Piaffe

Ann Oren’s arresting debut, shot on lush 16mm, is a visceral journey into control, gender, and artifice. Introverted and unqualified, Eva is unexpectedly tasked with foleying the sound for a commercial featuring a horse. As she slowly acclimates to the new job, her obsession with creating the perfect equine sounds grows into something more tangible. Preceded by the short film “Heptapus.”

Heptapus

This is the story of Yokozuna, a Japanse-American immigrant with no connection to his past, surrounded by the trappings of American culture on all sides — British period dramas, weightlifting, inhuman medical care — and finds no niche for himself to feel at ease. When his beloved dog is attacked on the beach by an errant octopus, he searches for some way to exorcise his grief and rage. In the refuge of his basement, he finds a way to break open his protective armor. This film is a memory of a childhood at the beach, the summer Princess Diana died, as seen through a kaleidoscope — and the underlying tensions it brought out in my family’s cultural backgrounds. Directed by: Cooper Troxell

Only screening in person.