All programs will be held at: The Midtown Cinema - 250 Reily Street, Harrisburg, PA 17102
Welcome to the 24th Annual Moviate Underground Film Festival in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It sure doesn't seem like 24 years! We are excited to be presenting the entire festival for the second year at The Midtown Cinema. They have been a long time supporter of our film festival and monthly programming throughout the year and we are more than happy to be hosting the festival again at our favorite Art House!
You can purchase tickets for Single Events, or save with Day-Passes for Saturday or Sunday, and Full-Festival Passes which includes our Featured Events!
This year includes a wonderful program of over 50 shorts and features from around the world!
Friday Night
Our kickoff screening will be a DCP screening of the recently released "non-documentary" - We Are Fugazi From Washington DC! We are excited to be the first to screen the film outside of its initial run in Silver Spring, Maryland. The film was curated by filmmakers Joe Gross, Joseph Pattisall, and Jeff Krulik. We will be hosting Jeff Krulik at the screening where he will be introducing the film and participating in a post film Q&A. Some may remember Jeff's appearance at his screening of Led Zappelin Played Here back at our 17th Annual Moviate Underground Film Festival as well as the screenings of his other works including Heavy Metal Parking Lot back in our days at the Whitaker Center.
Saturday Morning
We are excited to start the morning off with the feature documentary Other Ways of Listening - a wonderful French documentary about avant-garde music by filmmaker Jérôme Florenville.
Saturday Night
We will be hosting filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan as we present a newly restored 4K DCP of his acclaimed feature film, Keane. Lodge will join us for the screening and participate in a post film Q&A with our audiences.
Throughout the rest of the weekend
We will present 8 different programs of exciting short films submitted from all over the world from many different genres!
The Moviate Underground Film Festival would like the acknowledge the generous support we receive from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Midtown Cinema, and the support from our filmmaker entry fees.
The festival is entirely volunteer operated with a core group of members. Moviate core members include: Caleb Smith, Josh Drake, Tara Chickey, Jeremy Moss, James Hollenbaugh, and Michael Robinson. Read more...
We wish to thank all of the volunteers who dedicate time and passion to the Moviate Underground Film Festival and to the staff of The Midtown Cinema, The Millworks, and J.B. Shope Consulting for their continued support of Moviate. Additional thanks for the local community organizations that support us including Elmentary Coffee Roasters, Moonrise Candle, and Fennec Design. We would like to acknowledge Brittany Baksa for her wonderful collage work and designs created for this year's festival. Special thanks to Lodge Kerrigan, Jeff Krulik, Grasshopper Films, and all of the filmmakers who come from near and far to attend and support our festival.
Harrisburg, PA Screening with Filmmaker Jeff Krulik In Person
First Screening Outside of the Maryland / DC area!
One Night Only! In conjunction with the 24th Annual Moviate Underground Film Festival! Filmmaker Jeff Krulik will be introducing and conducting a post film Q&A!
Program curated by Joe Gross, Joseph Pattisall and Jeff Krulik | 96 min. NOT RATED
To commemorate the 20 years that have passed since DC-based post-hardcore band Fugazi's last live appearance (November 4, 2002, at The Forum in London), AFI Silver (Maryland) presented a screening of crowd-sourced, fan-recorded live shows and rare archival footage to pay tribute to Fugazi's prowess as a live act — for old fans to remember and for a new generation to discover what they missed. This unique archival assemblage celebrates the fans and their cameras, as much as the band itself — a collision/collusion of the ephemeral moment on stage, and the moments captured on camera.
MOVIATE now brings this film to Harrisburg for a special ONE NIGHT ONLY engagement with filmmaker Jeff Krulik in person!
After a long run of completely sold out screenings at AFI Silver, WE ARE FUGAZI FROM WASHINGTON, DC will finally screen outside of Maryland with several limited screenings throughout the US! This will be the only Harrisburg screening and this film will likely never be released on any home video or streaming format. So, come out and have fun with us at The Midtown Cinema!
