfucker’s Birthday shows the evil of the dictator and the horror people endure under powerful political leaders. The film presents dancing, a universal and uniquely human activity often representing joy, with footage of Saddam and his sons’ torture tools while they dance. Bush dances with a smirk across the screen while announcing a war that would destabilize a whole region. Contrasting the dancing of these powerful men, who seem disturbingly unconcerned with the lives they impact, with the dancing of the people of Iraq, amplifies the fear, control and horror the general public lives under. Everyone becomes a dancer, the dictator and the oppressed performing a distorted version of this human act. Saddam dances, Bush dances, so what’s left for the Iraqi people except to join in. (Saif Alsaegh) bay area premiere
Malaz Usta (Syria) is a filmmaker, designer and visual artist, working with film, graphics, animation, poetry, editing and sound. He was born in Damascus, Syria. He studied TV and Cinema in Istanbul and obtained his Masters of Film degree at the Netherlands Film Academy, Amsterdam. His works deal with issues of displacement and ideas of belonging, identity, home and absurdity.
Experimental filmmaker and video artist, Guillaume Vallée (Quebec) graduated from Concordia University with a Major in Film Animation and MFA in Studio Arts—Film Production option. He works mainly on film (Super8, 16mm, 35mm), on analog video (VHS, Hi8) and on stereoscopic video (anaglyph, red/cyan). In addition to directing short films, visual albums and music videos, Vallée is a video designer for dance, music and theater. He’s been an artist residency in multiple artists-run centers, such as La Bande Vidéo (Quebec); Le Fresnoy—studio national des arts contemporains (France); Signal Culture (US); Studio 303 (CA); Visual Alchemy avec Al Razutis (Vancouver); Main Film (Montréal); PANACHE Art Actuel (Quebec); Light Cone, Atelier 105 (Paris) and also did the Avatar/MUTEK (Quebec) in 2023, in collaboration with sound artist Joël Lavoie.
Lin Htet Aung (b. 1998) is a self-taught filmmaker from Myanmar. He began with avant-garde poetry before transitioning to filmmaking in 2017. His short films have been selected at several international film festivals, including Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam and have won several awards, including the TIGER SHORT AWARD at IFFR. An alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Locarno Filmmakers Academy, Asian Film Academy and a Prince Claus Seed Awardee 2023, he is now developing his debut feature, Making A Sea, which received the Asian Cinema Fund and Red Sea Award at Asian Project Market.
Dianna Barrie (Australia; b. 1972, Melbourne) found her way into filmmaking as a middle ground between the pursuit of abstract music and philosophy. Ever pushing the limits of the hand processing of Super-8mm led to the establishment of nanolab with Richard Tuohy and into the intersection of hand making and industrial cinema technology. This exploration has spread beyond individual work to the establishment of Artist Film Workshop, where celluloid is embraced and advocated by a community of practitioners in Melbourne.
Richard Tuohy (Australia; b. 1969, Melbourne) began making works on Super-8mm in the late nineteen eighties. His films have screened at venues including the Melbourne IFF, EMAF (Osnabruck), International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival and Media City and he has toured Europe, the Americas and Asia presenting solo programs of his work. His works are firmly in the “hand-made” film tradition. An advocate for the possibilities of hand made cinema, Tuohy has devoted much time and effort in sharing his knowledge through workshops and classes both in his native Australia and internationally.
Miranda Pennell (UK) is a London-based filmmaker whose work often recycles images from British colonial archives to reflect on contemporary situations. Her films have screened at New York Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, FID Marseille, Viennale, International Film Festival Rotterdam and the London International Film Festival among others. Recent group exhibitions include Evil Eye: The Parallel Histories of Optics and Ballistics (2023) at Tabakalera Centre for Contemporary Culture, San Sebastian. She is currently developing a new commission for the Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
Saif Alsaegh (Iraq/US) is a US-based filmmaker from Baghdad. Much of Saif’s work deals with the contrast between the landscape of his youth in Baghdad growing up as part of the indigenous Chaldean minority in the nineties and early 2000s and the U.S. landscape where he currently lives. His films have screened in festivals and venues including Cinéma du Réel, Kurzfilm Hamburg, Kassel Dokfest, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and The Gene Siskel Film Center. Alsaegh’s films are distributed by Video Data Bank. His work has been supported by fellowships and residencies including the Squeaky Wheel, Flaherty, Ucross and Yaddo.