Sunday, October 12, 5:00 p.m. | Since the first Celluloid Now in 2022, we’ve seen an explosion of activity around analog cinema among young filmmakers. While it has been heartening to see new artists embrace film on an international scale, we’re especially excited that in recent years, Chicago has quietly fostered a sizable and immensely talented pool of analog filmmakers. For this edition of Celluloid Now, we’re closing with a selection of works made by filmmakers we’re claiming for the city of Chicago, all of whom are under 40 years of age. Some filmmakers featured here will be screening their work publicly on film for the very first time. Others have already built impressive analog corpuses and screened in multiple Celluloid Now programs. (Chicago Film Society has also hosted recent “Celluloid Now Presents” solo programs for Kioto Aoki and Sara Sowell.) The artists in this program come from a diverse set of backgrounds and artistic traditions, and the array of technical and creative approaches they take speaks to just how flexible the medium of film is. As evidenced by Julian Antos’s GD2, photochemical A-and-B-roll traditionalism is still very much alive, but the recent popularity of affordable “direct positive” digital-to-film printing has made possible work like josh brainin’s Shed, which condenses an unnerving accretion of selfies, surgery photos, and phone conversations into a dissonant soup of abstract analog and digital textures. Eschewing commercial labwork altogether, Tristen Ives opted to process the exhibition print for cloud film themself, a decision which contributes significantly to the film’s unique look. Other films here feature DIY computer graphics, optically printed effects work, and simultaneous 16mm and 35mm projection. These examples only hint at the litany of creative approaches taken by the artists in this program, whose collective work has made Chicago our favorite city for film in the entire world.
Program
Mounds Above the Earth (Jiayi Chen, 2025, 7 min.) - 16mm/35mm
Green Today [fragment] (Cameron Worden, 2025, 3 min.) - 35mm
Shed (josh brainin, 2024, 7 min.) - 35mm
Olympic Order (Kioto Aoki, 2025, 15 min.) - 16mm
Camera Roll 3 (2018-2022) (Charles Cadkin, 2023, 3 min.) - 16mm
Color Negative (Sara Sowell, 2023, 6 min.) - 16mm
Paloniya (Ashley Dequilla, 2024, 3 min.) - 16mm
Guarita (Lua Borges, 2025, 3 min.) - 16mm
Home without organs (Yao Song & Zihan Mo, 2025, 2 min.) - 16mm
cloud film (Tristen Ives, 2024, 11 min.) - 16mm
GD2 (Julian Antos, 2021, 11 min.) - 16mm
Giddy Up Cowboy (Justin Dean, 2024, 2 min.) - 16mm
Celluloid Now | October 10–12, 2025
The Chicago Film Society (CFS) is proud to welcome you to the third edition of Celluloid Now: four days of screenings, workshops, and other events showcasing the work of analog filmmakers and artists, alongside archival rediscoveries and restorations. Join CFS at the Gene Siskel Film Center for a special, jumbo-sized program of 35mm shorts, featuring brand new prints and other surprises! Learn more at celluloidnow.org. Synopses courtesy of Chicago Film Society.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu