Prismatic Ground 2026: Parine Jaddo, etc.
plus Chinese avant-garde films, early Japanese video art, a free online program, and some other things
The sixth edition of Prismatic Ground began last night and continues through the weekend. I am, for better and for worse, not in New York City this week, but I have seen a number of films from this year’s program either through other festivals or through screeners, so here’s a quick note on some things I recommend. If you’re not in NYC, some of these are available online through Prismatic Ground’s Virtual Selection.
Three Films by Parine Jaddo
Beirut and its diaspora have produced a wonderful tradition of lyrical experimental film and video, from the pioneering works of Jocelyne Saab and Jayce Salloum to the contemporary ones by Rawane Nassif, Nour Ouayda, and Rania Stephan. These vary from essay and diary film to media study to opaque narrative, but a commonality is the way they tend to blend these modes of address and blur the lines between poetry, narrative, and personal or national biography in their search for a form able to express a view of cultural continuity through civil war, regional tragedy, and exile.
These three films by Iraqi-Lebanese-American artist Parine Jaddo, which have been recently digitized from 16mm and 35mm, have not been screened in many years, or in one case was never screened at all, but deserve to be placed alongside the best of this tradition. Atash (Thirst) is the earliest, from 1995, and the only one filmed in Lebanon. It’s a gorgeous short that typically collapses the distinction between narrative and personal memory, and between two narrators. Atash is in the virtual program.
The other two films, Aisha (Surviving) and Teyh (Astray) were made after Jaddo’s move to the United States. The former is a pseudo-documentary, partially if not entirely fictionalized, where a filmmaker follows her cousin’s media career and sexual exploits and complicates the relationships of camera-artist-narrative-subject-audience in various ways that question what can be known or expressed through art and representation. It’s engaging and never as dryly academic as I’ve just made it sound. Teyh, which has never been screened before as I understand it, is a self-study of the artist of the artist’s alienation as an Iraqi immigrant living in the USA in the period after 9/11. The three films have overlapping formal concerns, and the relations between them and with the artists I named above are clear, but each also feels entirely distinct and singular. I hope these screen in many other contexts.
The Land Lies Heavy: The Contemporary Chinese Avant-Garde
The amazing works of Zhou Tao have been getting some well deserved attention in the Western film world, but he is by no means the only great Chinese artist working in formalist documentary or experimental film. This program, co-presented by Tone Glow, highlights four others. They’re all good, but Kaiwen Ren’s Redland Hooves is particularly great if you love beautiful, opaque 16mm assemblages as much as I do.
Other stuff
Chronovisor is one of the best films of the year, and it’s having its second NYC screening at Prismatic Ground. I interviewed the directors earlier this year.
Eislow Johnson’s latest, Injured?, is a paranoid frenzy of injury lawfirm billboards, motor vehicles, and highway crime made in collaboration with some of the best contemporary moving image artists in the Chicago area. It reaffirms my impression from In Place of a Hollow Tree that Johnson is one of the better new sound designers and editors in the American experimental film world. This one is available in the virtual program.
Chae Yu is another of the best young experimental artists around right now, and three of her films are featured in various Prismatic Ground programs. Rotating Signals is especially good.
Kohei Ando was an early adopter of video art in the late 60s and 70s who continued working in HD formats for decades later. I was not even aware of any of these playful and adventurous oddities before this year, and they feel like an essential contribution to the video art canon, so I’m happy that he’s the recipient of this year’s Ground Glass Award and that a full program of his works is screening. That artists like Kohei Ando and Parine Jaddo, or the revelation that was Antoinetta Angelidi’s filmography at the 2024 festival, can still be “discovered” proves that even in the age of torrent trackers and drive folders we have much to learn and film festivals have an important role to play in teaching us.