19th Black Maria film festival comes to Cornell Cinema

Cornell Cinema hosts the 19th Black Maria Film and Video Festival, named after Thomas Edison's film studio, pictured above, tonight, April 13, at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre.

Cornell Cinema welcomes John Columbus at a screening of highlights from the 19th Black Maria Film and Video Festival. Columbus, the festival director, will present the program Thursday, April 13, at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Admission is $4.50 general/$4 students, seniors and children 12 and under.

The self-professed aim of this annual film festival is to scour the film world for bold and innovative films. The festival is a smorgasbord of genres, techniques and themes displayed in a collection of short independent works that surprise and entertain.

This year's program features films by both younger and well-known filmmakers, recreating familiar genres and inventing new ones. Peter Tscherassky deconstructs a 1981 Barbara Hershey horror film and turns it into "Outer Space." Colorado-based filmmaker Phil Solomon transforms found footage through mysterious alchemical processes into the elegiac film "Walking Distance." Other filmmakers in the festival also use old footage to suggest the nature of memory and longing, including Jason Livingston, a Cornell Cinema alum, whose "The Two Boys" explores the idea of home.

Black Maria has always provided cutting-edge animators with a venue for their work, and this year is no exception. Richard Reeve's "Sea Song" is an example of the most low-tech type of animation, but his hand-scratched images of syncopated sea creatures are more vivid than Technicolor. Emily Hubley's "Pigeon Within" is an urban dreamscape, and Steven Subotnick's "Hairyman" is an absurdist masterpiece about a wacky grandma. The program also includes last year's Oscar winner for short animation, Don Hertzfeldt's "Billy's Balloon," the cracked tale of a boy and his evil balloon, and one of this year's nominees, "When the Day Breaks," a story of a lonely pig, created by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis.

The festival also includes more abstract experimental work. "Roost," created by Amy Kravitz, is a brooding, tactile concert of images that becomes a meditation on the rebirth of spiritual faith. "Rotation" shows off Australian filmmaker Paul Winkler's mastery of optical illusion techniques in a dance of geometric, almost psychedelic forms.