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Past Ithex Film Festival Programs:
2025 JURY
CATHY LEE CRANE
Special thanks to our volunteers: Caleb Cackowski, Ivana Cvetanoska, Eve McDougall & Gabriel Biennas
Opening Night Feature: Your Final Meditation
Your Final Meditation - Corey Hughes
Alone in her warehouse apartment, Jodiiie plays a VR guided meditation video game to calm her escalating anxiety. The game, run by a next-generation AI algorithm, adapts its gameplay to the player’s emotions as they navigate twelve levels on a quest to achieve the ultimate goal: transcendence. Jodiiie becomes increasingly consumed by the game as the meditation descends into a maze of real, virtual, and hybrid worlds. Ultimately, Jodiiie must transcend the game itself.
Corey Hughes / 52min / 2024
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A bricolage memoir of two different lives running parallel, intersecting in ruminations on death, transformation and time. Visuals created and culled from the filmmaker's personal mini-DV archives. Audio taken from cassette tapes found on a sidewalk in Prospect Heights.
Corey Hughes / 52min / 2024
Opening Night Short: when i wake up tomorrow, everything will be different [excerpt]
A bricolage memoir of two different lives running parallel, intersecting in ruminations on death, transformation and time. Visuals created and culled from the filmmaker's personal mini-DV archives. Audio taken from cassette tapes found on a sidewalk in Prospect Heights.
| Tynan DeLong / 6min / 2025 |
[TICKETS]
Shorts Block #1:In the Dark Corner of a Dream
Cinemapolis - Saturday | March 1st | 2pm - 4pm
86 Mi
| de julho | Craig Scheihing |
| Fainter Echoes | Brady Lewis |
| Echoes of Glass | Ezra Aydin, Robin Joyce, Anthony Zayneh |
| Incantation | Kalpana Subramanian |
| Another Sinking Sun | Tyler Rubenfield |
| Cricket Feet | Jake Nicastro |
| Vigile | Pierre Lefrançois Vérove |
| Small Vessels | Matt Feldman |
| Firestarter | Jacob Mark Shpall |
| Welcome to the Enclave | Sarah Lasley |
86 Mi
[TICKETS]
Shorts Block #2: LOVE LETTERS
Cinemapolis - Saturday | March 1st | 6pm - 8pm
Shorts Block #3: Far Away From Everything That Was
Cornell Cinema - Sunday | March 2nd | 2pm - 4pm
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2023 JURY
Day 1: Hello Dankness
Hello Dankness - Soda Jerk
Screening at Ithaca College Roy H. Park School
Day 2: Red-Eyed and Blue
The land of the free and the home of the brave. This land was made for you and me.
- ITHEX
- ITHEX
1. Too Much Fun - Grace Mitchell
Swirling imagery of junk food, driveways, and caves. Dreamlike stories of a family and their intergenerational relations. - Grace Mitchell / 12min / 2020 2. How to Behave at a Party - Allison Radomski
Do you feel weird around other people? Are you anxious at social gatherings? Do you often find yourself trying to seem like a normal, happy person, and then coming up short? Look no further, friend. Even though I’ve never, ever had those problems in my whole life, this distorted Super 8 microshort is here to give you all the good advice. - Allison Radomski / 2min / 20213. Small Wonder - Elias Z.X.