“Changing life” was the objective proclaimed by the politicians who came to power in France in 1981. It was this impetus that enabled the Ministry of Culture to provide the major creators of avant-garde music with the means to develop new ways of making and listening to music. Luc Ferrari seized this opportunity to create a collective structure in 1982: La Muse en Circuit. "Other Ways of Listening" retraces the tumultuous history of this association dedicated to the development of non-standard music, drawing on archives and explosive testimonies. Forty years after its creation, this laboratory continues to irrigate a whole current of unclassifiable music, the common thread of which is still based on sound creation.
Follow Winnipeg's Portage Place shopping mall, from its opening day in 1987 to what may be its final days.
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Erren Franklin California/France I 6 I 8mm
A final road trip together. A film made as an offering, an acknowledgement of pain, shown as evidence that she is seen fully in this life, and loved always.
In 1993 Your Father-In-Law Told Me a Joke...
Roger Horn Flagstaff, AZ/Switzerland I 5 I Super 8
Recounts a joke that the filmmaker’s father-in-law told his Ukrainian friends, that once seemed harmless and amusing, but is now all too real. Initially appearing to be a nostalgic look at an older couple enjoying a holiday with friends in the beautiful Swiss countryside, it becomes clear that Evgeniy and Elena are not on vacation but are, in fact, being sheltered by friends as they wait for assistance from Germany. The film asks viewers to consider the challenges and struggles faced by refugees as they navigate unfamiliar landscapes and bureaucratic systems in search of safety and stability.
The Fall of Cannonsville
Charles Cadkin Chicago, IL. I 22 I 16mm/35mm
Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s the communities of Cannonsville, Granton, Rock Rift, Rock Royal, Johnny Brook and Beerston, NY were destroyed to make way for the Cannonsville Reservoir. The reservoir would serve as the last piece of New York City’s growing water infrastructure in a battle of upstate versus downstate. 60 years after vacating or moving their homes, former residents gather at their annual town reunion to reflect and reminisce on their memories and the collective trauma that they share.
Disappearing Acts
Sarah E. Jenkins Boston, MA I 4 I Digital
Darkness encroaches upon a loggy landscape of animated tricks and turns.
Goldilocks
Meryl Jones Brooklyn, NY I 21 I 16mm
Two siblings coming of age in 1989 learn a painful lesson when one secretly pursues the other into the woods in search of an elusive mountain lion.
Padrick Sean Ritch United States I 3 I Digital/35mm/16mm/Super 8
A short film about the "terms of service" agreements of social media applications and smart phone devices.
CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man
Brian Lonano/Blake Myers Atlanta, GA I 15 I Digital/16mm/Super 8
"Filmmaker" Brian Lonano tries to talk about a beloved cult film. What happens next will shock you!
ALL YOU WANT IS GREECE
Alex Morelli Chicago, IL I 4 I Digital
Something is awry with Greece’s COVID-19 tourism ads—is it the virus itself? Or is the invitation to #visitgreece not as open as it seems? With a little help from datamoshing, the ads begin to offer glimpses of new anti-migrant measures and reveal the contradictions of travel.
Tar Beach Revelation
Neil Ira Needleman United States I 3 I Digital
Does listening to Bach transform teenage boys into homosexuals?
The Voice in Isabel Fleiss's Office
Jim Haverkamp Durham, NC I 6 I Digital/16mm
A woman with an unusual malady--cobweb buildup in the throat--receives an even more unusual treatment in this adaptation of a surreal poem by North Carolina writer Virgil Renfroe.
Spank Patrol
Kevin Ralston United States I 3 I Digital
An evil agent has stolen a valuable piece of gold from its rightful owner with no telling what they’ll do with it. The Spank Patrol is called in to retrieve the gold and serve out some justice...Justice in the form of numerous spanks to the butt.
