As it was when it began in 2021, Prismatic Ground is a festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film. It was launched as an all-virtual festival during the waning days of the lockdown and has returned each year since as an in-person gathering with a virtual component. Making it to the fifth edition, a marker I didn’t foresee, has given me pause to consider the goals I proclaimed at the start of its first: remunerating filmmakers, prioritizing accessibility, resisting unsustainable growth, and cultivating curatorial distinction.
Candidly, this year feels like at least a partial failure on the first two counts. The festival’s sole source of funding was abruptly withdrawn at the 11th hour, and I’ve had to ask filmmakers for a deferment of screening fees. But Prismatic Ground was started without any external funding sources and will find a way to continue as such if necessary.
Regarding accessibility, it has been important to me each year to maintain an online section of the festival without a paywall or geoblocking (the practice of restricting viewership to certain regions). I have left the choice to filmmakers each year of whether they’d like their work included in the virtual section of the festival—I don’t believe in forcing the issue upon artists who need to make strategic decisions about getting their work seen—and each year fewer filmmakers have chosen to have their work online; this year may set a record-low. Through no fault of these filmmakers, but rather by the anxious return of festival politics and valid concerns about audience (not to mention, the very obvious fact that we’ve returned to public life), the brief giddy spirit of openness that softened the trauma of the pandemic and that enabled the creation of Prismatic Ground is no longer with us. So it goes. However, there will still be around 10 short films available to stream, and those in the United States can watch short films from the festival’s last three editions on the Criterion Channel. It’s worth noting, too, that there are plenty of like-minded festivals around the world platforming similar work. Furthermore, I’d be misrepresenting the issue if I didn’t share that virtual viewership per film has also declined each year.
On the latter two aspirations, the festival can hopefully claim greater success. Prismatic Ground remains small and nimble, and uncompromised in its programmatic integrity. Aside from myself, the festival is supported by Screen Slate’s founder/editor-in-chief Jon Dieringer and managing editor Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer; Shira Kresch, who designed and maintains the website; and my grad students at the New School, who assist as screeners for the festival, providing valuable and varied insight on submissions. There are also the venue partners and their phenomenally competent filmworkers—this year at Anthology Film Archives, BAM, Light Industry, and Metrograph. And the festival is of course sustained by a diligent and dedicated community of filmgoers and cinephiles, who I hope have come to rely on Prismatic Ground for a unique curatorial vision, featuring boundary-pushing work that conjures various combinations of material experimentation, militant leftism, marginalized experiences and artistic irreverence, with a strong emphasis on exhibiting analogue film whenever possible.
This year’s festival lineup offers a feast of cinematic riches for the curious and engaged viewer. Highlights include a tribute to the late Indian “Parallel Cinema” filmmaker Kumar Shahani; “Films and Poems from the Fifth Season”, guest curated by Courtney Stephens and Shiv Kotecha and featuring JJJJJerome Ellis, Tiziana La Melia, Diana Hamilton, and Courtney Bush; a selection of films by this year’s Ground Glass Award recipient Ashish Avikunthak; Ayanna Dozier’s Super 8mm trilogy “It’s Just Business, Baby”; three programs dedicated to Some Strings, an omnibus project featuring tributes to martyred Palestinian poet Rafaat Alareer by filmmakers including Apichatpong Weersathakul, Eva Giolo, Jayce Salloum and Mitra Farhani; Irish filmmaker Tadhg O’Sullivan’s two most recent feature films, The Swallow and To the Moon; a newly rediscovered Third World Newsreel agitprop short titled Palestine Will Win; an Artist Spotlight on Cho Seoungho co-presented with Tone Glow; Y'a Matière au Pays des Éclairs, a 16mm expanded cinema performance by Charles-André Coderre and Frédéric Boisclair; new feature films by Yehui Zhao, Amit Dutta, Kaori Oda, Ruiqi Lu, and Nicolás Onischuk; and vital short form work by Alexis McCrimmon, Fernando Saldivia Yanez, Micah Weber, Lindsay McIntyre, Kevin Jerome Everson, Burak Çevik, Isiah Medina & Philip Hoffman, Rhayne Vermette, Samy Benammar, Kyujae Park, Gio Lingao, Lawrence Lek, Grace Zhang, Leonardo Pirondi, Sofia Theodore-Pierce, Grace Mitchell, Adam Piron, Emir West, marlow magdalene, Chris Kennedy, Matt Feldman, Xiaolu Wang, and Danielle Adobi Dean. Rajee Samarasinghe and Angelo Madsen, filmmakers who had short films in the festival’s very first edition, will mark the festival’s Opening and Closing Nights, respectively, with the presentation of their new feature films Your Touch Makes Others Invisible and A Body To Live In.
Pouring so much energy into a film festival at a time of massively gross social dysfunction feels a tad disheartening; but, as long as artists are able to honestly express themselves, it remains incumbent upon cultural workers to sustain venues for those expressions. I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the work of all these talented filmmakers, and that you’ll bring along your friends, comrades, colleagues, and co-conspirators. With your help, Prismatic Ground can continue to foster a space for bold and principled cinema in New York City.
The fifth edition of Prismatic Ground runs April 30-May 4, 2025 at Anthology Film Archives, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Light Industry and Metrograph. Browse the full program and purchase tickets at https://www.prismaticground.com/2025-program. Image: Tuktuit (Lindsay McIntyre, 2025).
