Mothlight Microcinema

About
 —
  1. an artist-run, nomadic film series screening experimental and avant-garde, fiction, documentary, and animated film + video in Detroit, Michigan since 2012.
  2. screening schedules and program line-ups can be found here and on our Facebook page
  3. Stay connected by subscribing to our newsletter!


Upcoming Events
MMC 2024 ++
  • Short Films by Lisa Truttmann

  • Past Programs
    MMC 2024 ++
    1. 16mm filmmaking workshop (in partnership with Detroit Narrative Agency)
    2. 16mm filmmaking workshop with Shanna Maurizi (in partnership with Carpenter Creative Cooridor)
    3. Gaza Ghetto (1984), Speakers: Umayyah Cable and Hannah Fahoome

    MMC 2023 ++
    1. 16mm filmmaking workshop with the Detroit Narrative Agency
    2. 60th Ann Arbor Touring Program, Q&A with Jerrod Willis

    MMC 2022 ++
    1. 59th Ann Arbor Touring Program, Q&A with Ahya Simone 

    MMC 2021 ++
    1. Malni: towards the ocean towards the shore, Q&A with Sky Hopinka
    2. Film About a Father Who, Q&A with Lynne Sachs

    MMC 2020 ++
    1. The Wolf House (virtual, co-presented with The Film Lab and Cinema Lamont)
    2. Vitalina Varela (virtual, co-presented with The Film Lab)

    MMC 2019 ++
    1. Films in Space (Cosmos + shorts on 16mm)
      Curated by Raul Benitez

    2. Remember to Remember: New and Old Films from Niagara Custom Lab
      Curated by Derek Jenkins

    MMC 2018 ++
    1. Chicagoland Shorts, Vol 4 
      Curated by Full Spectrum Features
    2. Based in Havana: Documentary Shorts
      Curated by Mary Pena
    3. Clicks Inside My Dreams: Short Films by Margaret Rorison, Q&A with Rorison
    4. Image Bearings: New Video Work by Women in the Midwest
      Curated by Sally Lawton, Q&A with Bree Gant

    MMC 2017 ++
    1. The Maribor Uprisings, Q&A with Maple Raza
    2. Kairos Dirt and the Errant Vacuum, Q&A with Madsen Minax
    3. INAATE/SE/, Q&A with Adam Khalil
    4. ANTI-ETHNOGRAPHY, Q&A with Adam Khalil
    5. Untitled (Just Kidding), Q&A with Jesse Malmed

    MMC 2016 ++
    1. Chicagoland Shorts
      Curated by Full Spectrum Features

    2. Films by Mothlight Filmmaker-in-Residence Jayne Amara Ross, Q&A with Ross
    3. Films by Ephraim Asili, Q&A with Asili
    4. SÖFNUN: Mothlight Microcinema in Iceland
    5. Seeking: Missed Connections & Loose Associations, Q&A with Chris Collins & LJ Freeza
    6. Films for One to Eight Projectors: Multiple Projector Experiments by Roger Beebe, Q&A with Beebe

    MMC 2015 ++
    1. Itinerant Spaces: Films by Stephen Connolly, Q&A with Connolly
    2. Minority Report
      Curated by Nazli Dincel, Q&A with Sky Hopinka

    3. Frenkel Defects III
      Curated by Kevin Rice
    4. Handmade Emulsion workshop with Process Reversal (led by Kevin Rice)
    5. Cellular Cinema VI: Mothlight in Minneapolis
    6. Films by Filmmaker-in-Residence Dan Smeby, Q&A with Smeby
    7. Tale of Two Syrias: Films by Filmmaker-in-Residence Yasmin Fedda, Q&A with Fedda
    8. Paradise: Films by Filmmaker-in-Residence Lydia Moyer, Q&A with Moyer
    9. Failure: Experimental Animation by Kelly Sears, Q&A with Sears
    10. Projection Instructions: Selections from Filmmakers Coop Curated by Josh Guilford, performed by Mothlight

    MMC 2014 ++
    1. Synchronicity, Q&A with Jason Sudak
    2. Films by Julie Murray, Q&A with Murray
    3. Films by Fern Silva, Q&A with Silva
    4. Form/Fragment, Q&A with Jen Proctor
    5. 51st Ann Arbor Film Festival Touring Program

    MMC 2013 ++
    1. Moving: 16mm shorts
    2. On Holiday
      Curated by Brandon Walley
    3. Peninsulam, Q&A with Jack Cronin
    4. Handmade (Animation)
      Curated by Gary Schwartz, Q&A with Dustin Grella
    5. Portraits of America, Part II, Q&A with Katie Barkel & Oren Goldenberg
    6. Portraits of America, Part I, Q&A with Brandon Walley

    MMC 2012 ++
    1. Maximal Minimal (16mm)


    Mark

     




    MMC22 03132016 / Films for One to Eight Projectors 
    Multiple Projector Experiments by Roger Beebe


    Mothlight hosts filmmaker/curator/professor/road warrior Roger Beebe as he makes his first-ever appearance in Detroit with a program of his multiple-projector performances at Trinospheres on March 13. The program features several of his best-known projector performances (including the six-projector show-stopping space jam “Last Light of a Dying Star”) alongside recent award-winning work in single-channel HD video as well as the Detroit premiere of his latest multi-projector mayhem, “SOUNDFILM.” These workstake on a range of topics from the forbidden pleasures of men crying (“Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes)”) and the secret logic of the book of Genesis (“Beginnings”) to Las Vegas suicides (“Money Changes Everything”) and companies jockeying to be at the start of the phone book (“AAAAA Motion Picture”).

    "[Beebe’s films] implicitly and explicitly evoke the work of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, all photographers of the atomic age whose Western photographs captured the banalities, cruelties and beauties of imperial America."
    --David Fellerath, The Independent Weekly

    “Beebe’s films are both erudite and punk, lo-fi yet high-brow shorts that wrestle with a disfigured, contemporary American landscape.”--Wyatt Williams, Creative Loafing (Atlanta)

    "Beebe's work is goofy, startling, and important." --Daniel Kraus, Wilmington Encore

    ABOUT ROGER BEEBE:
    Roger Beebe has screened his films around the globe at such unlikely venues as the CBS Jumbotron in Times Square and McMurdo Station in Antarctica as well as more likely ones including Sundance and the Museum of Modern Art with solo
    shows at Anthology Film Archives, The Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City, and Los Angeles Filmforum among many other venues. Beebe is also a film programmer: he ran Flicker, a festival of small-gauge film in Chapel Hill, NC, from
    1997-2000 and was the founder and Artistic Director of FLEX, the Florida Experimental Film Festival from 2004-2014. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the Ohio State University


    Mark