Astrogolem
Thorsten Fleisch Germany I 6 I Digital
Follow the brilliant inventor, Nikola Tesla, as he and Alan Turing accidentally release demons into our dimension with help from Robo-Marie Curie. It is a thrilling journey into a world where science and the supernatural coexist, and the choices we make have the power to shape our destiny.
Happiness
Ryan Tynan Chicago, IL I 2 I Digital
A short film inspired by the spoken word piece of the same name.
Soap is an Illusion (Dirt: Part One)
David Finkelstein United States I 21 I Digital
The viewer is plunged into the volatility of our conflicting attractions to dirt and cleanliness. A collage of poetic imagery, music, and abstracted, incantatory language, the film follows two men in an excavation of our cultural soil. Their dialog gives rise to unexpected landscapes, populated by revengeful toasters, soap bubbles which fly on magic carpets, and other surprises.
Skin Kligman
Ronni Thomas Brooklyn, NY I 6 I Digital
A down and out ex-convict attempts to shed light on the unreported atrocities of Dr. Albert Kligman, creator of the 'cosmetic wonder cream' Retin-A. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Kligman performed barbaric skin experiments on prisoners, mainly black, to develop his anti-aging cream serum. Though the details in this film are based on factual evidence, the story has gone untold for decades.
Better Lovers/Hsin-Yu Chen United States I 13 I Digital
Part of an ongoing series of experimental shorts conceived of as a guide for learning pottery-making through hypnotism, the film probes through dark psychological vignettes like Russian nesting dolls. Material and psychical space collapse as ideas appear and reappear in temporal spiraling; perceptual experience and the process of learning become indistinguishable. You can pick up your work next week.
This Is How I Felt
Josh Weissbach East Haddam, CT I 2 I 16mm
Filmed in a twenty-four period while the filmmaker was wearing a heart monitor to investigate possible arrhythmias.
Drive with Persephone
MiruFiyu Unknown I 10 I Digital
. . . . . The ancient myth of the goddess of rebirth’s abduction told through ‘drive with me vlogs’ and sousveillance. Seemingly innocuous recordings are fraught with foreboding as the vloggers who yearn for freedom, love and self-expression find themselves unable to escape society’s haunting bondage.
Retide
Sandy McLennan Canada I 3 I Super 8 I In-Camera-Edit I Silent
With a super 8 cartridge I shot moons ago, labelled "unknown", I'm back in the darkroom after some months. Ah, it's the river near home! Turned out to look just how I felt, with muted brown, false horizon, chemical re-balance and frayed nerve.
SAYOR
Kathryn Ramey United States I 10 I 16mm
An acronym for swimming at your own risk, SAYOR refers to a forum without a moderator. Three years in the lives of three AMAB (assigned male at birth) children with a parent/observer. What does it mean to be male in the 21st century?
Body Legato
Sam Drake Milwaukee, WI I 6 I Digital/16mm
Imagined possibilities of disembodied being. A cow becomes meat becomes man becomes angel, while a surveillance balloon hovers overhead.
Vision of Paradise
Leonardo Pirondi Brazil/USA/UK I 16 I 35mm/16mm
The film follows a voyage of the Brazilian Military in search of an imaginary island with the same name as their country. The myth from 1483 Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, is known to exist to the west of Ireland and above the Fortunate Islands. Amidst the fine threshold of the real, simulated, and imagined, the film analyzes the contemporary ideas of virtual reality and their ambition to expand the frontiers of the physical world into a "New World".
Lodge Kerrigan Presents - KEANE (New 4K Restoration) - Live & In Person
Followed by an in-person Q&A with Director Lodge Kerrigan
“KEANE might just be the greatest American film of the past fifteen years.” – IndieWire
Moviate invites you to a one night only special film event as we welcome Lodge Kerrigan to Harrisburg for the 24th Annual Moviate Underground Film Festival!
