Image Description: A still image from the film Augmented by AgX member Raymond Rea
Join the AgX Film Collective during Waltham Open Studios for an after hours screening program of recent works by AgX members, including works on 16mm and video, followed by a conversation with the filmmakers.
Works by Colin V. Barton, David Bendiksen, Sarah Bliss, Alison Folland, Stefan Grabowski, Brittany Gravely, Abhi Indrekar, Kyle Joseph Petty, Raymond Rea, Ian Sexton, and Douglas Urbank.
Doors open at 6:30pm, program starts at 7:00pm
Attendance is free with a suggested sliding scale $5 - $20 donation to support our ongoing work at AgX as an artist-run film lab and collective for moving image artists in the Boston area. Donations can be made in cash, check, or online. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.
PROGRAM:
Mist, Brittany Gravely, 2025, 16mm, silent, b&w, 4:30
A phenomenon captured in the park, days after the death of a friend.
Brittany Gravely has focused on making 16mm experimental films for the past several years, but also creates art in many other media. Currently, she makes expanded and non-expanded cinema projects of a more mystical nature in Magical Approach with artist Ken Linehan. Recently, their films screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Artifact, Fracto, Crossroads, Chicago Underground and Antimatter, among others. She also works as the publicist and designer for the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, MA, curates short film programs and is a founding member of the artist-run film lab AgX.
Augmented, Raymond Rea, 2025, 16mm to digital, sound, color, English, 8:27
Augmented follows a conversation I had with friend and Transmale author, Maz Valerio looking at the terms Correction, Augmentation, Alignment to talk about the connections between medical augmentation and Transgender alignment. We may be scary because we're the future.
Raymond Rea is a filmmaker and playwright. His short films, made under Density Over Duration, have exhibited widely in experimental venues & microcinemas, non-fiction spaces and festivals as well as on the LGBTQ+ film festival circuit. His writing for stage has been produced at the EXIT Theatre in San Francisco (EXIT Stage Left and the EXIT Cafe) and by Theatre B (Minnesota). Ray's work often challenges assumptions, hints at theatricality, and uses a raw LoFi aesthetic to address complexities. His works are distributed by Canyon Cinema.
ZigZag, Douglas Urbank, 2022, 16mm, sound, color, 7:35
An arrangement of images in 16mm film, mostly from found footage, reshaped to create a graphic score, a curtain drawn and opened, an image concealed and revealed, a new rhythm imposed over an opposing motion.
Douglas Urbank, based in Boston, Massachusetts, is an artist with a background in sculpture and drawing who began to experiment with filmmaking in 2008. His short films have screened in festivals and curated programs, including nationally. at Revolutions Per Minute Festival, Boston, Massachusetts; Microscope Gallery and Millennium Film Workshop in New York; San Francisco Cinematheque’s Crossroads Film Festival; Moviate Underground Film Festival, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Chicago Underground Film Festival; Engauge Experimental Film Festival, Seattle, Washington; and internationally at Mire Lab’s PRISME festival, Nantes, France; and curated programs including, Zumzeig Cinema, Barcelona; Laboratorio Experimental de Cine program, Mexico City; Artist Film Workshop, Melbourne, Australia; and others. He is a founding member of the AgX Film Collective.
As I Belong to My Life, Sarah Bliss, 2025, 16mm to digital, sound, b&w, English, 4:10
Part of a series of work exploring the ways older bodies and psyches engage eros, gender, creativity, sexuality and desire. How do we navigate and grow from the loss of power, ability, vitality, and each other? In a culture in which aging bodies are assumed to be sexless and considered neutered, what does it look and feel like to reclaim our erotic power?
Sarah Bliss is a filmmaker, artist, curator, educator and Buddhist practitioner working artisanally with hand-processed film and with video to make experimental and documentary films that engage personal and social history. She utilizes an experimental ethnography to investigate desire, time, memory, place and to facilitate presence and attunement with the sensate body. Her work is screened internationally at museums, galleries and film festivals including the Ann Arbor Film Festival; Edinburgh International Film Festival; Antimatter; ARKIPEL Jakarta; Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; Fracto Film Encounter Berlin; and Anthology Film Archives.
People in Pain, Colin Barton, 2012, 16mm, optical sound, color, English, 10:00
A passage of pain resonates the cries for help only answered by death, explored through stages of suffering and release. Give a hand to the people in pain.
Colin V. Barton works with a fascination for classic film visual effects, optical printing, projection, and structuralist Avant Garde Experimental Film and Animation.
