Introducing the 2024 GMFF Shorts Program!
Opening Night Party (Shorts)
In collaboration with Montpelier Chamber Orchestra
GREEN MOUNTAIN PROJECT
d. Tori Lawrence | USA | 2023 | Dance Film | 11 min
A collaboration between choreographer-filmmaker Tori Lawrence and dancers Emily Climer, Ellie Goudie-Averill, and Marie Lynn Haas. Together, the four created site-specific choreography through improvisational scores for the dancers and the camera.
Live score: Petite Symphony by Gounod
CHAMBERPEACE
d. Natalie Jones | USA | 2023 | Experimental | 10 min
Light forms by the water.
Live score: Night Music by Arthur Foote
THE SPACE BETWEEN
d. Andreas John, music Evan Premo, painting Jan Sandman | USA | 2024 | Experimental | 30 min
Three artists come together in movement, sound, image, trust, time and space.
Sky Hopinka (Shorts)
One of the boldest voices in contemporary cinema today, Sky Hopinka merges visual art, music, non-fiction interviews, and poetry to create wholly new images and feelings excavating the contemporary Native American experience.
JUST A SOUL RESPONDING
d. Sky Hopinka | USA | 2023 | Video Art | 16 min
The title echoes Smokey Robinson’s protest song “Just My Soul Responding,” recorded in 1973 with the Indigenous rock band XIT performing a Sioux chant. Perspectives, images, music, poetry, and personal stories are layered and intertwined in a complex reflection on traditions and possible futures.
SUNFLOWER SIEGE ENGINE
d. Sky Hopinka | USA | 2022 | Video Art | 12 min
Moments of resistance are collapsed and woven together; from documentation of the Indigenous led occupation of Alcatraz, to the reclamation of Cahokia and the repatriation of the ancestors, to one’s reflections on their body as they exist in the world today.
FAINTING SPELLS
d. Sky Hopinka | USA | 2018 | Video Art | 11 min
Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, this is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska, or the Indian Pipe Plant - used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.
DISLOCATION BLUES
d. Sky Hopinka | USA | 2017 | Video Art | 17 min
An incomplete and imperfect portrait of reflections from Standing Rock. Cleo Keahna recounts his experiences entering, being at, and leaving the camp and the difficulties and the reluctance in looking back with a clear and critical eye. Terry Running Wild describes what his camp is like, and what he hopes it will become.
Total run time: 56 min
Vermont Shorts
Films set in Vermont made by local filmmakers.
*denotes filmmaker in person for a Q&A after the screening
BLOODROOT*
d. Lukas Huffman | USA | 2024 | Narrative | 15 min
Over the course of their lives, two brothers return to a granite quarry.
STILLPOINT*
d. John R. Killacky | USA | 2023 | Experimental | 3 min
A visual poem rumination on living with chronic pain.
THE THAW*
d. Sean Temple and Sarah Wisner | USA | 2023 | Narrative | 16 min
In 19th century Vermont, a young woman's parents drink sleeping tea in order to survive the harsh winter, but an early thaw leads to horrifying results.
BAD MOTHER*
d. Molly Longwell | USA | 2023 | Narrative | 25 min
As a grieving family gathers home on the eve of a dear neighbor’s funeral, a mother tries to restrain her existential rage after her husband makes a crushing confession of infidelity.
Total run time: 59 min + Q&A
Love and Lack in America (Shorts)
Unfulfilled desires, unique arrangements, and vulnerable conversations in our country today.
*denotes filmmaker in person for a Q&A after the screening
UR HEINOUS HABIT*
d. Eugene Kolb | USA | 2023 | Documentary, Animation | 14 min
A blackmail email prompts a filmmaker to explore the intersection of shame and masturbation through a series of animated Zoom conversations with his friends.
SIDE HUSTLE
d. Abby Harri | USA | 2023 | Narrative | 15 min
Eden, a dancer in New York City, pays the bills with financial support from her sugar daddy.
HICKEY
d. Giovanna Molina | USA | 2023 | Narrative | 20 min
Three sisters come of age within a strict evangelical community in rural Oregon.
BIGGER ON THE INSIDE
d. Angelo Madsen Minax | USA | 2022 | Documentary, Experimental | 12 min
From an isolated wooded cabin a trans man star gazes, scruff chats with guys, watches youtube tutorials, takes drugs, and lies about taking drugs - feeling his way through a cosmology of embodiment.
