Picture Lock Shorts
This program is a collection of short films made over the course of a single calendar year in the Film/Video Studio.
Film/Theater
Picture Lock Shorts features an array of short films that were each completed in 2024 during a Film/Video Studio residency. The grouping explores narrative and documentary film conventions and embraces the rich gray area between what is real and what is created. Seen together, the shorts connect through examinations of love, community, family, and memory, and their representations in film form. (program approx. 88 mins., DCP)
Program lineup
Myself When I Am Real (Angeline Gragasin, 2024)
Set in the year 2000, a single mother and her teenage daughter struggle to make friends and find belonging at a Filipino Christmas party in suburban Wisconsin. Filmed on MiniDV tape in the style of a home movie, this award-winning short film explores memory, identity, and assimilation from the contrasting perspectives of childhood and adulthood. In English and Tagalog with English subtitles. (18 mins., DCP)
Supported by a 2023 Film/Video Studio residency.
Wouldn’t Make It Any Other Way (Hao Zhou, 2024)
In this award-winning documentary short, a queer costume designer living in Iowa returns to their island hometown in Guam to make costumes for a children's theater performance and reconnect with distanced parents. In English with English subtitles. (21 mins., DCP)
Supported by a 2024 Film/Video Studio residency.
Heart Shaped (Grace Mitchell and Sofia Theodore-Pierce, 2024)
An experimental narrative that uses improvisation and collaboration to explore long-distance intimacy and the boundaries between self and stranger, Heart Shaped follows the transient lives of seven guests staying in a themed hotel in Wisconsin. Letters between the two filmmakers explore blurred identity and the eroticism of collaboration. (13 mins., DCP)
Supported by a 2024 Film/Video Studio residency.
Revolver Magic Wand (Cherry Nin, 2024)
Set in a dystopic, urban environment, Revolver Magic Wand follows a prostitute named Haunted who is troubled by the murder of her girlfriend. Though physically alive, Haunted drifts through life like a ghost and seems trapped in a fragmented world. Meanwhile, her client John, growing increasingly paranoid that he is being watched, digs himself deep into a hole in his backyard. (24 mins., DCP)
Supported by a 2024 Film/Video Studio residency.