Zero Length Spring (2021)
Ross Meckfessel
Zero Length Spring Ross Meckfessel USA16mm > digital16 min2021
If the most valuable item we know is human life, what is it that we do to substantiate our survivals? Envision survival as a tower. It is very far away, but terminally visible on the horizon. The sky is hazy, and the architectural details are conjecture. We imagine them. Envision survival as a cave. Miles and miles of terminal darkness. Miles and miles of terminal darkness. Miles and miles of terminal darkness …” – Brian Torrey Scott
Zero Length Spring is an apotropaic film, imprinted by rituals and symbols, basking in ruptures of the body and the earth. Through ASMR brush tracks and the language of self-help therapy, film surface abrasions and alleged paranormal photos, the film gives shape to various unseeable forces. You’re worth it, you deserve love, you can grow. – Ross Meckfessel
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with Movimcat.
Image credits: all artworks, stills, and portraits courtesy of the artist © Ross Meckfessel
about the artist
Ross Meckfessel (USA) is an artist, filmmaker, and curator born in Redwood, California in 1988. He works primarily in Super 8 and 16mm film, often emphasizing the materiality and poetic structures of analogue practice while depicting the complex conditions of contemporary life. Through explorations of apocalyptic obsession, contemporary ennui, and technological landscape, Meckfessel’s recent practice has been described by the Toronto International Film Festival as “kinetic and provocative considerations of the way we look at the world.” He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011). He has completed 14+ films since 2010, including The Century Plant in Bloom (2017), Flowing (2018), The Air of the Earth in Your Lungs (2018), and Estuary (2021), which have been exhibited widely at festivals, museums, galleries, and microcinemas worldwide, including Green Lantern Gallery, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Light Field, European Media Arts Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, ULTRAcinema, Crossroads Film Festival, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Pentagon Gallery, Sheffield International Documentary Festival, FRACTO Experimental Film Encounter, Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, California Institute of the Arts, Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, Black Hole Cinematheque, Echo Park Film Center, Museum of the Moving Image, Millennium Film Workshop, Uplink Shibuya, Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University, and San Diego Underground Film Festival, among many others. His films have received awards from Artifact Small Format Film Festival (2012, 2017, 2019), Milwaukee Underground Film Festival (2019), and Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival (2021). Writing about his practice has appeared in Mubi, Indie Wire, Aspect: Journal of Film and Screen Media, Cinevue, and others. Meckfessel is co-founder of Negativeland, a Brooklyn-based, worker-owned, and operated film laboratory dedicated to the creative use of photochemical motion picture film. He lives and works in New York.