The Tafilalt region in the Sahara Desert was once the Rheic Ocean. 350 MYA conjures the ocean’s presence in the landscape, deep time in the folds of space.

Terra Long (Calgary AB, 1983). Studies at Concordia, and York Universities. Works in film since 2011; screenings and exhibition at Edinburgh International Film Festival, IDFA (Amsterdam), CPH DOX (Copenhagen), Anthology Film Archives (New York), International Film Festival Rotterdam, TIFF, etc. 2016 Mobile Frames filmmaker-in-residence. Lives in Toronto, Ontario.

The Moroccan author, artist, and storyteller recounts two tales for the camera.

“When I tell a story I don’t know where or why it began, how it will continue or when it will end. A story is like the sea, it has no beginning and no end, it is always the same and still it keeps always changing. When the ears want to hear, a voice begins to speak. Today the ears don’t want to hear but the eyes want to see. And when the pen forms words the story becomes a rock and rocks never change.” – Mohammed Mrabet

Ben Rivers (Somerset, England 1972). Studies at Falmouth School of Art. 20+ films since 2003; screenings and exhibitions at International Film Festival Rotterdam, ICA (London), Courtisane (Ghent), Image Forum (Tokyo), etc. 68th Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize (2011), Robert Gardner Film Award (2012), IFFR Tiger Award for Short Film (2014). Sixth appearance at Media City. Lives in London, England. 

It is said that in the year 1492 the first European ship led by Christopher Columbus disembarked on the coast of Samaná, present-day Dominican Republic, and was received by a rain of arrows carefully plotted by the Caribbean Taíno. Presently, a saline lake named after Taíno Chief Enriquillo witnesses profound eco-systemic changes leading to species migration, forced evacuation and an expanding coral desert revealing the lake’s geologic past. Taking the camera itself as an arrow, a foreign body, Amérika: Bay of Arrows looks for ways in which to animate, to awaken, to make vibrate again this gesture in the present—arrows against a perpetual “falling sky.”

Ana Vaz (Brasilia, Brazil 1986). Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and Le Fresnoy (Tourcoing). Ten+ films since 2008; screenings at Curtas Vila do Conde, Visions du Réel (Nyon), “Views from the Avant-garde” and “Projections” at the NYFF, etc. Third appearance at Media City. Film Society of Lincoln Centre’s Kazuko Trust Award, Media City and Fronteira Festival (Goiânia) Grand Prizes (2015).

“The figure of the jig-saw / that is of picture, / the representation of a world as ours / in a complex patterning of color in light and shadows, / masses with hints of densities and distances, / cut across by a second, discrete pattern / in which we perceive on qualities of fitting and not fitting / and suggestions of rhyme / in ways of fitting and not fitting— / this jig-saw conformation of patterns / of different orders, / of a pattern of apparent reality / in which the picture we are working to bring out appears / and of a pattern of loss and of finding / that so compels us that we are entirely engrossed in working it out, / this picture that must be put together / takes over mere seeing.” – Robert Duncan

Daïchi Saïto (Tokyo, Japan 1970). Studies at Concordia University. 10+ films and installations since 2003; screenings and exhibitions at Image Forum (Tokyo), Anthology Film Archives (New York), BAFICI (Buenos Aires), CCCB (Barcelona), Tate Modern (London), etc. 2014 Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence, and 2015 Underground Mines Commission Artist. Second appearance at Media City. Co-founder of Double Negative Collective. Media City Grand Prize in 2010. Lives in Montréal, Québec and Ithaca, New York.

Tumbling between the US and Canada, a dance echoing a certain instability. Sound from a single continuous recording made at the base of Mont Royale, Montréal, Quebec.

Robert Todd (Boston MA, 1963). Studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts (Boston). 150+ films since 1993; screenings and exhibitions at Harvard Film Archive (Cambridge), “Views from the Avant Garde” at NYFF, Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Cinematheque Ontario (Toronto), etc. Thirteenth consecutive appearance at Media City. Lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Filmed between Windsor-Detroit in summer 2016, Fluid Frontiers traces history and presence along pathways of the Underground Railroad, and other significant landmarks including the Heidelberg Project. Animating texts from Detroit’s storied Broadside Press, publisher of many leading African American poets, including Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Ethridge Knight, Fluid Frontiers engages chance encounter in the Detroit River borderlands.

Ephraim Asili (Philadelphia PA, 1979). Studies at Temple University and Bard College. Working in film since 2007; screenings and exhibitions at TIFF, MoMA (New York), Milan Film Festival, “Projections” at NYFF, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Film-Makers’ Cooperative (New York), etc. Second appearance at Media City. 2016 Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence. Lives in Hudson, New York.