Letters Festival presents [Video Nights]: What Remains in View

More about the event

[Video Nights] debuts with a screening program of short experimental films by McLean Fahnestock, Jonathan Rattner, and Masha Vlasova, exploring landscape and eco-critical perspectives. Artists will be in attendance. Q+A with the audience after the screening.

More about the artists

Jonathan Rattner is an artist and filmmaker who primarily producesexperimental nonfiction films and videos. He holds an M.F.A in Film and VideoProduction from the University of Iowa, an M.F.A. in Intermedia Art from theUniversity of Iowa, and a B.F.A. in Film and Television from Tisch School forthe Arts, N.Y.U.He has exhibited work in galleries, microcinemas, festivals,and universities internationally.Rattner holds the position of AssociateProfessor of Cinema & Media Arts and Art at Vanderbilt University in Nashville,Tennessee.

Masha Vlasova is an experimental and non-fiction filmmaker. She has exhibited andscreened her films at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival,Ottawa International Animation Festival, London Short Film Festival, Smack Mellon,Anthology Archives, Abrons Arts Center, the Border Project Gallery in New York City,Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at HarvardUniversity, among others. Her experimental animation “Un-Tidal” was awarded“Original Concept” and “Best Celluloid Film” at Experimental Film Festival of EastAnglia, UK. Her films "Midsummer" and “Motion Animal” received HonorableMentions at the Thomas Edison Film Festival. Her documentary short "Her Type" washonored with the Audience Choice Award at Burnt Video Art and Experimental FilmFestival. Vlasova attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2024), sheholds an MFA from Yale School of Art (2026) and a BFA from Cooper Union (2012).She's a Fulbright Fellow and a MacDowell Fellow. Vlasova lives and works in Atlanta, GA, where she teaches filmmaking at OxfordCollege of Emory University.

McLean Fahnestock is a Nashville based interdisciplinary artist who works who workswith desire in the manufactured landscape and its violent consequences. Thegrandchild of an explorer, McLean Fahnestock questions how desire shapes ourrelationship with the land, manipulates our perception and judgement, and can manifestin conflict, violence, and ownership. Her practice is primarily in video and other forms ofnew and digital media, animation, installation, and sculpture, most often engaging inappropriation and collage strategies integrating forms of digital capture, presentation,and creation with embodied layering and sculptural containers for media. Her work hasbeen exhibited and screened across the United States and Internationally at institutionssuch as the Aurora Picture Show and Menil Collection (Houston), Frist Art Museum(Nashville), Black Mountain College Re{Happening} (North Carolina), TechnischesMuseum Wien, (Vienna, Austria), The California Science Museum (Los Angeles), TheBritish Library (London), MOCA Hiroshima, (Japan), and Off the Screen at the 57th AnnArbor Film Festival. Her work has been supported by grants from the Puffin Foundation,Hoff Foundation, Durfee Foundation, South Arts, and Current Art Fund, a regionalregranting program of the Warhol Foundation. She has been an artist in residence atCerritos College, Vanderbilt University, The School of Making Thinking, Stove Works,Mineral House, and The Lock-Up. She has given lectures and gallery talks manyinstitutions including the University of Houston, University of Newcastle, and BlackMountain College Museum.

Event line up

The Desire for Birds Provokes the Desire for Stones, 2024, 6 minutes, McLean Fahnestock

wildfire and paperkites, 2026, 10 min, Jonathan Rattner

it razes that visual itch like, 2024-26, 5 min, Masha Vlasova

High Desert Blues,2026, 2 min, Masha Vlasova

Under, 2021, 4 min, McLean Fahnestock

Northward, 2026, 20 min, Jonathan Rattner