Category Archives: Screenings

We Don’t Decompose.

Music by Akira Sky

A short musical stop motion animation about sustainable solutions that could be applied to disposing of art materials such as acrylic paint and markers that typically end up in landfills.

ABOUT AKIRA:

Akira Sky is a versatile composer and artist whose work spans film, pop, and musical theater. She crafts emotionally resonant songs that reflect her ongoing interest in how music can deepen storytelling across mediums. Whether collaborating on visual narratives or writing for live performance, Akira is always exploring new ways for her music to come alive on screen.

Instagram: @akirasky_ 

This film was co-directed by Eliot Cho and Jinsung Park. Eliot Cho is a director and cinematographer, and he is studying film and television at Tisch. Jinsung Park is a director and writer, and he is studying dramatic writing at Tisch. This is Eliot and Jinsung’s third project together, but their first time co-directing with each other. 

A collage of archival and original footage, When the Fire Dies tells the story of humanity’s rise and fall. 

Noah Lazar Abraham is an 18 year old artist and storyteller studying Film & Television at New York University. He is an alumni of the LaGuardia High School, the school that inspired the show Fame. There he specialized in technical theater with a focus on costumes and puppetry. 

We Don’t Decompose.

A short musical stop motion animation about sustainable solutions that could be applied to disposing of art materials such as acrylic paint and markers that typically end up in landfills.

Julia is currently studying Cinema Studies and Urban Design and Architecture at Tisch School of The Arts. She is dedicated to filmmaking, production design and visual collage projects that represent Brazilian stories, intersectional womanhood, the feeling of double-conciousness in immigration as a third culture kid and sustainability. She is passionate about capturing stories through materials, textures, patterns, and powerful imagery onscreen. This film was an experimentation, in collaboration with the talented Akira Sky, that brought music, collage and stop motion together. 

Portfolio/Filmography Instagram: @julia_andrade_roz

Personal Instagram: @juuu.andrade.roz 

Julia’s Portfolio Website

Thwaites Glacier, often referred to as “the doomsday glacier”, is melting faster and faster every year. What that means for us and our planet lies in the ice, with ground breaking technology helping to decode what the future of Thwaites looks like.

Aleka Agre is a Motion Designer and Illustrator. She’s a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is currently working full-time as the Lead Animator at Mess Kit Inc.

Connect: Instagram, alekaagre.com

Return to Sender is a quiet short following a lone narrator as she tries to maintain some sense of normalcy whilst reaching a loved one in a climate-devastated world. The film reinforces the crucial message that all hope is completely irrational; and yet still staunchly necessary. Despite the world crumbling, human beings will always try to do what they have always already done; reach out to each other even when there is no logical path forward; because it is the only way we know how to live.

The film was written, directed, and edited by Kiran Arain, a rising senior in the Collaborative Arts program at NYU Tisch. Her work for this  film aims to focus on the intersection of personal memory, climate anxiety, and the irrational ways we cope with grief and loss. She enjoys experimenting with new methods of storytelling and using her multi-media art skills to create unique and interesting projects at NYU.

This film was shot on a Sony A6700 with no additional hardware or software. It was edited and color graded in Adobe Premiere Pro, and scored with Ableton. 

ZEFU CHEN

A DIAMOND THAT CUTS THROUGH ILLUSION

The Alchemy of Saving the Planet

An experimental travelogue coalescing contemporary spiritual malaise with climate anxiety, “A Diamond That Cuts Through Illusions” is filmed entirely on expired Super 8mm and 16mm film in the Elysian villages at the foot of the mythical Namchabarwa Peak in Eastern Tibet. The manifesto film traces its genesis in the revered Diamond Sutra, diagnosing the illusory solastagia (the grief from one experiencing an environmental crisis) of our time with ancient Buddhist wisdom. As the film’s author wander through the diamantine landscape in search of a ecological nirvana, the melancholic decay of the expired celluloid metaphorically paints by the frame a paradisiacal world besieged by Anthropocene destruction. The camera becomes a prophetic whisperer of our planet’s stoic threnody, transmitting its mighty powers and beauty with existential awe. Through this short cinepoem, the author experiments with his aesthetic and social theory of symbio-poeisis, which posits that the ecstasis of posthumanist freedom, the end goal of all sublimated art, will be at the instant of the full integration of man into Earth.

Instagram @zefustudios

ZEFU (b. 2003, Canton) is a filmmaker, poet, and transdisciplinary artist based in New York working across all avant-garde media. Incubator of the meta-poiesis of a transhuman self, his mytho-autobiographical work aims to induce the state of ecstatis through generative enstatis. Adhering to the etymology of “poetry” as “to make, to create,” his often scientific-fantastical worlds are deeply informed by studies of antiquity, esotericism, existentialism, and posthumanist theory, while remaining faithful to his artistic roots in surrealism and mysticism. Centering his artistic nucleus in the power of the ancient poet equipped with modern technologies, his immaterial narratives aim to delineate an individual portal to a collective higher consciousness unbounded by historical spacetime. 

Zefu’s motto is that life is greater than art. He is currently completing his BFA at New York University in avant-garde cinema with a concentration in philosophy. His next major project, SØMÄLGEBRA (the body’s algebra) is in the pre-production stage. The film will explore humanity’s future potentiality in transcending beyond the physical-temporal plane through the Ancient Greek myth of Narcissus retold with the knowledge of 20-century quantum mechanics. He is looking forward to collaborating with scientists, artists, and producers on the exciting project. 

Andrea comes home to find something mysterious lurking around her house; she desperately searches for help but all help disappears. She tries to run from the unfamiliar figure but realizes the figure is all too familiar.

Evan Pan is a director, producer and editor. He is a Gallatin student studying film and business with a concentration in “Selling the Narrative.” When he isn’t playing Fifa, you will find him sleeping for long long hours, more so than any other human could sleep. Either way, he is a homebody with a tight knit group of friends and a small 6-month-old puppy named Bolt (yes, like the movie).  IG  LI

https://wp.nyu.edu/ICCS/

Descent follows the story of Jasmine Robinson, a young college student in the midst of finals. The film explores how the stress of finals along with pressure from her family and other problems in her personal life leads her on a descent towards self-destruction. The ending is purposefully left ambiguous as this is not supposed to be a strictly narrative piece, it is intended to open dialogue and inspire self reflection.

The filmmaker, N’ya Clarke, is currently at student at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She enjoys creating content that spans multiple mediums and plans to pursue a career in screenwriting.

This film was shot on an iPhone 6s with no additional hardware or software. It was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro and the music comes from rapper XXXTENTACION.

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