William Keane (Damian Lewis) is barely able to cope. It has been six months since his six-year-old daughter was abducted from New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal while traveling with him. Repeatedly drawn to the site of the abduction, Keane wanders the bus station, compulsively replaying the events of that fateful day, as if hoping to change the outcome. One day he meets a financially strapped woman, Lynn Bedik (Amy Ryan), and her seven-year-old daughter, Kira (Abigail Breslin), at a transient hotel. Keane becomes increasingly attached to Kira and, in a harrowing climax, uses her in an attempt to fill the void left by his daughter’s disappearance.
The 4K restoration of KEANE from the 35mm original camera negative was supervised by Lodge Kerrigan and Kristina Boden. Nat Jencks was the colorist, Larry Blake was the re-recording mixer, and Travis Gerdes was the post-production supervisor. It was completed in early 2022 at PostWorks, New York.
Lodge Kerrigan's writer/director feature credits include CLEAN, SHAVEN (1993), CLAIRE DOLAN (1998), KEANE (2004), and REBECCA H. (RETURN TO THE DOGS) (2010). He co-created, wrote and directed the television series THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE. His television directing credits also include episodes of HOMELAND, THE AMERICANS and THE KILLING.
Garden Glimpses: An All-Ages Program of Short Films
Pump
Charles Cadkin Chicago, IL I 5 I 16mm
On the Northwest side of Chicago, large swaths of people have been gathering for decades to fill their containers with water from a magical water pump.
OUI
Erren Franklin California/France I 7 I 8mm
An experimental film shot on regular-8mm. All in-camera, analog effects.
Konni
Lee Lorenzo Lynch/Thorbjorg Jonsdottir Iceland I 9 I 16mm
An intimate portrait that documents a day in the life of Konni, the last child inhabitant on a remote island in the arctic circle that boasts a population of only 16 people.
Garden Glimpses
Caryn Cline Seattle, WA I 6 I 16mm
Inspired by Marie Menken's "Glimpse of the Garden," this is the second in a series of films about artists of the everyday. In-camera double exposures capture the colors and textures of landscape architect Keith Geller's Seattle garden on a warm spring day.
Beyond the Shadows
Steven J. York/Jacob Dodd West Virginia/New York I 13 I 16mm
A shadow puppet film that explores a series of Appalachian family stories inspired by the dreams of West Virginia director Steven J. York and his father William York. The film depicts mountain mysticism, traditional Appalachian folk magic, and dreams of life out at the old homeplace.
Coo-Coo
Ella Harmon United States I 3 I 16mm I In-Camera-Edit
A short observational film about the relationship between pigeons and their anthropocentric environment. These birds find freedom where other animals perish, yet owe their mobility in the urban space to a long history of domestication.
There is a Hole in the Ground
Aidan Cronin East Northport, NY I 12 I 16mm
While mowing her lawn, Janice uncovers a hole in the ground and is forced to navigate its ever-looming sounds and presence.
Menagerie
Jack Gray Philadelphia, PA I 4 I Digital
Featuring hundreds of looping animated characters, the film explores how the repetitive actions of our day-to-day lives quickly spiral into an endless kaleidoscope of abstraction.
System
Dana Sink Harrisburg, PA I 3 I Digital
An animated film intersecting machinery, life, and our subconscious.
Wreckage & Rags A non-explicit program of experimental short films
GIRLS SMOKING
John Peter Coronati Philadelphia, PA I 2 I 16mm
A painted, scratched, wax-covered 16mm montage set to Lead Belly’s “Ain’t You Glad.” The footage is compiled from a 1980s anti-smoking educational film, an artifact strangely reflective of how cultural phenomena such as moralizing behaviors and gender stereotyping are reinforced through media portrayals.
Frames for Yoko 1-5
David Sherman Tuscon, AZ I 11 I Digital
A FLUXUS inspired performance framing of Yoko Ono caught on camera in January of 1969, extracted sequentially from Peter Jackson's film Get Back (2021) from footage originally directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969.
A Body Appeared at the Lake Today
Brian Ratigan Brooklyn, NY I 5 I 8mm
A found footage examination of what happened at the lake today. Where were you? An exquisite corpse by Non Films. Images randomly selected from found footage; poem written without images; music written without images or words. 8mm found footage: New York, 1953.
