Finding Purpose
3:00 - 4:00 pM
The Bloch Learning & Performance Hall
(MOURNING) AFFIRMATIONS
Spyros Patsouras
Year: 2025
Run Time: 15:00
Country: Germany, Greece
Synopsis: (MOURNING) AFFIRMATIONS is a dreamy short film that drifts through mental struggle, grief, and fractured memory, structured around the relentless voiceover of a self-help tape. Set in the gloomy landscape of Berlin, the film exposes the quiet violence of compulsory wellness, the demand to cope, to heal, to be “okay,” and explores what emerges when we stop performing stability and allow ourselves to unravel.
Bio: Spyros Patsouras (b.‚ÄØ2001, Corinthos, Greece) is a Berlin-based creative and producer working across experimental videos, feature films, and political documentaries.
They studied marketing and communication in Athens before moving into film in 2019, beginning as an assistant director and gradually shifting into producing work across cinema, live events, and performance. They have collaborated with filmmakers such as Shulea Cheang, Fil Ieropoulos, and Charlie Kaufman. These collaborations have been deeply formative for Spyros’ artistic language.
(mourning) affirmations is the first film Spyros feels ready to share with the world, offering a glimpse into their emerging voice as an artist.
Don't Cry For Me All You Drag Queens
Kristal Sotomayor
Year: 2024
Run Time: 9:00
Country: United States
Synopsis: “Don’t Cry For Me All You Drag Queens" pays homage to the legendary Mother Cavallucci by weaving together the present and past to provide a striking portrait of belonging and memory. Joseph ‚ÄúJosie‚Äù Cavallucci (aka Mother Cavallucci) is a legendary New Hope drag queen that would host annual wedding celebrations in the 70s and 80s that served as fundraisers and a community party. Poetically merging archival photographs and present day footage from a community drag show, the film sparks conversation about the modern day issues Mother Cavallucci revolutionized.
Bio: Kristal Sotomayor is an award-winning nonbinary Peruvian American filmmaker, journalist, and curator based in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. They are a 2023 DOC NYC Documentary New Leader Honoree, a Ford Foundation Rockwood Documentary Leadership Fellow, and were named one of HipLatina’s “10 Latinx Filmmakers You Should Know About.” Their short documentary Expanding Sanctuary, an award-winning film that screened widely at festivals across the globe, won the Philadelphia Filmmaker Award at the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival and is distributed by OTV, Kanopy, and New Day Films. Their short documentary Don’t Cry For Me All You Drag Queens received multiple awards, including Best LGBTQ Documentary at the 2025 Poppy Jasper International Film Festival, and screened internationally. Kristal’s debut narrative short Las Cosas Que Brillan, a coming-of-age story about a Trans Latina mermaid, was produced with support from BlackStar. Kristal is developing their debut feature documentary Untitled PARS Project on the surveillance of immigrant communities with support from the Sundance Film Institute, and producing their first audio documentary on water rights in Pennsylvania with Voice of Witness. Their work has been supported by Outfest, If/Then, Points North Institute, MDOCS, DCTV, and NeXtDoc. In addition to their creative practice, Kristal previously served as Awards Competition Manager for the IDA Documentary Awards and has curated acclaimed programming for SFFILM, Frameline, True/False Film Fest, and the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival. They currently serve as Director of Marketing, Audience Engagement & Community Partnerships at cinéSPEAK, and their writing has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Documentary Magazine, Autostraddle, AL DÍA, and WHYY.
Gamelan Evolution
Juan Vito Timothy Reyner
Year: 2025
Run Time: 12:45
Country: Indonesia
Synopsis: "Gamelan Evolusi" follows the journey of Dewa Alit, who has devoted his life to music and now faces a new challenge: creating innovative variations of gamelan music.
Through this film, we are invited to delve deeper into Dewa Alit's exploration of contemporary gamelan, using a new tuning system together with his group, Gamelan Salukat.