This is the film Grandma Sally made for her family. Well, technically I made this film. Also, Grandma Sally is not my grandmother, I have actually never met her in my life, I don’t even know her last name. This film is composed using clips from a RCA Small Wonder camcorder that Sally filmed videos on between 2009 and 2010. I bought the same camcorder at a flea market in 2022 for five dollars, she never cleared the memory card. - Elias Z.X. / 17min / 2022 4. Hen in the Foxhole - Theodore Collatos
Existential unease, social anxiety, mental illness, shame and public humiliation.- Theodore Collatos / 7min / 20225. Genetial Reveal Party - Hogan Seidel
An exploration of gender binarism, violence, climate disaster, and the second coming of Christ. A 3D spectacle for the whole family!Through found footage, text, and photochemical abstraction, this film begins to draw connections between many oppressive structures that are linked to gender essentialism. - Hogan Sediel / 7min / 2022
6. Civil War Surviellance Poems Pt 1 - Mitch McCabe
The first iteration of a five-part feature film of speculative experimental nonfiction, which contemplates an impending American civil war via lyrical nonfiction, mixing call-in radio, twenty years of verité footage from the filmmaker’s archive, and robots. - Mitch McCabe / 15min / 20207. A Black Hole is A Black Hole in the Ground - Sophia Feuer & Tyler Macri
Concerning three groups of children from disparate upbringings, A Black Hole is a Black Hole in the Ground intimately depicts the strange, ephemeral realities that arise on evenings of play, when dimensions of space and time, not fully cemented by adulthood, begin to dissolve. - Sophia Feuer & Tyler Macri / 12min / 2018
8. This is Yates - Joshua Yates
Collaging years worth of media from Josh Yates' home movie archive, this analog-elegy presents a deeply intimate self-portrait and a kaleidoscopic mixtape of youth, memory and loss. - Joshua Yates / 12 / 2017Day 3: Getting No Place Fast
Walking and wandering through the mind’s eye.
- ITHEX
1. The Waiters - Ken Webb (out of competition)
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A series of vignettes of people waiting for things. 30th Anniversary re-release & remaster. - Ken Webb / 8min / 1993
2. Deerwoods Deathtrap - James Gannon
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50 years ago Jack and Betty were hit by a train and survived. This is their story. - James Gannon / 9min / 2022
3. Rest Stop - Crystal Kayiza
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On a bus ride from New York to Oklahoma, Meyi, a young Ugandan-American girl realizes her place in the world through her mother’s ambitious efforts to reunite their family. - Crystal Kayiza / 12min / 2022
4. Dakhla - Nick Leffel
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A young Muslim man must face his longing to fit in while living in Latin America, and thus is forced to reconcile with the dark post-colonial turmoil of his homeland. - Nick Leffel / 6min / 2023
5. Slower Animals - John C Kelley
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While aimlessly following a winter goose migration across the American south, a professor slips in and out of childhood memories that all surround a forgotten trauma. This short animated film explores the ways we are shaped; both by what we remember and what we forget. - John C Kelley / 7min / 2022
6. Ghost of You - Chloe Xtina
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At the apex of a heatwave and California’s fire season, 16-year-old Mae and her sisters become prey to a hidden camera at their hometown creek. As the fires intensify, the suffocating male gaze blurs with Mae’s desire to be watched. A sheet ghost is conjured -- Mae’s phantom representing the convergence of lust and violation within her girlhood. - Chloe Xtina / 15min / 2023
7. Exterior Turbulence - Sofia Theodore-Pierce
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Seizure dreams, horses, and long distance conversations from bed. Loose reenactments from Marguerite Duras Baxter, Vera Baxter. A year of stormy weather and temporal rupture recalled in fragments. Featuring my mother and other star crossed lovers. - Sofia Theodore-Pierce / 11min / 2023
8. Parenthesis - Vasilios Papaioannu
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In this lonely contemplation of a past summer, the ancient promontory becomes a parenthetical projection of frantic lines and alternating impressions. - Vasilios Papaioannu / 5min / 2021
9. Hoss - Ryan McGlade
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Hoss checks in on his dead friends' house and finds a stranger inside. - Ryan McGlade / 14min / 2019
Cinemapolis - 120 E Green St. Ithaca, NY
Format: DCP
Tickets: HERE
Genre: Experimental, Doc, Found Footage, Archival Footage
A series of vignettes of people waiting for things. 30th Anniversary re-release & remaster. - Ken Webb / 8min / 1993 2. Deerwoods Deathtrap - James Gannon
