VIDEO

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Welcome to the Featured Film page for Bridge Video. Click a featured film to read more & view the trailer. New all-original films, exclusively available on Bridge Video are posted here weekly on Fridays Aug-Dec & Feb-June. Click here to subscribe & view our entire collection of under-represented categories of film and video.

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "McGunner05” (May 10-16)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "McGunner05” (May 10-16)

In 'MCGUNNER05' (2022), footage of Saddam Hussein’s US occupied palace is documented by McGunner05, a US soldier.

A documentary video, played side by side on screen, creates a gutter of "doubling" or "afblau". Through the facade of paired videos, an outward appearance emerges that reveals a less pleasant reality.

-------------------------------------------

"While in letting things say themselves, we rest in them, while we let things say themselves….and while yet even in the establishing of facts we meet with a doubling which to some extent arises from the things themselves, in the process of intending we go from ourselves toward things. We do not thereby have a dead image of something, but we are dealing, with a living movement toward what is intended (see PG 107; PI-455-6; PG 98; PG109)."

-Brand, Gerd, The Essential Wittgenstein (Basic Books, Inc.), 24.

Read More
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “‘Popular Thought” (May 10-16)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “‘Popular Thought” (May 10-16)

“Popular Thought” by Teri Yarbrow. A powerful experimental short examining the danger of religious politics, over-zealous religiousness, and religious bigotry, finding a link between the tactics of Hitler’s Germany and Ronald Reagan’s America. Repeated quotes from Jerry Falwell refer to American Christians as an “army.” Footage of an Ohio parade featuring a “Let’s Bring America Back to God” banner is shown under audio of a modified version of the American pledge of allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the savior who saves all. One savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.”

Read More
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Heavy Focus” (May 3-9)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Heavy Focus” (May 3-9)

Heavy Focus weaves together ideas of tactility, visibility and the body, and the material conditions of image-making. In this single-channel video, disembodied hands carefully collage and layer physical photographic prints, while other images are manipulated within a digital workspace. Drawing from a wide variety of idiosyncratic sources including architectural theory, vintage beauty tutorials, phenomenology, archaeological studies of Venus figurines, stock images and the artist’s own photographic archives, Heavy Focus explores seeing as a sensory, tactile act that plays out both tenderly and forcefully upon the body.

Read More
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Experiment 752” (April 26-May 2)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Experiment 752” (April 26-May 2)

I take control of my sublime experience from outside abstract control into my own hands. The outer control is religion, state, and government. for centuries external forces controlled what is forbidden and what was allowed, thus controlling my consciousness – what I think, enjoy, and what makes me feel awe or spiritually elevated. To develop into the state of post-human, I need to shed the old restrictive skin of current thinking. The object I am trying to control, the lost ship of my mind is in its own entity.

Read More
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Silence is Deathly Painful” (April 19-25)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Silence is Deathly Painful” (April 19-25)

The audio used in this work comes from an archive of recordings that were conducted by a computer program. This program listened to talk radio broadcasts across the United States from 2019-2022 and recorded what happened before, during, and after moments of silence that occurred on these broadcasts. This software generated an archive of recordings that captured the voices and ideologies of broadcasters commentating on events that happened throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read More
THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Festival De Mujeres” (April 19-25)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S IMAGE UNION FEATURE: “Festival De Mujeres” (April 19-25)

“Festival De Mujeres,” June 30, 1979, by Eleanor Boyer and Karen Peugh. Color video. Documentary about a women’s festival in Chicago’s predominantly Latinx Pilsen neighborhood. Salima Rivera reads several of her poems, one is an ode to Pilsen, another dedicated to women searching for their sons after the Allende government in Chile was overthrown.

Read More
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Frustum Culling” (April 12-18)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Frustum Culling” (April 12-18)

A scrolling maze on shifting ground.

Conceived as a performable webpage, Frustum Culling is a prose poem of text and sound, animation and HTML. It is a guided tour through a vessel populated by ghoulish characters, each surveilling and seeking: others, objects, assets. Reflecting upon architecture, labour, and gaming vernacular, the work extrapolates the present, suggesting a coming absurd predicament.

Read More
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "White Noise” (March 22-28)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "White Noise” (March 22-28)

“White Noise” is an abstraction of the social and political concerns currently reverberating throughout the United States. A video that travels through an anonymous American landscape is juxtaposed with the increasingly chaotic sounds of newscasts and punditry. The banal time and space of everyday life take on an ominous atmosphere as the radio gives voice to a stream of issues pulling at our social fabric, while the image of the landscape fragments and falls out of sync with itself, transforming what was once familiar into a threatening experience.

Read More
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Lick Fire” (March 8-14)
Michael Workman Michael Workman

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED FILM PREMIERE: "Lick Fire” (March 8-14)

Through intimate reflections, Lick Fire delves into the ecstasy and turmoil that spring forth from the limitless realm of imagination, while fearlessly contemplating the impending consequences of artificial intelligence in breathing life into these captivating and unreal realms.

Read More

Only the most recent month of Featured Films is available here. Please click below to create a free account & access our general archives of film and videos, Bridge magazine, & online Listening Room, both also updated weekly, and more.