Threading Images: Films & Expanded Cinema Performance with Christina Nguyen

Join us for a program of short films by Chicago-based educator, filmmaker, and expanded cinema artist Christina Nguyen. In Nguyen’s work, analog film systems and cinematic processes become sites of play and experimentation where sound/image, celluloid/digital, and machinic/handwork push boundaries and open new spaces for form and experience. Across a range of works, images emerge from color fields, sounds are found in unexpected places, and meaning is encoded between frames so that minor gestures become expansive possibilities. Presented on 16mm film prints (as well as digital transfers), the program spans over a decade of Nguyen’s practice and culminates in a recently developed, live 16mm three-projector performance.

Works screened:

• In the Middle of a Heartache (16mm, sound, 2014), 1 min
• Infinite Blue (16mm, silent, 2015), 6 min
• Parallel Inquiries (16mm, sound, 2016), 10 min
• Film for Optical Sound no 1 (digital, sound, 2016), 2 min
• You Don’t Own Me (digital, sound, 2015), 6 min
• Phytochrome (16mm to digital, sound, 2025) 7 min
• NO IMAGE FIELD (3x 16mm, sound, 2025 WIP) 10 min projector performance
  

Runtime: ~45 mins

Please note: Some films in this program have sequences with imagery and sustained flashing lights.

Screening and performance followed by a conversation with the filmmaker.

Christina C Nguyen (she/her) spends time in the realms of experimental film and projector performance, fascinated by the periphery of human perception and experience. Her interest in systems results in the use of specific forms and structures to interface between the digital and analog mediums. She works with alternative analog processes, including hand developing with a focus on more ecologically sustainable practices. Christina teaches at Northwestern University in the Radio/Television/Film department and believes that with a little guidance and support, anyone can make films.

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Host or Publisher The Block Museum of Art