KNACKERED, Kyle J. Petty, 2025, digital, sound, color, English, 5:28
Undermining the orderly violence of action cinema, found footage of a bare-knuckle boxing match between two Irish Travellers is rendered sterile by removing all physical contact between the fighters. Spacial-temporal synergy is further deconstructed by re-ordering the leftover fragments using a random number generator. The result is simultaneously void of violence and brimming with it; lumbering bodies locked in a dance of masculinity forever unconsummated. Why are we fighting? Even the men can't explain.
Kyle J. Petty is a visual artist working in film, video, photography, and collage. His film work has screened internationally at Visions du Réel, Barents Ecology Film Festival, and Antimatter Media + Art. Kyle grew up in the Merrimack Valley of New Hampshire, earned a BA from Chester College of New England, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He is a member of AgX Film Collective and teaches film production at Montserrat College of Art, Anna Maria College, and Tufts University. Kyle lives in Medford, Massachusetts.
UTOPOS, David Bendiksen, 2024, hand-processed 16mm to digital, sound, b&w, 5:33
A night in the shadow-land of UTOPOS.
David Bendiksen is a filmmaker, scholar, and teacher who believes in the expressive use of equipment, ideas, materials, and processes. In an era of ever-increasing digital dominance, his creative work emphasizes sustainability through the rich chemical, optical, and mechanical aspects of analog filmmaking. As an interdisciplinary scholar and instructor, David believes in bridging the analog and digital divide in order to equip a new generation of students with the fullest possible set of creative tools to achieve their vision. David has taught over a dozen different film-related courses across Film Studies, Comparative Literature, CHFA, and French at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Emerson College.
Song of Ascent, Alison Folland, 2025, 16mm to digital, sound, b&w, English, 4:25
Peering over the railing of a ferry boat, I feel I am looking down and up at the same time. What is more terrifying, the possibility of drowning or being sucked into the sky?
Alison Folland is a filmmaker and performer based in Somerville, MA. Her short hybrid films engage questions of affect and truth-value and are directly informed by her work as an actor in the commercial film industry. Alison studied physical theater at the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU/Tisch and film/video art at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her films have been screened at festivals such as Athens International Film and Video Festival (Ohio), Athens International Film Festival (Greece), Antimatter (Victoria, BC), and Winnipeg Underground Film Festival. As a performer, Alison has worked with directors such as Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, Barbet Schroeder, and David O. Russell. She is a member of AgX Film Collective and teaches 16mm filmmaking at Emerson College.
Untitled, Stefan Grabowski, 2025, 16mm and Super 8 to digital, sound, color, 5:02
Stefan Grabowski is a founding member of the AgX Film Collective and programmer of the Balagan Film Series since 2011.
M.H.F.C, Ian Sexton, work-in-progress, digital, sound, color, English, 11:00
It’s like falling out of a burning tree, hitting every branch on the way down; you breathe in the acrid smoke until your body finally misses the ground and tumbles off a cliff into an icy mountain stream that sucks the remaining breath from your chest, grinding you along the polished river stones until you come to… swept out to sea, alone in the middle of the ocean… and as you slowly sink, deeper and deeper into the inky blackness, the pressure builds until you truly can no longer breathe. So instead, I just say, “Doing good!”
Ian Sexton is a faculty member in the Digital Media program at UMass Lowell.
I Am Grass, Abhi Indrekar, 2025, digital, sound, color, Hindi, Bhantu (Tribal Dialect) and English with English subtitles, 21:11
“I am grass” links street theatre to street protest, witnesses police violence against one people duplicating itself across cultures and geography. It sees resistance persisting in traditional artistic livelihoods at the same time that adaptations of traditions create something new.
Abhi Indrekar is an award winning independent documentary filmmaker and editor raised in the traditions of street theatre activism and community-based art in India. He is a recipient of the prestigious Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship 2024-2025. Born into one of India’s “Denotified and Nomadic Tribes” or “DNT” communities, Abhi identifies as a twice-colonized person — first by the label of inborn criminality applied by the British at the height of their colonial power, and second by the ongoing stigma wielded by a mainstream Indian society still ruled by caste and class hierarchy. Drawing from his upbringing in political street theater, Abhi sees cinema as an important ground for an ever-evolving decolonizing practice. Abhi has over a decade’s experience in documentary editing with some of India’s most respected and daring socio-political filmmakers, including Anand Patwardhan, Dakxin Chhara and Nakul Singh Sawhney. He has worked on documentary and fiction films. Since coming to the US, Abhi’s credits have included Trevor Noah’s Turning Point series for MSNBC and Peacock TV, the World Channel at GBH Boston and PBS, Untold: Netflix, Black Voters Matter documentary among other independent documentary projects.
PLEASE NOTE:
Masks are encouraged at this event to help protect the most vulnerable among our community. If you are hoping to attend but feel that you need a specific accommodation of any sort, please do not hesitate to reach out to hi[at]agxfilm.org.