Art and Belonging Short Films

(82 min.)

How do people feel like they belong in place and time? Or don’t belong? What role can the arts play in helping build that sense of connection or highlighting the intentional alienation of certain people from places, times, and societies? This moving and thought-provoking evening of short films will explore the convergence of art and sustainability. Our sense of (dis)connection may range from scales as small as your cubicle to as large as the planet itself, but, however we try to connect, the arts are a vital response to the need for community and belonging as we respond to a host of sustainability challenges. Scheduled shorts to play include:

• Where I End and You Begin — Dir. Will Hoffman and Julius Metoyer III (2019, 9 min., U.S.) How can art help us see the universal and the particular in the human experience? What connects us as a humanity and not just individuals? Hoffman and Metoyer’s film offers a beautiful and, at times, shocking mosaic of the human experience.
• Dignity at a Monumental Scale — Dir. Kelly Whalen (2018, 8 min., U.S.) In his day job, Chip Thomas works as a healthcare provider in Indian Health Services in the Navajo Nation. But more than that, he has become a storyteller and healer of his community through monumental scale photo installations on the sides of buildings, bus stops, and other infrastructure–making visible the Navajo who have been dispossessed and alienated from their own land.
• Three Walls — Dir. Zaheed Mawani (2011, 26 min., Canada) According to the inventor of modular office furniture, the worst possible use of this furniture would be to create a cubicle. And yet here modern workers sit in a sea of boxes–disconnected from each other and themselves. A wry, bittersweet look at the history of the cubicle and cubicle denizens.
• Ice Cream Cake — Dir. Pearl Gluck (2019, 3 min., U.S.) Speaking of office workers, what can arguments over an office party cake tell us about our relationship to planet Earth? Maybe quite a lot in this entertaining short from Penn State professor and filmmaker Pearl Gluck.
• That Which Once Was — Dir. Kimi Takesue (2011, 20 min., U.S.) Over 150 million people are forecast to be climate refugees in the next 50 years. How will they keep alive the memories of home and place in a strange land? For two refugees from different parts of the globe, art may provide a way to process the trauma in Takesue’s beautiful narrative short.
• “Elegy for the Arctic” Performance — (2016, 3 min., Spain) In a haunting performance commissioned by Greenpeace, Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi plays an original piano composition on a floating barge in the Arctic against a backdrop of calving glaciers. Can music do more than bear witness to changes in our landscape in a time of climate change?
• Das Rad — Dir. Heidi Wittlinger, Chris Stenner, and Arvid Uibel (2003, 8 min., Germany) Losing your grip on life? Maybe you need a different perspective. In this Academy Award-nominated animated short, perspective comes from two rocks who look at place and time very differently than humans!
• Three Seconds — Dir. Spencer Sharp and Richard Williams (2016, 4 min., U.S.) In this award-winning spoken word slam poem, Spencer Sharp puts it all in perspective, humanity and our place in the universe. If the history of the Earth were translated into a single day–human beings have been around for . . . three seconds. What will that fourth second look like?

(Presented in cooperation with the College of Arts and Architecture)