International Competition 08

ENDURING FREEDOM

• The Hideout Up, Thursday, 6:30PM
• Texas Union Theater, Friday, 7:00PM

NOT TOO MUCH REMEMBER

USA 11:00 16mm
DIR Tony Gault
Maybe it's the CIA, or the LSD they gave "Richard" or Americana and its vast TV images being screwed into our brains, restructuring our identities. Get ready for a found footage trip interested in the mighty power of narratives and their subtly pervasive effect on the formation of our consciousness. It is a reflection not only on what we choose to "ingest" but also on how we seem to reinterpret those memories (read: stories) on the spot. -- Sean Gallagher

UNTITLED AFFAIR

USA 7:00 VIDEO
DIR Chi-Jang Yin
Perception, or lack thereof, is central to this eyewitness account of a possibly detected affair between strangers. Questions of gender fuel this consideration of the nature of human focus and how easily our minds can float from that focus to something hazier. -- Sean Gallager

NIGGER OR NOT?

USA 28:00 VIDEO
DIR Ken Wyatt
A documentary on the context and subsequent cultural impact of the use of that most detested of racial slurs. It seeks to determine who is culpable of the word's crimes and how a speaker's ethos helps to determine the impact of any word. The result is a gray area somewhere in between black and white. -- Sean Gallagher

THERE THERE SQUARE

USA 14:00 VIDEO
DIR Jacqueline Goss
So the entire New World was named after an Italian (who lied about his first voyage here) by a German mapmaker (who later thought better of it), and that label remained just about the only constant ever since (aside from the shape of Florida). Jackie Goss stages a more elegant land-grab in this wry meditation on the pleasures of naming, mapping and the mastery they confer over all you survey. -- Spencer Parsons

RE: THE_OPERATION

USA 27:30 VIDEO
DIR Paul Chan
"The operation is going well. We're all falling into a routine." Frontline communiqués from the true fighting men and women of America. -- Jason Cortlund