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

     




    MMC28 09212017 / Untitled (Just Kidding)
    with Jesse Malmed


    Join us at Cave Gallery (in the Russel Industrial Center) for a evening of films by Jesse Malmed.

    Jesse Malmed presents a suite of videos and performances, including new works made specifically for tonight. Malmed's moving image works channel and channel surf the intersects of conceptual comedy, dizzying illogics, the poetic plu-future and sustainable sourcing, animating the cinema space with live gestures. Tonight's sights include: a sitcommune, an actorless play, the permeability of the screen and new letters.Jesse Malmed is an artist and curator, working in video, performance, text, occasional objects and their gaps and overlaps. He has performed, screened and exhibited at museums, microcinemas, film festivals, galleries, bars and barns, including recent solo presentations at Roots and Culture, the Chicago Cultural Center, D Gallery, Syntax Season, Cinema Contra, Microlights, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Echo Park Film Center, Lease Agreement and the University of Chicago Film Studies Center. His platformist and curatorial projects include the Live to Tape Artist Television Festival, programming at the Nightingale Cinema, the mobile exhibition space and artist bumper sticker project Trunk Show (with Raven Falquez Munsell), programming through ACRE TV and the recently inaugurated Western Pole. A native of Santa Fe, Jesse earned his BA at Bard College and his MFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was named a "2014 Breakout Artist" by Newcity and has attended residencies at ACRE, Ox-Bow, Summer Forum, the Chicago Cultural Center and Links Hall.


    Program

    HOW TO HAVE YOUR / OWN TELEVISION SHOW! / (YOU ALREADY DO), 2016, 13:01, digital video
    An unreliable narrator details how to deliver people in the age of surveillance from within and without, a how-to for lateral minds, a hippie family sitcommune set to a bootleg of Peter Hutton's Florence, a drearily rousing theme song as gps-to-mp3 directions out to the country. With Henry Thomas, Vic Mizzy and Peter Hutton.

    THERE, 2016, 1:00, digital video Still.

    WREADING, 2012, 18:16, digital video
    Reading as writing. A romp through meaning-making and diffuse divination. The clouds hold secrets. Tuli Kupferberg is not the beluga, but the beluga sings human. Charles Bernstein. The world is a word is a world. Cloud covers.

    SELF-TITLED (Rough Cut),2015-17, 7:00, digital video
    "The final structural film. Finally!" -David Manning, Saugatuck Sentinel

    GOTH MOVIE, 2013, 2:36, color, sound, Super-8 on video
    Starring (in order of appearance): Govind, Veda, Nananancy, Gayatri, Ali, Chloe Sound: Chemutoi Ketienya & Kipsigis Girls Goth breakfast, flying lanterns, alien landscapes, mirrors and seeings. Séance Nonfiction.

    THIMBLERIG, 2012, 11:00, digital video
    Body swaps, time manifest and made literal, multiverse tears, two minds to a body, dream babies, singtalk, represented realities.

    CONQUE, 2013, 8:47, digital video + flashlight
    Sixteen—at least—ideas and images in search of a trajectory. The voice you hear is your own, interrupted and ruptured, while a little real-life actualizing is all they need. Frank Stella, Phreak Headroom, Robert Creeley, Quixotic Tivoli, the demography of the Sitcom Set, Pizza Burger Covers and and. My favorite parts are when the permeability of the screen is made clear: when the diegesis becomes our world and when cinema's prosthetic memory becomes a site for immortality. For Jonah Adels.

    DO VOICES, 2013, 15:05, digital video Choirs, choirs, Robin Williams, the contemporary folk art ensemble of youtube, George Mason University’s English Accent Archive, Shamuel Beckett and others come together for a We Are The World / We Arendt -style movie/concert/concert movie. Highly recommended for those already there, those on their way. Topics include: where you’re from and how you sound, the imaginative space of the bootleg, the morass of language, the virtuosity of a radio on scan and typing in stereo.


    Co-presented by Mothlight Microcinema and CAVE; special thanks to Kylie Lockwood.
    Mark