50 years ago Jack and Betty were hit by a train and survived. This is their story. - James Gannon / 9min / 2022 3. Rest Stop - Crystal Kayiza
On a bus ride from New York to Oklahoma, Meyi, a young Ugandan-American girl realizes her place in the world through her mother’s ambitious efforts to reunite their family. - Crystal Kayiza / 12min / 2022 4. Dakhla - Nick Leffel
A young Muslim man must face his longing to fit in while living in Latin America, and thus is forced to reconcile with the dark post-colonial turmoil of his homeland. - Nick Leffel / 6min / 20235. Slower Animals - John C Kelley
While aimlessly following a winter goose migration across the American south, a professor slips in and out of childhood memories that all surround a forgotten trauma. This short animated film explores the ways we are shaped; both by what we remember and what we forget. - John C Kelley / 7min / 20226. Ghost of You - Chloe Xtina
At the apex of a heatwave and California’s fire season, 16-year-old Mae and her sisters become prey to a hidden camera at their hometown creek. As the fires intensify, the suffocating male gaze blurs with Mae’s desire to be watched. A sheet ghost is conjured -- Mae’s phantom representing the convergence of lust and violation within her girlhood. - Chloe Xtina / 15min / 2023
7. Exterior Turbulence - Sofia Theodore-Pierce
Seizure dreams, horses, and long distance conversations from bed. Loose reenactments from Marguerite Duras Baxter, Vera Baxter. A year of stormy weather and temporal rupture recalled in fragments. Featuring my mother and other star crossed lovers. - Sofia Theodore-Pierce / 11min / 2023 8. Parenthesis - Vasilios Papaioannu
In this lonely contemplation of a past summer, the ancient promontory becomes a parenthetical projection of frantic lines and alternating impressions. - Vasilios Papaioannu / 5min / 20219. Hoss - Ryan McGlade
Hoss checks in on his dead friends' house and finds a stranger inside. - Ryan McGlade / 14min / 2019 Cinemapolis - 120 E Green St. Ithaca, NY
Format: DCP
Tickets: HERE
Genre: Experimental, Doc, Found Footage, Archival Footage
HONORABLE MENTIONS <3
1. The Enlightment - Stephanie Barber
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Listing dangerously into poetry, philosophy and sound art, Barber's new film (distributed by Video Data Bank) finds Yon and Payola in a Victorian conservatory. They are companionable, disoriented and petulant––they whip wildly through these disembodied states. Payola reads an excerpt of their considerable tome on the age of enlightenment to Yon. - Stepahnie Barber / 12min / 2023
2. Pogo - Andrew Fernandez, Anna Rafalowski![]()
Pogo finds her purpose after being rejected from the Academy - Andrew Fernandez, Anna Rafalowski / 8 min / 2023
3. Homesick Lungs - Felix Klee![]()
You can't bring back a dead horse, but there are ways to step into a place that was lost. - Felix Klee / 13 min / 2021
4. Living Fish - Isabela Costa
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A lonely woman belongs more to the sea universe than to the human world. - Isabela Costa / 12 min / 2022
5. Learning to Dance - Cat Ashworth
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What does the last period of our lives bring us, age 70 and beyond? What do you call this period and what are the challenges and joys it brings? - Cat Ashworth / 22 min / 2023
6. Dreams Under Pressure - T.J. Blanco
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What is the revolutionary potential of dreams? To astral project out of our bodies and into those more hurt by capitalism? - T.J. Blanco / 8 min / 2023
Listing dangerously into poetry, philosophy and sound art, Barber's new film (distributed by Video Data Bank) finds Yon and Payola in a Victorian conservatory. They are companionable, disoriented and petulant––they whip wildly through these disembodied states. Payola reads an excerpt of their considerable tome on the age of enlightenment to Yon. - Stepahnie Barber / 12min / 20232. Pogo - Andrew Fernandez, Anna Rafalowski
Pogo finds her purpose after being rejected from the Academy - Andrew Fernandez, Anna Rafalowski / 8 min / 2023
3. Homesick Lungs - Felix Klee
You can't bring back a dead horse, but there are ways to step into a place that was lost. - Felix Klee / 13 min / 2021
4. Living Fish - Isabela Costa
A lonely woman belongs more to the sea universe than to the human world. - Isabela Costa / 12 min / 20225. Learning to Dance - Cat Ashworth
What does the last period of our lives bring us, age 70 and beyond? What do you call this period and what are the challenges and joys it brings? - Cat Ashworth / 22 min / 20236. Dreams Under Pressure - T.J. Blanco
What is the revolutionary potential of dreams? To astral project out of our bodies and into those more hurt by capitalism? - T.J. Blanco / 8 min / 2023