Prismatic Ground Presents

Prismatic Ground Presents

31 Episodes

One of the most exciting and adventurous film festivals to emerge in recent years, Prismatic Ground brings together aesthetically innovative, politically radical work at the intersection of experimental and documentary cinema. This selection of shorts from the festival’s first five editions offers an eclectic cross section of vital works by filmmakers whose approach to image-making eschews traditional narrative in favor of abstraction and sensation, showing how avant-garde techniques can be deployed to illuminate profound personal experiences as well as violent histories of colonialism, oppression, and dispossession. The latest additions from the festival’s 2025 edition confront topics as varied as class, labor, family, memory, landscape, history, consciousness, and resistance with rigorous attention to form and galvanizing emotional power. The sixth edition of Prismatic Ground runs from April 29–May 3, 2026.

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Prismatic Ground Presents

31 Episodes

  • Theta
    11:21
    Theta
    Episode 1

    Theta

    Episode 1

    Directed by Lawrence Lek • 2022 • United Kingdom, South Korea

    In the abandoned smart city of SimBeijing, a self-driving police car confronts their existential troubles with their built-in AI therapist in this Sinofuturist exploration of identity, surveillance, and empathy.

  • Yaangna Plays Itself
    07:20
    Yaangna Plays Itself
    Episode 2

    Yaangna Plays Itself

    Episode 2

    Directed by Adam Piron • 2022 • United States

    YAANGNA PLAYS ITSELF is an ode to the memories of El Aliso, the sycamore tree that once stood at the center of Yaangna, the Indigenous Gabrieleno village that Los Angeles grew out from.

  • All the Days of May
    07:00
    All the Days of May
    Episode 3

    All the Days of May

    Episode 3

    Directed by Miryam Charles • 2023 • Canada
    Starring Schelby Jean-Baptiste, Florence Blain Mbaye

    Following the shooting of a documentary on the death of her daughter, a mother reflects on her own life and especially on the passing of time.

  • Exterior Turbulence
    11:13
    Exterior Turbulence
    Episode 4

    Exterior Turbulence

    Episode 4

    Directed by Sofia Theodore-Pierce • 2023 • United States

    A year of stormy weather and temporal rupture is recalled in fragments in this collage of seizure dreams, horses, long-distance conversations from bed, and loose reenactments from Marguerite Duras’s BAXTER, VERA BAXTER.

  • A Movement Against the Transparency of the Stars of the Seas
    30:22
    A Movement Against the Transparency of the Stars of the Seas
    Episode 5

    A Movement Against the Transparency of the Stars of the Seas

    Episode 5

    Directed by Esy Casey • 2023 • Philippines, United States

    In this contemplation on the meanings of movement in the experience of migration, the grace and skill of a Filipina domestic worker are juxtaposed with devotional dances to the Santo Niño statue that Magellan brought to the islands in 152...

  • Keeping Time
    32:31
    Keeping Time
    Episode 6

    Keeping Time

    Episode 6

    Directed by Darol Olu Kae • 2023 • United States

    The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (The Ark) has been a legend in Los Angeles’s avant-garde jazz community for over sixty years. But since the death of its founder, pianist and composer Horace Tapscott, the band has spent the last three decades ebbi...

  • Two Sons and a River of Blood
    10:33
    Two Sons and a River of Blood
    Episode 7

    Two Sons and a River of Blood

    Episode 7

    Directed by Amber Bemak and Angelo Madsen Minax • 2021 • Mexico

    The self-made family unit of two dykes and a trans man imagine a kind of erotic magic that will allow for procreation based solely on desire.

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