This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Welcome to the Featured Film page for Bridge Video. Click a featured film to read more & view the trailer. New all-original films, exclusively available on Bridge Video are posted here weekly on Fridays Aug-Dec & Feb-June. Click here to subscribe & view our entire collection of under-represented categories of film and video.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Unnamed” (Dec 22-28)
Zainab is a successful girl who supports her family financially, but considers herself a boy in spirit, and now she has decided to undergo gender transition, but in addition to her family's opposition and the society's inappropriate view of this issue, she has more difficulties There is something more important to come.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Modern Marriage” (Dec. 22-28)
“Modern Marriage” by Max Almy. Color video. An experimental video in which a static close up of a sun-bathing man’s face is shown while a woman narrates his personality traits. The traits begin well enough (intelligent, sophisticated, etc.) but devolve into a very negative portrait (self-centered, bossy, jealous, unfaithful, etc.).
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Through the Rift” (Dec 15-21)
The relationship between the information we retain and its imagery we mentally re-envision and reassemble, helps us conceptualize imperceptible events such as the slow moving catastrophe of climate change. Recalling Robert Jay Lifton’s concept of fragmentary awareness, we form surreal sequences from these visual thoughts in order to create our own narratives of the real events that are difficult to comprehend.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Crossing With the Light” (Dec. 15-21)
“Crossing With the Light: A Poetry Video” by Marsha V. Morgan. Urban night images with poetry voice-over.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Re-Record” (Dec 8-14)
A family celebrates the birthday of their son. After a warm greeting, their usual feast takes place.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “The Cleansing” (Dec. 8-17)
“The Cleansing” by John Davies and John Petrakis. Color film starring James Belushi. A comedic short about a devout Catholic girl, Mary, who brings home her new boyfriend to her equally devout parents. After pronouncing that the boyfriend is the antiChrist, Mary’s parents decide to “cleanse” him.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "The Knife and the Heart” (Dec 1-7)
Tape of unknown origin, appearing to depict a dramatized sequence of "phases" in time and space that both tell the story of a woman's past and explore the end of our universe, intertwining the two with dark surrealist imagery. Not Recommended. Runtime: 11 minutes.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Alien Nation” (Dec. 1-7)
“Alien Nation” by Edward Rankus, John Manning, and Barbara Latham. B&W and Color video. An experimental video that features sound bites from various alien-themed science fiction films/TV shows over other imagery, most of which has been altered or enhanced with computer graphics.
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT (DEC ONLY): “Us In Octaves”
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT (DEC ONLY)
In a hyper color summer nightmare, two lovers are haunted by their last act of love: saying goodbye. Us In Octaves is an official two part narrative music video for veteran producer Caural and told through an all Womxn & Non-Binary cast.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Bitter September” (Nov 24-30)
After the assassination of the Greek-American LGBTQ activist, Zak Kostopoulos, his childhood friend Sophia Farantatou, returns to Greece and finds herself stuck in a dead end. The video of the assassination shot from a passer by, plays on replay in all the national TV channels. Between the media storytelling and her own archive footage from her friend, Sophia has no choice but to isolate and reflect on the meaning of memory. Only time can give her the space to grief and face the absence of her friend.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “New Protest” (Nov. 24-30)
“New Protest” by Sherrie White. Color video. A documentary about the “Peace Walk” that took place in Chicago on April 10, 1982 to protest the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The tape features interviews with the participants and footage of the official speakers at Federal Plaza, including Studs Terkel, Ed Sadlowski, and Harold Washington.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Softcore” (Nov 17-23)
The story of three friends growing up in the 90’s, navigating relationships, school, and their individual sexual awakenings.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Banana Dupuy” (Nov. 17-23)
“Banana Dupuy” by Davidson Gigliotti. Performed by Jean Dupuy and Olga Adorno. Color video.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "One Drift & We All Go Home” (Nov 10-16)
Kenai, Alaska. July 1998. Commercial fishing has been closed for nine days. Dozens of workers have lost nearly an entire year's income waiting for regulations to lift... all while a nearby tourist spot teems with joyfully unregulated sportfishermen.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Studs Terkel at the Steel Mill” (Nov. 10-16)
Produced by The Public Interest Video Network. Terkel talks to Alice Peurala in South Chicago about the troubles steel mill workers are facing and the negative impact of Reagan’s presidency. Peurala stresses solidarity for workers. Terkel likens the current situation at the mill (it is refusing new applications) to the situation during the Great Depression. Peurala predicts disaster for the country if workers are further and further disadvantaged by Reagan’s policies.
THIS WEEK’S LIMITED ENGAGEMENT FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "The Microcosm” (Nov 3-9)
Director: Joe Ingham
London, 1966. Homosexuality between men is still criminalised. Women don't fare any better. A woman who is exposed as a lesbian can expect to lose her job, her lodgings, her family. It is a tough, dangerous and nerve-wracking existence.
But in one subterranean corner of Chelsea, society's rules don't apply. The Gateways club offers a safe haven for women to dance, express themselves and love who they want. Or does it?
Maureen Duffy published “The Microcosm” in 1966, turning her probing gaze to London's first and infamous lesbian hang out. In this searingly honest work, based on her own experience, Maureen examines if this gay bar, and those like it, really offers the freedom its patrons crave.
Fifty-six years later Maureen's words are brought vividly to life by two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson. Glenda, along with director Joe Ingham, draw striking parallels between the past and the present and explore the uncomfortable paradox that exists within queer spaces.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Pink Triangles Rising” (Nov. 3-9)
“Pink Triangles Rising.” This tape is more documentary-style, and features the conflict between a gay and lesbian rights group and the American Nazis/Ku Klux Klan in a public rally in Lincoln Park. Images consist of the gays and lesbians on parade, while the audio is mainly racist/bigoted radio broadcasts by the American Nazi party.
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT (NOV ONLY): “Sandtime Psalm of Fading Flowers”
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT (NOV ONLY)
Animations and videos of wilting plants among debris. Hybrid sculptures reminiscent of vehicles and measuring devices, as well as shelters or craters within damaged landscapes.
There is sand everywhere, visible or invisible: in the concrete walls, in the optical equipment, in the phone, in the landfill. The movements of the animated flowers flicker and accelerate. In between the images, there is nothing but emptiness, a mental absence.
In video footage, withering plants appear in a rotating installation that spins at different speeds. The arrangement circles mechanically through light and shadow, faster and faster until it becomes vague, leaving fleeting expressions of a fading time and space and fusing reality with desolation. The sculptures in the installation speak to a standstill of the status quo.
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Driving Force” (Oct 27-Nov 2)
Driving Force journeys through the banality of ecocide, circling metaphorical parallels in the capitalist treatment of nature, workers, and women. The gray protagonist ponders impending cataclysm and whether or not to have children.
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Poetry 9-5” (Oct. 27-Nov. 2)
By Jim Ferguson. Color video. A short documentary that features Elaine Equi, who discusses her personal relationship to poetry and her commitment to enlarge the audience for poetry. Also features Jerome Sala.
