Balagan Films

Feb. 28, 2012 - Highlights of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival

DJ Ethan Kiermaier opens the evening at 7pm. Films start at 8pm. Tickets: $10 regular / $8 student and senior. Followed by a Q&A with Calmin Borel, Curator of the LAB (Experimental Film and Animation) Competition, Clermont-Ferrand, France.

One of the world's leading festivals devoted to short films, Clermont-Ferrand in France is a vital showcase and a market for shorts, attracting over 100,000 visitors each year. Often referred to as the ‘Cannes’ of short film, it is now in the fourth decade. Originally Clermont-Ferrand screened only fiction films and only on 16mm and 35mm. But with the arrival of new technologies, a new competition called LABO (The LAB) was established in 2002. The LAB brings audiences films at the crossroads of different techniques and genres such as Fiction/Documentary, Experimental/Fiction, Animation/Documentary, etc. With the support from the Cultural Services of the French Consulate in Boston and New York, Balagan is thrilled to host the LAB's curator Calmin Borel who, together with Balagan's co-curator Alla Kovgan, compiled a diverse and eclectic mix of films from the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

March 13, 2012 - Prometheus Unhinged: The Films of Bruce Bickford

Filmmaker in person! DJ Angela Sawyer at 7PM, films start at 8PM. Tickets: $10 regular, $8 student/senior.

A far cry from the wholesome work of Art Clokey (creator of Gumby/Davey & Goliath), the clay animated films of Bruce Bickford (b. 1947) showcase constant barrages of free-flowing, surreal, stream-of-consciousness imagery. Playing out like fever dreams, objects and figures shrink and grow and morph in rapid succession – a painter's palette may transform into a pizza or a man into a deformed beast. The content may be perceived as disturbing at times, especially when things take a turn for the explicitly sexual and ultra-violent (perhaps inspired by the time Bruce spent in Vietnam), but the films are ultimately fascinating as brutally honest realizations of the Id.