Total run time: 61 min + Q&A
Borders, Absurdity, Revolution (Shorts)
Where do we cross over into another country and what happens after we do?
TIERRA DE LECHE
d. Fiona Hall and Milton Guillen | USA | 2023 | Documentary, Experimental | 12 min
An interrogation of capitalism and the American dream through migrant labor, GPS, and dairy cows.
MY HEART IS MY ONLY COUNTRY
d. Iva Gocheva | USA | 2022 | Documentary, Experimental | 11 min
Structured over a remote therapy session between Elya, a young immigrant woman, and her therapist, the film explores the existential challenges of belonging to a country not one's own.
45TH PARALLEL
d. Lawrence Aby Hamdan | UK | 2022 | Documentary, Experimental | 15 min
A monologue is performed in a building that inhabits the thickness of a borderline, telling stories of permeable borders and impermeable laws, reflecting on how free movement, free knowledge and free space are under threat.
DAU:AÑCUT (MOVING ALONG IMAGE)
d. Adam Piron | USA, France | 2023 | Documentary, Experimental | 15 min
The likeness of a relative of the filmmaker surfaces as a tattoo on the arm of a Ukrainian soldier, and a U.S. Army post in Oklahoma, built to fight Kiowa and Apache, is rededicated to aid in the fight against Putin’s own Western expansion.
SUDDENLY TV
d. Roopa Gogineni | Sudan, Qatar | 2022 | Documentary | 19 min
A group of young revolutionaries create an imaginary television station at a besieged sit-in. What begins as play becomes an urgent conjuring of a new Sudan.
Total run time: 72 min
Portraits (Shorts)
Get to know some unforgettable characters in this collection of documentary shorts, spanning comedy to social action, that each dive deep into one human’s world.
*denotes filmmaker in person for a Q&A after the screening
THE REDUCTIONIST*
d. Garret Anton Harkawik | USA | 2023 | Documentary | 16 min
Daniel Garrett spends nearly all of his free time on a hobby that consumes his life: opioid harm reduction.
LITTLE BOY LOON*
d. Kevin Bay and Julia Thompson | USA | 2023 | Documentary | 10 min
A young boy in Patten, Maine, works in his family’s grocery store, serves mass, sings opera, and calls loons.
SLICE
d. Zaire Love | USA | 2023 | Documentary | 17 min
Rico Golden and his homeboys from Memphis, Tennessee submerge themselves in an original swimming art form of athleticism, creativity, and joy called slicing.
PET STORE*
d. Joanna Rothkopf | USA | 2023 | USA | Documentary | 16 min
Larry Wallach is the owner of “Sloth Encounters,” a controversial Long Island exotic pet store.
Total run time: 59 min + Q&A
GMFF Film Slam and Youth Media Showcase (Shorts)
Free showcase of the GMFF Film Slam plus excerpts from short films by local youth filmmakers including recent work from the Vermont Youth Documentary Lab, Conversations from the Open Road, and Central Vermont Career Center.
Q&A with filmmakers following the screening.
Total run time: 35 min + Q&A
Mothership Monthly Film Festival Selects (Shorts)
A collection of 6 short films curated from Burlington’s Mothership Monthly Film Festival.
*denotes filmmaker in person for a Q&A after the screening
RECREATING ALL THE BLUE STORIES*
d. Ryan Siegmann | USA | 2023 | Experimental | 7 min
Ryan Siegmann recreates blue works of art from a favorite high school art history book.
SNAPPING*
d. Dillon Tanner | USA | 2023 | Experimental | 4 min
A snapping turtle is saved from the middle of a busy Vermont road.
BOOKSTACK HAM
d. Dan Burke Perez | USA | 2023 | Animated | 1 min
A comedic candle on a bookstack investigates a ham left on its front porch steps.
A RIVER RUNS BENEATH US
d. Jake Paron | USA | 2023 | Documentary, Experimental | 8 min
A visual research project into the Burlington Ravine and its lasting geographic impact today.
EXTINCTION IS A MYTH
d. Baxton Alexander | USA | 2023 | Experimental | 5 min
Jesus, extinction, and sexuality intersect as one former “gay little dinosaur boy” wanders around a dinosaur park as an adult.
DRIFTWOOD*
d. Marina Khananayev | USA | 2023 | Documentary | 9 min
One man’s heartwarming practice of building sculptures out of driftwood.
Total run time: 34 min + Q&A
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