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Saturday
Feb 22nd
doors 7p ~ films 7:30
ERIC LEISER
new feature length & short films
Twilight Park (The Bell Tower) (2025, 60 mins, shot on 4X6 inch Holographic Film, 35mm, 16mm & 8K Digital) Seraphim Cloud grows up visiting his Grandparents in Twilight Park, a desert retirement community in the Dinétah (Navajo Nation) There Seraphim meets Howie Heehaw; a wandering clown from Tibet seeking a flowering blue cactus seen in a powerful vision.
First World (2025, 3 mins, 16mm to digital) A black light animation about the first world in the Diné Banhané (Diné Creation Story) with an accompanying live laser light show.
Bell Foundry (2024, 3 mins, 16mm to digital) Seraphim visits the only still-operating Bell Foundry in the USA where the tradition and craft of the bell-founders' art utilizes centuries-old methods).
filmmaker in attendance from NYC
post-screening Q&A
Eric Leiser is an award-winning artist, experimental filmmaker, animator, holographer, sculptor and teaching artist, working in New York City but born in California. An alumni of CALARTS experimental animation and art programs, Eric was mentored by Jules Engel, Suzan Pitt and Jan Svankmajer. To date their work is composed of 70 short films and 5 feature films along with numerous artworks exhibited and collected globally in alternative spaces, museums and galleries.
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Friday
March 7th
doors 7p ~ films 7:30
the short films of
RANKIN
RENWICK
Over more than forty years, Rankin Renwick has produced a collection of films, videos, and installations that hang together as comfortably as hobos around a rail side fire. It's an oeuvre of misfits. The narrative voice bounces from first-person memoir to straight documentary to outright appropriation. It's an oeuvre of opportunism. Renwick’s work often springs from deeply divergent impulses and understandings of beauty; sometimes elegant, often discomfiting, but always penetrating. While their films can be received as equally mystifying and assaultive on first encounter, deeper viewings reveal a resounding theme to be the artist's own consistent affection for experience, for others, and for life.
filmmaker in attendance from Portland Oregon
post-screening Q&A
Working in experimental and poetic documentary forms, Renwick's iconoclastic work embodies their interest in landscape and transformation, and the relationships that exist between bodies, landscapes, and borders. As an artist who often self-distributes their work, their screening history reads as a worldwide roadmap of independent cinema. Renwick's work has been exhibited in hundreds of venues internationally, both institutional and underground, including The Museum of Modern Art, Light Industry, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Art Basel, Oberhausen, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Centre Pompidou, Bread and Puppet Theater and True/False Film Festival, among many others.
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Friday
March 14th
doors 7p ~ films 7:30
YOUR EYES ARE
SPECTRAL MACHINES
16mm & 35mm multi-projector film performance
A selection of films in which Luis Macias investigates the concept of what he calls spectral cinema. Exploring each of the different components of the film spectrum: the process and structure as a challenge, the photochemical transformation in the laboratory of created and/or appropriate images, editing/manipulation and re-photography through the optical/contact printer, and the projection as an event. The properties of the image and its forms and the modification/alteration of the mechanical structure of the projector are combined in new proposals for the exercise of a human eye that explores the images of nature and/or how it is revealed to us. These are parts of a filmic form organized in closed structures allowing intermediate spaces that force/activate improvisation.
filmmaker in attendance
from Barcelona Spain
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Luis Macias is an artist, filmmaker & image composer. His work deals with the formal & spectral properties of the moving image, through the exploration of the cinematographic device itself & the photochemical nature of the medium. Focused on experimental & procedural practices of analog image, his works in Super-8mm, 16mm, 35mm & video are composed for projection performance. His films and pieces of expanded cinema have been shown in prestigious film, art and music festivals as well as art centers, museums & alternative spaces around the world. Macias is a co-founder of Crater-Lab, an independent laboratory for analog cinema, and alternates his art work with specialized teaching in experimental cinema and the exploration of analog formats.
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Friday
April 4th
doors 7p ~ show 7:30
a 35mm slideshow of amateur snapshots
VERNACULAR
VISIONS
An exploration and celebration of the medium and its subjects, spoken and coded in the visual dialect of the amateur practitioner. Presented in a relaxed tone alongside a custom made audio mix offering the opportunity for meditative contemplation, as well as casual and comfortable social interaction.
