Looking Back Before You Leap

A Collection of Images from the Point of View of Lightness of Being

A collection of images taken on 35mm film with a point-and-click Holga135BC during the year after I dropped out of school.

Eclogues

Landscapes are permeable, impermanent. They are hallucinations of literature, manifestations of human manipulation. Like the pixel, they are degraded, rearranged, forgotten. “Eclogues” is an expression of landscape in the purest principles of digital image-making: duration, practicality, limitation. Shot in 2020 in Strafford, Vermont.

9 Days in the Summer

MARKS/MARKS

MARKS/MARKS examines the relationship between the mark making of optical lens technologies (writing with light) and the mark making of painting within the context of digital technology and mass data. The film maps the movement of painter Dr Harrison Waed See in the studio painting to generate the tempo and trigger audio and visual effects. Similarly digital image sonification and digital data sonifcation of still and moving images of Dr See were used to generate further noise and visual effects. Alongside this, the soundtrack also includes amplifcations of the sound of his movements and paint brush.

La Panadella

La Panadella, an emblematic small road town in decline located in Catalonia, is awaiting the arrival of visitors from a mysterious tower. While its inhabitants and passersby follow their monotonous routines, a strange signal manifests itself.

Vampir Cuadecuc

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

Café au Lait

Stone Fruit

My great-grandmother, Frieda Riesenfeld, recounts moving into her first apartment in the United States after escaping from Germany in 1938.

The Forgotten

An exploration of memory after death.

Formosa

A girl from Hainan recounts her youth in a seaside village she couldn't leave.

Pet Shop

Pet Shop works as an experiment on regret and suffering. A juxtaposition of a dog in a pet shop and a window. Narrated from the perspective of God, or the Devil, the text recounts discussions a person has had with Him. The person accuses Him of destroying his life. This could be for a sin, a murder, or for falling in love with a person of the same sex.

around around around & down

a raw descent, billowing fast & spun 'til the time we'll force the soil to swallow ourselves: too far gone, & no backwards to safety. only spirals of wasted water down dirty, half-clogged drains, razed by fates written for us in cold ash by the bones of ancient smokestacks.

behind the scenes

An experimental documentary/animation hybrid exploring likeness scanning, AI, and what that means for identity.

Pacho's visual archive

After the death of my only brother I found rolls of undeveloped film. This documentary is a reenactment of those stills and an exploration of the aspects of my brother's life that I didn't know.

The Hadron Collider: In Search of the Peace Particle

In the aftermath of Hiroshima, a group of scientists vowed never to turn knowledge into weapons again, and from that promise, CERN was born. Deep underground, researchers from nations in conflict have worked side by side for decades, driven by curiosity and shared wonder. For 70 years, CERN has stood as an act of hope, a place where collaboration transcends borders, even as the world above grows more divided. Blending poetry, music and rare archival footage of Oppenheimer with remarkable access to the Large Hadron Collider, the film explores how science, politics and culture collide.

Suture: A Study

An experimental, visual, and poetic study about bodies, stitches, and repair. A sensory exploration of fragmentation and reconstruction. The body, real or symbolic, is treated as a surface to be opened, sutured, and reimagined. Using textures, objects, and silent rituals, the film contemplates the tension between vulnerability and resilience, between decay and the desire to mend. It is not about narrative, but about sensation. Not about answers, but about the act of touching what is broken.

Reminiscence: A Life Through the Lens

A visual essay on the stimuli that draw a bridge to past memories of my life; a real documentary about where I was and where I am, what I did and what I do; a reflection of the person I was and continue to be.

We Exist Triply

A sock puppet explores a family history told from the perspective of a mother and father.

Corridors

Latest installment from the on-going collaboration between filmmaker Paul Clipson & musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Paul's Super8 films, shot entirely in New York City, channel the blissed out states of color drenched psychadellia explored by Brakage as well as lovely black and white still life's that reminisce on Ozu's 'pillow shots' & Chantel Akermans monumental portrait of Pre-Giuliani New York 'Letters Home'. Jefre's music is culled from the same sessions that launched his 2007 release on Students Of Decay 'Shinning Skull Breath', (the two share a track in common). Billowy clouds of distorted guitar expand out into long passages of muffled static and fuzzed out melody.