RPM Fest Presents: Between Breaths, Films by Kalpana Subramanian

Name: RPM Fest Presents: Between Breaths, Films by Kalpana Subramanian
Start: 2026-02-22T16:00:00-05:00
Location: Brattle Theatre

Schedule

Sun, 22 Feb, 2026 at 04:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Brattle Theatre | Cambridge, MA

Post Screening Q&A
with Kalpana Subramanian and Shira Segal
Join us at the Brattle Theatre for a special screening of works, Between Breaths, Films by Kalpana Subramanian - an artist-filmmaker, scholar of experimental film and media and Assistant Professor at the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Her current research investigates the poetics of breath in experimental film using a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach. Her work has been supported by grants including a Humanities Institute Advanced PhD Fellowship (University at Buffalo, 2022-23), the UK Environmental Film Fellowship (2006) and the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship (University of Colorado Boulder, 2015-16). Her films have been presented at venues including the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Interfilm Berlin, National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai, India), UNESCO (France), Antimatter Media Arts (Canada), Asia Society, Union Docs and Flaherty NYC Seminar (USA) among others. She has received awards for her films at the Documentary Festival of History and Archeology (Perugia, Italy, 2015), Montana CINE International Film Festival (2003, 2005) and CMS Vatavaran (2008). Her curated film programs have been screened at the Alternative cinema series (Colgate University, USA), Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (UK) and Simon Fraser University (Canada) among others.
Kalpana Subramanian
The Maze of Lanes (2002)
6’12, Col, Sound
Incantation (2021)
8’38, Col, Sound
woolgathering (2020)
3’10, Col, Sound
Tattva (2018)
4’34, Col, Sound
Light Mediated Series
Liquid is Light (2016)
8mm transferred to Digital, 4:02, sound, B&W
Empyrean (2016)
HD, filming of 16 and 35 mm projections, 6:20 min, silent, color
Light Rooms (2016)
HD filming of digital and 16 mm and 35 mm projections, 1:45 min, silent, color
Prismatic Resonance (2016)
HD, 12:46 min, sound, color
A Dialogue of Dissonance (2016)
HD filming of 16mm projection, 6:23 min, Sound, Color
Strange Duet (2026)
5 min, Digital, sound, color

Shira Segal has designed and taught a wide range of film history, theory, and criticism courses, with a focus on avant-garde and documentary. As the former director of Film Studies at UAlbany, she oversaw curriculum redesign initiatives and served as co-chair to the Experimental Film and Media scholarly interest group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).
She received her PhD in Film and Media from Indiana University. Her dissertation "Home Movies and Home Birth: The Avant-garde Childbirth Film and Pregnancy in New Media" includes filmmaker interviews and research with the James Stanley Brakhage Collection, housed by the Archives at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. Her MA in Cultural Memory from the University of London focused on Hollis Frampton.