90 min mixtape by DJ Drips, aka NNC's janitor, dubbed specially for this show pay-what-you-want
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Upcoming Events
Sat Feb 22 - ERIC LEISER - NYC-based filmmaker & animator returns to NNC to share new work, including: Twilight Park (The Bell Tower) (2025, 60 mins, shot on 4X6 inch Holographic Film, 35mm, 16mm & 8K Digital: Seraphim Cloud grows up visiting his Grandparents in Twilight Park, a desert retirement community in the Dinétah (Navajo Nation) There Seraphim meets Howie Heehaw; a wandering clown from Tibet seeking a flowering blue cactus seen in a powerful vision), alongside new short films First World (2025, 3 mins, 16mm to digital: a black light animation about the first world in the Diné Banhané (Diné Creation Story) with an accompanying live laser light show) & Bell Foundry (2024, 3 mins, 16mm to digital: Seraphim visits the only still-operating Bell Foundry in the USA where the tradition and craft of the bell-founders' art utilizes centuries-old methods). ~ Eric Leiser is an award-winning artist, experimental filmmaker, animator, holographer, sculptor and teaching artist, working in New York City but born in California. An alumni of CALARTS experimental animation and art programs, Eric was mentored by Jules Engel, Suzan Pitt and Jan Svankmajer. To date their work is composed of 70 short films and 5 feature films along with numerous artworks exhibited and collected globally in alternative spaces, museums and galleries over the past 20 years. (filmmaker in attendance from NYC + post-screening Q&A)
Fri March 7 - the short films of RANKIN RENWICK - Over more than forty years, Rankin Renwick has produced a collection of films, videos, and installations that hang together as comfortably as hobos around a rail side fire. It's an oeuvre of misfits. The narrative voice bounces from first-person memoir to straight documentary to outright appropriation. It's an oeuvre of opportunism. Renwick’s work often springs from deeply divergent impulses and understandings of beauty; sometimes elegant, often discomfiting, but always penetrating. While their films can be received as equally mystifying and assaultive on first encounter, deeper viewings reveal a resounding theme to be the artist's own consistent affection for experience, for others, and for life. ~ Working in experimental and poetic documentary forms, Renwick's iconoclastic work embodies their interest in landscape and transformation, and the relationships that exist between bodies, landscapes, and borders. As an artist who often self-distributes their work, their screening history reads as a worldwide roadmap of independent cinema. Renwick's work has been exhibited in hundreds of venues internationally, both institutional and underground, including The Museum of Modern Art, Light Industry, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Art Basel, Oberhausen, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Centre Pompidou, Bread and Puppet Theater and True/False Film Festival, among many others. Artist website: odoka.org (filmmaker in attendance from Portland Oregon + post-screening Q&A)
Fri March 14 - LUIS MACIAS "YOUR EYES ARE SPECTRAL MACHINES" (16mm & 35mm multi-projector film performance) - A selection of films in which Luis Macias investigates the concept of what he calls spectral cinema. Exploring each of the different components of the film spectrum: the process and structure as a challenge, the photochemical transformation in the laboratory of created and/or appropriate images, editing/manipulation and re-photography through the optical/contact printer, and the projection as an event. The properties of the image and its forms and the modification/alteration of the mechanical structure of the projector are combined in new proposals for the exercise of a human eye that explores the images of nature and/or how it is revealed to us. These are parts of a filmic form organized in closed structures allowing intermediate spaces that force/activate improvisation. ~ Luis Macias is an artist, filmmaker & image composer. His work deals with the formal & spectral properties of the moving image, through the exploration of the cinematographic device itself & the photochemical nature of the medium. Focused on experimental & procedural practices of analog image, his works in Super-8, 16mm, 35mm & video are composed for projection performance. His films and pieces of expanded cinema have been shown in prestigious film, art and music festivals as well as art centers, museums & alternative spaces around the world. Macias is a co-founder of Crater-Lab, an independent laboratory for analog cinema, and alternates his art work with specialized teaching in experimental cinema and the exploration of analog formats. ~ (filmmaker in attendance from Barcelona Spain + presented on 16mm & 35mm film + post-screening Q&A)
Fri April 4 - VERNACULAR VISIONS - A 35mm slideshow of found amateur snapshots; an exploration and celebration of the medium and its subjects, spoken and coded in the visual dialect of the amateur practitioner. Presented in a relaxed tone alongside a custom made audio mix which offering the opportunity for meditative contemplation, as well as casual and comfortable social interaction. - (90 min mixtape by DJ Drips, aka NNC's janitor, dubbed specially for this show pay-what-you-want)
Sat April 19 - K/S/R "Already in Heaven" (expanded cinema performance for dual 16mm film projectors, dual 35mm slide projectors & live sound) + LUNA GALASSINI (expanded cinema performance) + JOHNNY WOODS (expanded cinema performance) + world premiere of new super-8 short, Maspeth is America, by BEN KUJAWSKI (filmmaker in attendance from The Catskills) + record release event for K/S/R's 2xCD!
Fri May 2, 5-8pm - MEGAN MIRRO [art exhibition opening reception] - Oakland California-based ceramicist exhibits wall-hanging work in New Mexico for the first time ever. Refreshments provided.
Fri May 30 - OPEN SCREEN v.7 - Open to all local artists working in experimental, personal, animation or non-fiction filmmaking. One submission per person, 15 mins MAX (shorter is better). No industry-aspiring work, please. - (submissions open in late April 2025)
JUNE 2025 (exact date TBA) - the short films of MATT WHITMAN - Whitman has been making short works on motion picture film since 2010. Mainly silent and often edited in-camera, his films over the last ten years were largely generated in response to moments of grief and loss, both private and public – particularly as seen and felt through the mediation of digital interfaces and archives. ~ This program showcases his film work in chronological order starting with an early short shot on a now discontinued Super-8mm film stock and developed at lab on the Lower East Side that has since closed. While his films have been shown at festivals and other group screenings, this program of films is his first solo screening in the American West. (filmmaker in attendance from NYC + post-screening Q&A)
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Fri Aug 8, 5-8pm - MAX NORDILE [art exhibition opening reception] - Olympia Washington-based collage artist & musician exhibits work in New Mexico for the first time. Live musical performance & refreshments provided.
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