arc

arc, an ongoing project by the filmmaker known as tooth (USA), has been a mainstay in the Bay Area experimental scene for many years. They run a free and open-to-the-public cinema (Black Hole Cinematheque), helped found a new lab (Black Hole Collective Film Lab) and a celluloid-only film festival (Light Field). They’re continuously shooting and making new work, often shown at packed venues at various in-the-know, small, experimental theatres. Favouring analogue-only screenings, their work is often performance-based expanded cinema and single screen 16mm films, where they run layered multiple 16mm projectors, and create a live accompanying score through various instruments and feedback. Their work encourages trance-like meditative spectatorship that relies heavily on the sensation of light reflecting in a darkened room full of vibrating tones.

Filmography

(all short) no translation (2009-2015), year of the rabbit (2011), moyah pravda newsreel (2011), january coda (2012), protection ritual (2012), palms (2012), every second has been dreamed of many times before (2013), a turn in air, an impossibility (2013)
(sans)(image) (2014), the arc of the sun (2012), the sea the other day or so it seems (2013), polar forces (2013), hexagram (2014), lost sight (2014), blood signs (2015), s/x (2016), conical signal (2016), ascensions (2017), broken symmetry (2019), within the prism (2020), window (2020), breathing (2020), katabasis (2021), infinite column (2021), field (2022)

arc at IFFR

year of the rabbit

A New Year ritual.
Focus: arc
window

Colour, light and sound in contrapuntal layers of patterns and rhythm.
Focus: arc
s/x

A portrait of two trans Bay Area artists: Saturn Rising and Xara Thustra.
Focus: arc
palms

A closer look at the non-native palm which has become an emblem of California.
Focus: arc
katabasis

A parallel descent/ascent/descent in search of a miraculous unknown.
Focus: arc
infinite column

“…to perceive the shape of light which has been stretched forth.” – The Chaldean Oracles
Focus: arc
hexagram

The occurrence of chance collisions in form through the intervention of the xerox machine on emulsion-less film.
Focus: arc
field

Live projector performance reflecting on the unseen forces of resonance and magnetism that surround us.
Focus: arc
conical signal

Dual 16mm projector performance that uses image to investigate sound.
Focus: arc
broken symmetry

Expanded cinema performance for four to six 16mm projectors and a home-built, light-triggered square wave synthesizer.
Focus: arc