Their work redefines the meaning of tradition and innovation.
Bio: Juan Vito Timothy Reyner Manuhutu is a student in the Film and Television Production Department at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (Institut Seni Indonesia) in Bali. He was born in Denpasar on June 27, 2004.
Indonesia is home to a rich and diverse cultural heritage that is deeply rooted in the spiritual, social, and artistic life of its people. Every film I create is intended to convey a message to society within a global context—aimed at sparking self-reflection and empathy toward others, and portraying diversity and the often-overlooked differences that already exist within society.
To deliver these messages, I explore such themes in my films, including:
"Ranting Ranting Penghakiman" (2024) — a story highlighting the public’s lack of awareness about nurturing trees and nature;
"Kilometer Terakhir" (2025) — a film that reflects on the importance of humanizing others, a value I personally learned and embraced during the production process;
"Gamelan Evolusi" (2024) — an exploration of how we can preserve traditional music while remaining open to its modernization and evolution.
a decade
Wrik Mead
Year: 2026
Run Time: 10:00
Country: Canada
Synopsis: a decade is an experimental film that fuses analog and digital techniques and reflects on the artist's life through the 1980s.—a time of rebellion, discovery, and loss. Blending Super 8 and 16mm film, digital animation and personal reflection, the film drifts from the raw urgency of punk rock to the glittering pulse of gay discos. Bookended by the deaths of his two closest friends, it’s a haunting and poetic elegy to a transformative era, where identity and community thrived amidst the shadows.
Bio: Wrik Mead has been making experimental queer animated films for over 35 years, building a deeply personal and defiantly imaginative body of work that spans more than 50 films. Rooted in the psychodramatic, his films explore queer fantasy, desire, dreams, and the unstable terrain between the personal and the political. Through frame-by-frame manipulations and fractured narratives, he explores queer embodiment, loss, eroticism, and the unconscious, offering viewers an invitation into a world where nothing is fixed and everything is in motion. Whether through intimate documentary or surreal animation, his work resists convention—alternately offering a cinema of feeling, fragmentation, and transformation. His work defies easy categorization, instead carving out space for queer longing in all its complexity and contradiction.
A graduate of the Ontario College of Art (1988, with Honours), he later earned his MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London (2004). His films have been Internationally exhibited and celebrated for their vulnerability, sensuality, and raw visual language—charting a queer lineage that is as much about survival as it is about invention.
He lives and works in Toronto and teaches at OCAD University, continuing to shape and be shaped by the evolving landscape of queer experimental film.
Nabt Al-Ard
Mohammed hamed salama
Year: 2025
Run Time: 11:12
Country: Egypt
Synopsis: documentary about distinctive Egyptian handcrafts through Am sayed
Bio: screenings: The Arab Film & TV School Assiut Egypt July 2, 2024 North Africa Jury Award at the Luxor African Film Festival Best Documentary Award at the Documentary Film Festival at the Bread Festival in Portugal
Like Friend, Like Deer
Malek Eghbali
Year: 2025
Run Time: 12:59
Country: Iran
Synopsis: Like Friend, Like Deer tells the story of a wildlife ranger in a critical situation who kills an illegal hunter during a confrontation. This short film explores the deep connection and hidden similarities between humans, animals, and the environment they share.
Bio: I am an Iranian visual artist with a background in painting and photography. Recently, I have focused on visual storytelling and experimental animation. "Like Friend, Like Deer" is my first professional animation project.
On Camera
Jackie Mishol
Year: n/A
Run Time: 7:48
Country: United States
Synopsis: A mother and daughter make a movie together, even though one of them is dead.
Using what her mother has left behind, a camera-woman’s director daughter teaches herself cinematography across the country; it’s up to her to piece the story together, in this experimental documentary that explores legacy, women in film, and the connection of an artist to their maternal muse.
Bio: Up-and-coming young director, artist, and documentary filmmaker based out of the Paris of Appalachia, Pittsburgh, PA.