How a Sprig of Fir Would Replace a Feather
Anna Kipervaser Durham, NC I 8 I 16mm I Silent
Taking its title from Charles Altamont Doyle, the film is a meditation on ritual, at once a labor of love and of pain, of parting. A taxonomy of the investigation of love, of becoming. In perpetual beginning. In perpetual ending. Coming into vision, into the present, a leaving. A leaving.
kauaʻi ʻōʻō
Samy Benammar Canada I 4 I Super 8
In 2000, the International Union for Conservation of Nature officially declared the Kauai ‘ōʻō extinct. All that remains of this endemic bird of the Hawaiian island of the same name is the recording of its singing by ornithologist David Boynton. Between territories and treetops, I'm still looking for a trace of the vanished birds.
How to Build a House out of Wreckage and Rags
Bernd Lützeler Berlin, Germany I 8 I 16mm/Super 8
Found footage: California in the 1950's and 60's. A young Indian couple enjoys their personal American dream come true in their home somewhere in the suburbs of San Francisco. In great detail they demonstrate their newly achieved wealth in front of their Super-8 camera. Like postcards, they would send these film rolls to their families back in India. Around the same time, an American missionary couple visits the city of Calcutta to shoot a Christian propaganda film.
There, Where She is Not
Sarah Ballard Milwaukee, WI I 7 I 16mm
Echoes of a time in my grandmother's life that she no longer remembers—a fractured memory recollected through proxy figures Frances Farmer and Marguerite Duras—a mirror is a placeless place.
In the Broken Eye of the Butterfly
Vera Hector/Justin Brown Iowa City, IA I 5 I 8mm
The butterfly mime is getting up but there is no one left to watch the show. Skin, eyes, walls, wings, hair, sun, earth. An old song of tomorrow. A musical and visual poem shot in between new and old industrial cities featuring butterflies - live creatures and embroidered ones - as a shared collection of pictures. A two wings film.
Intersection
Richard Peter Tuohy Australia I 11 I 16mm
A staccato study of street level action and inter-action. People and vehicles on everyday journeys are atomized into coursing fragments of light, shadow, angle and inertia; reiterating and disassembling the creation of motion out of still frames at the heart of cinema. Filmed in ten cities on four continents.
A butoh dancer (Atsushi Matsuda, of the internationally renowned group Dairakudakan) travels across Tokyo on his way to rehearsals, traversing a subconscious landscape that bridges the interior world of the self with an exterior world that extends through the city to the cosmos. As storms boil and earthquakes rattle, we witness the visceral and moving process of destruction and renewal needed for the creation of a new performance.
secant
Timothy David Orme Unknown I 3 I Digital
When The Time Sings Again
Keyi Zhang Shangluo, Shaanxi, China I 11 I digital
A man's ten minutes have been stolen. He wants to look for them back. The story of his life has become this film. But now, as the character of this film, he is being sold by the author on the street.
Parts
Michael Lyons Japan I 5 I 16mm I Silent
This camera-less silent film examines parts and wholes. Electronic components were photogrammed on 16mm print stock. Displacements in time and space assemble the parts into an abstract dynamic gestalt.
As close as your voice can call
Derek B Jenkins Canada I 14 I 16mm
A film about language, about the way trauma inflects grief, and about learning to speak with the dead.
A CITY W/O A MAP
Josh Weissbach East Haddam, CT I 8 I 16mm/Super 8
signal communications proliferate across borders. incongruent shapes subtracted from form. fractal topographies without document.
A visual and sonic meditation on the disorienting experience of loss. Mallory moves through an encounter with an oracle-like figure to archival footage of her late son, Julian, as he reflects on the impact of young lives lost to violence.
