Film, Video, New Media, Animation, and Sound Festival (FVNMAS)
MAY 7–10, 2025
GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER
164 N. STATE ST.
MAY 7–10, 2025
GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER
164 N. STATE ST.
Let me welcome you to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2025 Film, Video, New Media, Animation, and Sound Festival featuring works by our graduating BFA and MFA students. Held annually each spring at the Gene Siskel Film Center, this showcase provides us with the chance to encounter the work of more than forty young artists across a wide range of moving-image and sonic genres, forms, and practices. Like their peers exhibiting in the Undergraduate and Graduate gallery shows, these students are engaged in a rite of passage that marks their official entry into the arena of public presentation as well as the opportunity to share their visions with an audience of friends, family members, fellow students, faculty and staff, and the general public.
Programmed by Amy Beste, FVNMA’s Director of Public Programs and curator of the screening series Conversations at the Edge, the four-day festival brings to the big screen some fifty works that represent a wide range of genres and practices: experimental media, intimate essays, rebellious animated shorts, and ambitious narrative and documentary films. We are proud to celebrate these diverse voices at the heart of our community.
I am deeply grateful to Amy Beste; Emily Eddy, our festival producer; Trevor Martin and the Department of Exhibitions; Rebecca Fons, Emily Long, Michael Wawzenek, Jack Richardson, Brennan McMahon and the entire staff at the Gene Siskel Film Center; Dan Holmes, Cameron Worden, Debs Akinlade, and the FVNMA technical staff; Graduate Assistants Lucas Gómez-Doyle and Hailey Tomanicek; all the faculty members who have worked diligently with our students over the past years; and, above all, the participating artists for their hard work and inspiring vision.
Given the ubiquity of screens in contemporary culture, there will be a multitude of destinations for the works shown in these programs. Some of them will soon be festival bound or will encounter audiences in galleries or emerge online; others will form the basis for more ambitious projects; and all of them will serve to showcase the creativity, perseverance, and commitment of these young artists.
So please join us in congratulating this remarkable group of students as they celebrate the completion of SAIC’s demanding fine arts degree programs and begin the next chapters of their lives and careers.
Bruce Jenkins, Chair
Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
RESERVE YOUR TICKETS:
The FVNMAS Festival is free and open to the public.
Please click HERE to reserve your ticket!
conscious | unconscious, Fiona Nellist, 2 min
It’s Just A Fucking Opening (work in progress), josh brainin, 18 min
And Then There Were Two, Olivia Moy, 11 min
Bootstrapping for the Boobied, Stella Chen, 15 min
Homeless Part 2, Gabriel Cyr, 3 min
The Lost Page, Xinyi Mo, 22 min
Cormorant Moon, Drew Foresta, 3:45 min
Take Off The Blindfold, Adjust Your Eyes, Look In The Mirror, See The Face Of Your Mother, Jonni Pepper-GoLions, 90 min
Jellyfish’s Adventure (work in progress), Xinyi Liu, 10 min
One Shot Is All It Takes, A. Piriyapokanon, 27 min
Empty, Hesam Salehbeig, 30 min
I-I, TongZ, 3 min
La Isla está viva, Ciara Castillo, 6:22 min
Finding Alexander, Peter Chen, 12 min
The End (work in progress), Kori H. Arquette, 6 min
Dance Piece, Cyrus Snow Spurlock, 4:40 min
Grey Sheep, Yaz, 3:25
Mehendi (work in progress), Sharada Venkateswaran, 6 min
PIOVRA, Mirabella Marshall, 7 min
Where Rivers Part, Linlin Deng, 13 min
Starlight (work in progress), Vanya Vellore, 8:06 min
The Invincible Inkanto (Intro Sequence), Owen Hechtman, 2:55 min
Rise of the Book Biters, Nadeige Fontaine, 5:13 min
Anonymouse, Ashley Husain, 5:35 min
Hunters and Runners, Tara V., 8:34 min
Mental Involution, Mingxu Zhang, 18 min
Space Rabbit, Orion Hunter, 4:04 min
The Rage Monsters Movie, Mary De Jesus Rodriguez, 11 min
AMALGAM, Zaydien Biddinger, 3 min
The Dollar Menu Do-Gooders, Michael Nelken, 12 min
La Strega, Kate Snider, 4 min
Paranormia, Lio Barnhardt, 6:56 min
Punisher, Chris Noon, 22 min
Scythian Lamb, Eva Erickson, 6:30 min
Reciprocate, Jule Gagne, 6:30 min
Moss Head, Holden Parker, 10:49 min
Labyrinth, Yuka Miwa, 7 min
Hualou Zone (花楼区) (work in progress), Yujian Wang, 51 min
100% AUTHENTIC BOOTLEG, Omnia Sol, 60 min
Conservation Conversations, Eli Smith, 6 min
At This Point in Time, Greta Zumbrunnen, 15 min
For the Sake of: The Sheep, Tolu Adeniji, 47 min
My Father’s House, Ally Broderick, 8 min
Where Am I?, Jejoon Park, 6 min
The Projects’, Kevin Banks, 8 min
Cheers to Youth, “kidult” (Orpheus), Biana Janice Alexandre, 14:45 min
Self Portrait, Emilia Jasinski O’Rourke, 12 min
Sold, Corinna Kloth, 15 min
What I Meant to Say, streetboymikey, 40 min
Lupatia, Sam Emmite, 14:30 min
18th Birthday Celebration, Xixuan Han, 22 min
Seer, Braxton Hay, 9 min
The Little World, Yoon Shin, 12:38 min
153 Days Apart, Dylan Pollock, 14:30 min