First Look, MoMI’s annual festival celebrating adventurous new cinema, is currently under way. The 14th edition began on March 12 and will continue through March 16, 2025. The festival includes two North American premieres presented by Science on Screen: Brigid McCaffrey’s feature documentary SANCTUARY STATION and Gerard Ortín Castellví’s short BLISS POINT. Both directors will be present for their screenings.
In addition, MoMI will celebrate the winners of the 2024 Sloan Student Prizes On Saturday, March 15, we will host an awards presentation and staged readings of excerpts from the two winning scripts: Grand Jury Prize winner Brittany Wang’s THIN ICE and Discovery Prize winner Yoel Gebremariam’s IMPACT. Directed by Yale School of Drama alumnus and Rattlestick Theater directing fellow Sammy Zeisel, the cast of the readings includes Olivia Cygan, Max Monnig Mihir Kumar, Caro Reyes Rivera, and Sam Boeck. The seated event will be followed by a reception.
Details on the above are as follows:
SANCTUARY STATION + UNSTABLE ROCKS
Friday, Mar 14, 2025 at 8:30 p.m.
Director Brigid McCaffrey in person
Dir. Brigid McCaffrey. 2024, 69 min. U.S. DCP. Shot on high-contrast black-and-white 16mm film and Super 16, this incandescent work continues Brigid McCaffrey’s ongoing portraiture of individuals who seek anarchic communion with their adopted land, weaving a rough, hallucinatory patchwork of encounters with women, old and young, solitary and collective, who live or work among the wildlife of the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. Through voiceover, the women share intimate observations of their primeval environment alongside personal stories of self-revelation, abstention, and conviction. These gradually merge in choral-like meditation, led by the richly timbred voice of the late poet Mary Norbert Körte, an ex-nun and Beat associate. Part of Science on Screen. North American premiere
Preceded by:
UNSTABLE ROCKS
Dir. Ewelina Rosinska, in collaboration with Nuno Barroso. 2024, 25 min. Germany/Portugal. DCP. Writes filmmaker Rosinska, “Geology, animals, and the human path flow together in this subjective portrait of Portuguese landscapes. Between 2018 and 2023, I came across different regions and places in this country, either alone or with a group of artists and eco-activists. The footage was shot on the fringes of these groups’ work and activities, reflecting and revealing themes such as nature conservation, ethnography, agriculture or actions against gentrification. The rhythm of the film is determined by the Bolex camera, but is rather slow and contemplative, aligning the film with the contemporary idea of slowing down.” North American premiere
Still from SANCTUARY STATION. Courtesy of the filmmaker.
THE PERIPHERY OF THE BASE + BLISS POINT
Saturday, Mar 15, 2025 at 1:00 p.m.
Director Gerard Ortín Castellví in person
Dir. Zhou Tao. 2024, 54 mins. China. DCP. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Originally trained as a painter, Chinese mixed media artist Zhou constructs mutating digital landscapes that confound classical notions of scale, composition, and visual realism itself. His latest sets us adrift in the desolate expanse of the Gobi Desert, where an amorphous infrastructure project of massive proportions is underway. Zhou films migrant laborers as they shuffle dazedly from one indistinct node of the site to another, or crawl into makeshift camps to catch a wink of sleep between shifts, his singular camera-eye remaining in restless gear at all times, panning, zooming, reframing, and focusing in movements that bear an uneasily indeterminate signature between the gestural and the mechanical, the improvised and the preprogrammed. Building to an ecstatic crescendo that pushes past the limits of the visible, Zhou’s film recasts the cinematic landscape tradition of James Benning and Peter Hutton for our posthuman age. North American premiere
Preceded by:
BLISS POINT
Dir. Gerard Ortín Castellví. 2023, 26 min. Italy/U.K./Spain. DCP. Filmed with elegance and technological precision, Bliss Point portrays the automation of food production. Artificial intelligence manages a warehouse, identical rows of burgers are flipped, and robots glide through factories; these processes are all parts of a system designed to optimize food ingredients to a “bliss point” for consumers. Following Agrilogistics (First Look, 2023), Bliss Point is the final film in Ortín’s trilogy examining the technocapitalist production, distribution, and consumption of food. Part of Science on Screen. North American premiere
Still from BLISS POINT. Courtesy of the filmmaker.
Sloan Readings and Awards Ceremony
Saturday, Mar 15, 2025 at 4:30 p.m.
The Sloan Student Prizes are awarded annually in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to emerging filmmakers for their outstanding science-themed screenplays. The 2024 winners were selected by a jury of scientists and film professionals that included Francesca Scorsese, Johan Renck, Emma Stewart, Dr. Sebastian Alvarado, Dr. Jeremy Greene, and Dr. Maureen E. Raymo. The Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize Winner is Brittany Wang for her script THIN ICE and the Sloan Student Discovery Prize winner is Yoel Gebremariam for his script IMPACT. This event will include an awards ceremony with remarks by the filmmakers, members of the jury, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as well as staged readings of excerpts from each project featuring a cast of professional actors. Followed by a reception.
THIN ICE: In 1999, graduate student Jane Willenbring embarks on a research expedition under legendary glaciologist David Marchant. However, upon reaching the remote Antarctic camp, Marchant makes her life a living hell. Powerless, injured, and isolated from the world, Jane promises herself to take action someday. Seventeen years later, Jane is now an award-winning geomorphologist—will she risk the career she’s built in order to bring her past abuser to justice? Based on a true story.
IMPACT: On the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, an embattled American astronaut lands on the moon alongside India’s first-ever astronaut. When a meteor storm strikes, stranding his partner in orbit, he must join forces with India and learn what it means to leave an impact.
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