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Persistent Visions

Ongoing

Persistent Visions is an ongoing series dedicated to creatively pairing historical and contemporary experimental works and inspiring a dialogue across generations of filmmakers, films, and techniques. Each program highlights recurring topics and themes among disparate films and filmmakers, and aims to explore a diversity of viewpoints and approaches to adventurous works of cinema. While effectively drawing connections among decades of independent films and discourse, the series also strives to make these films newly inviting, accessible, and relevant to audiences discovering the work for the first time.

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Past Films in Series

An image of a church's ornate ceiling shot directly from below looking straight up

David Lebrun: Looking Back, Moving Forward—Program 3: Transfigurations—Reanimating the Past (2018–2024)
An extreme closeup of a microscopic round protean being in black and white, with fronds and feathers around its circular shape.

David Lebrun: Looking Back, Moving Forward—Program 2: Animation (1976–2004)
Silhouettes of people dancing against psychedelic color bubbles

David Lebrun: Looking Back, Moving Forward—Program 1: The Sixties (1966–1970)
An abstract image of reds and greens with a hint of purple

Joshua Gen Solondz: We Don’t Talk Like We Used To
A cutout of a man in a red top hat and a dark face standing against red scaffolding

Lewis Klahr Program 3
A graphic illustration of a woman looking with a serious expression on her face, with a backwards comic-strip thought bubble on the side of the frame

Lewis Klahr Program 2: The Blue Rose of Forgetfulness
A cardboard cutout of a woman stands with her arms crossed against a diagram

Lewis Klahr Program 1
A black and white photo of a girl's face looking at camera, covered partly by a white grid of rectangles

Janie Geiser Program 3: Double Vision
A collage animated image featuring a man silhouetted holding a briefcase under telephone line wires

Janie Geiser Program 2: Time, a substance
A figure of a man in silhouette hunched over in front of yellow paper walls with light shining through

Janie Geiser Program 1: The Nervous Films + The Red Book and The Fourth Watch
A man rows a boat towards a city on the river

Forest of Bliss + Luminous People
Standing inside a house, a woman with curly brown hair looks off into the distance past the camera

Maya Deren: Choreographed for Camera
Extreme closeup of a woman whispering in another's ear in profile

Persistent Visions Program 2: Earth in the Mouth
A black and white closeup of a man in profile with another man in the background

Persistent Visions Program 1: Always and Only Place
the top of a palm tree broken over a blue sky

Amy Halpern Program 3: Plausible Light Sources
A hand draws a circle on paper

Amy Halpern Program 2: Unowned Luxuries
a naked body hunched over, hair dangling and obscuring the face from the side

Amy Halpern Program 1: Falling Lessons
A close-up of a man on 16mm color film looking into camera.

The Films of Fred Camper
An abstract image of pink, blue, and gold paint on glass

Stan Brakhage: 1954–2001

What’s Old Is New Again: Confronting the Circumstances of Our Time
A man dressed entirely in green including over his head is seen from behind looking at a mountainscape

Journey from the Outside In: Ben Russell’s The Invisible Mountain + Shorts Program

Her Name Was Europa

Three Materialist Shorts + Matsumoto’s Atman and Owen Land’s Wide Angle Saxon

External Shudders
A reflection within a reflection of a face in a circular vanity mirror with a glowing light around it

Fractured Syntax: The Films of Zachary Epcar with Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s Vault

Persistent Visions Program 2

Persistent Visions Program 1
A bearded, shirtless man reclines in bed and looks at camera.

Confessional Cinema

A Survey in Trance: Will Hindle in the Contemporary Avant Garde