Across the theatrical screens of Ithaca College’s Park School Auditorium, Cornell University Cinema and Cinemapolis, audiences were exposed to filmmaking visionaries from across the world.
The Ithaca Experimental Film Festival was hosted at these locations, and with it came a stacked lineup of filmmakers ranging from students to veteran directors that had their work showcased from Feb. 28th to March 2.
The Ithaca Experimental Film Festival is an annual event that was held for the first time last year. Experimental film is a style of filmmaking where non-traditional methods of film production are used in order to provide a more artistic, evocative meaning to the film. This could be using abstract images on screen to depict a message or characters that would be seen as confusing for typical movie trends.
Brothers Phil and Timmy Linnik are local filmmakers around Ithaca who attended the second block of the festival at Cinemapolis. This was their first experience with the festival and they said how they found it inspirational toward their own work.
“Every single film brought up a lot of feelings, and I think it’s really awesome even though you may not understand what you’re watching,” Phil Linnik said. “I think that as long as you make the audience feel something, you’ve already won. That’s all that matters.”
The festival started in the auditorium of Roy H. Park Hall, where it premiered the feature film “Your Final Meditation,” directed by Corey Hughes. The film is a hypnotic yet colorful depiction of escapism and, like the title suggests, therapy.
The short film “when i wake up tomorrow everything will be different [excerpt],” directed by Tynan DeLong, premiered alongside the feature. This film shows an intimate look into different people’s lives in both audio and visual found footage. DeLong’s footage consisted of a box of cassette tapes that he found on the street that depicted the recordings of an unknown stranger in different parts of his life.
But these films were just the tip of the iceberg for the festival, with each film boasting their own unique identity and form.
Founders of the festival Philip Thompson, Desirée Tolchin, and Aidan Cronin graduated from Ithaca College in 2021. They related their experiences as students at IC as why they decided to start the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival in 2023.
“After we graduated we got to festival our thesis films,” Thompson said. “It was a really great experience talking with artists who have been working on low budget films for a while. It really made things feel obtainable, since we were forming a space where people can just talk as artists and friends and form new relationships.”
Tolchin described her time as a student through the lens of someone who did not take courses relating to experimental film or genre.
“Seeing all of these different types of films … I didn’t get that opportunity in college,” Tolchin said. “The festival really tries to focus on this DIY type of filmmaking that I think is really important for younger people to see. To know that it is possible to make things that don’t cost much money.”
Last year, there were 247 submissions, with 17 short films and one feature film being screened at Cinemapolis and in the Park School Auditorium. This year, the festival had 565 submissions from over 54 countries, along with showing 35 short films and one feature film with the addition of Cornell Cinema.
“We were originally thinking that we would do two short blocks and a feature, but because of so many films, we decided to add another short block at Cornell Cinema,” Thompson said. “It’s really exciting to have the opportunity to show more stuff and bring more people to Ithaca.”
Senior Gracie DeGeorge, a cinema and photography major, submitted her short film this year. She said it was an amazing opportunity to have a chance to screen her film at a public festival.
“I lost my dad last semester, so the film was kind of me actively going through that experience,” DeGeorge said. “There’s a little bit of nervousness as well as excitement and a lot of love, because a lot of people get to see my dad in a different way. Sometimes in film, we don’t always see it in that extremely personal, upfront way.”
This year, there were over 133 student submissions, which was over double the amount of last year’s student submissions.
Sarah Lasley is a filmmaker and professor at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. She has been creating experimental films since she was in college at Yale University. She said this current period of history is an important time for experimental film to be publicly visible.
“As AI starts to funnel in and fill in some of these lower budget, Netflix categories like ‘Watch while you’re on your phone,’ content, we see more and more of this generic, baseline content,” Lasley said. “I think we’re going to be really hungry for things that are different than that.”
Lasley described experimental film as a style of filmmaking that is about artistic vision being executed in its purest form. She said it is proof that one does not need to follow conventional rules or modern trends in order to be successful.
The Ithaca Experimental Film Festival was founded to allow filmmakers to use film not for the purpose of making millions of dollars at a box office, but to portray art through its most evocative lens.
Lasley explained the possibilities of experimental film in relation to her students.
“Aim a little too high,” Lasley said. “Be a little too ambitious, maybe even audacious. I think that range of failure that’s right at the top of what you’re capable of is a really beautiful, vulnerable place. Push your own limits, try something that scares you, be vulnerable. That’s what’s really important.”