I was born in 1988
Yasaman Baghban Islamic Republic of Iran/North Carolina I 9 I Digital
An experimental documentary and personal essay on a series of executions of Iranian political prisoners that began in the summer of 1988, following the end of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. The mothers of these prisoners are a symbol of resistance and freedom. For nearly three decades, I have been preoccupied with the coincidence of this massacre and my birth in August 1988.
Sensitive Material
Nataliya Ilchuk Ukraine/France I 26 I Super 8
Shot over the course of 10 years on expired Svema Super 8 film, this film is about the mental trauma of a woman who grew up in a dysfunctional family during Soviet times in Ukraine.
Searching for Beauty in Student Loan Debt or at Least the Envelopes in Which It Comes
Nicky Tavares United States I 6 I 16mm
Don your 3D glasses, open your mind, allow the denial of questionable financial decisions made by an aspiring young artist to dissolve on your tongue, and take a trip over 10 years to a delusory destination where the student loan debt crisis and one advanced art degree converge. Lean into the darkness of capitalized interest or remove your glasses and dream in color of solvency that may never come.
Forests
Simon Plouffe Montreal, QC I 16 I Digital
Eastern white pines submerged under the waters of a hydroelectric reservoir on unceded Innu territory transform into flames. This exploration between water and fire illustrates our current climate emergency through multiple stories about the relationship between a community and its land.
Invisible World
Kym McDaniel Salt Lake City, UT I 5 I Digital
To apply for an accessible or Crip parking placard, a doctor within the state must approve the application. As part of the application, there are six medical conditions which qualify a person for a placard. Many people with disabilities are included and many are not. This film is a record of my introduction to healthcare in the state of Utah. My processing of the appointment and consequential aftermath as a video object serves as a reclamation and assertion for understanding disability and the physical world otherwise.
An Example of Lee-Roth Fog Isolated Under Laboratory Conditions
Ryan Betschart San Diego, CA I 3 I Digital
Spiritual mists are a stand in for the nuts-and-bolts details surrounding the life of enigmatic Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth. A personality perfectly captured in eruptions of ecstatic sound.
Stoned to the Bone
Rudy Childs Rockland, MA/Montgomery County, MD I 15 I VHS
A short that focuses on a 1985 weekend field party bacchanal that took place in Montgomery County, Maryland. A cast of colorful characters are recorded using a home video camera and a CBS microphone swiped from the Reagan Inauguration earlier that year. Music included is the doom metal icons Pentagram who are interviewed as they set up for the performance.
Scum Show - OSEES - Music Video
MaLo Sutra Fish Paris, FR I 2 I Super 8
Shot at Le Trianon in Paris during OSEES' show on June 29th 2022. The reels were hand processed at the Collective Lab L'Etna. The film was pre-edited and animated, colored, and special effects were also processed by hand; digitally edited. Long live Punk Spirit!
2940 N Campbell
Jacob Kessler Chicago, IL I 4 I 16mm
A Satanic holiday is celebrated at a queer DIY space in Chicago. As police raid and permanently shut down the venue, excess pleasures persist to the musicality of a malfunctioning police radio. In the onslaught of lights and noises, audience members find a curious indifference to their source.
Fugazi's Barber
Joe Tropea, Robert A. Emmons Jr. Baltimore, MD/Washington D.C. I 16 I Digital
In Washington, DC, legendary punk rockers get cleaned up by an old-school Italian barber.
Texas Transformed
Kwashiorkor Collective Harrisburg, PA/Dallas, TX I 29 I Super 8
My 1984 summer vacation to the Republican National Convention in Dallas Texas.
24th Annual Underground Film Festival - May 19th - 21st, 2023
Purchase Festival Tickets from the Midtown Cinema
This year's 24th annual Moviate Underground Film Festival events are taking place at the Midtown Cinema exclusively.
You can purchase tickets for Single Events, or save with Day-Passes for Saturday or Sunday, and Full-Festival Passes which includes our Featured Events!
"Moviate is a volunteer operated, not for profit organization, dedicated to bringing independent, underground, and avant-garde Cinema and Sound events to the Harrisburg, PA area."
