The Experimental Film Podcast

Hanna Ojala, 36, is a poet, a musician, and a self-made filmmaker as well as a dance movement therapist from Finland who has finally found her way of creative expression through experimental dance, music, and video poetry, and is keenly learning more every day. She savors verbalizing actual events in an abstract way as well as describing the visceral effects of inner emotions – making invisible vi...

In 2017 at the age of 15, Bosco Cabello directed, produced, and edited his first short "Catarsis" in the city of Castro. which received "special mention from the Jury" at the Fish Eye Festival and an Award at the Puerto Montt International Festival in 2018. After that, while working on different audiovisual projects, at the age of 17 he recorded his second short film "Phobos". Phobos was an offici...

A lifelong fan of cinema, DT "Dan" Kofoed has studied the theory and visual narrative conventions of comics and film, published academically on those subjects, and taught creative writing at both Michigan State University and the University of South Dakota. Through hands-on experience and pure hubris, he has reverse-engineered that theory into crude practice. As a working filmmaker with a neuro-mu...

Alan Berliner is one of the most influential contemporary experimental filmmakers. It was my pleasure to interview Alan about his films and to gain an insight into how he thinks about film, a bit about his process, and to touch on his personal involvement with his films. His films, as you'll hear in the podcast, are personal works. I love all of his films, but if you need a place to start, find "T...

Rob Underhill directed, "This Was My Son," a film in which Mamie Till recounts the heart-rending part she played in identifying the body of her only son, Emmett Till after he had been lynched for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi in 1955. She speaks to the thought process behind the choices she made that helped ignite and then fuel the Civil Rights movement in America. Mamie would g...

Kate Pelling and I discuss her experimental film, I'm Sorry I Abandoned You , language, her other films, her filmmaking process, her art, and her publishing business. You can catch more of her work at katepelling.com . In 2012, Kate Pelling founded Fifth Floor Publications , a publishing platform for artists’ books that use transdisciplinary methods with an emphasis on experimental works that exam...

Experimental filmmaker, fashion designer, and performance artist, Jackson McKeehan and I spoke about his film, Blue, Diane , which is an official selection in The Experimental Film Fest in Tulsa, OK. We also discuss his actors, his influences and inspirations for Blue, Diane , his performance artwork, and LGBTQIA and gender equality issues that are relevant to him and his work as a filmmaker and p...

My guest for Episode 12 is actor, director, producer, and experimental filmmaker, Joseph Culp . Joseph's film, Sunset Strip Self-Improvement Affirmations, is an official selection and Festival Winner of the Experimental Film Fest (2020) held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had the pleasure of speaking to Joseph during the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic when we were both isolated (myself in Tulsa, Oklah...

It was my pleasure to interview, Craig Baldwin. Craig operates Other Cinema and Artists’ Television Access . He is a found footage collage filmmaker, activist, and film curator. Craig's influence on contemporary filmmakers is immeasurable. I was excited to speak with him and glad that he was able to take time away from his many projects and businesses to be a guest on the podcast. If you're in the...

Since 2013, producer and director, Dick Jordan, has produced many short films for the public access television station, MarinTV, operated by the non-profit Community Media Center of Marin ( cmcm.tv ) in San Rafael, California. Several have been aired by other public access stations across the United States. His award-winning feature-length documentary film "Cuba, Libre?" has been an Official Selec...

In this episode, I speak with Chen "Chen" Xiang-Yun, the writer and director of the beautiful experimental film, Breathed Away, which was selected for screening at The Experimental Film Fest . Steve Crossman, founder of Brooklyn's Mono No Aware , which is a cinema-arts non-profit organization and film positive community. Chen is a visual artist from mainland China. She created Breathed Away using...

Hailing from suburban Philadelphia, where he spent his formative years, Turri now calls Pittsburgh home and has become enmeshed in its regional art community. He has had a broad range of artistic experiences: as a self-taught drummer playing in punk rock, to an improvising percussionist in a performance art band, writing for New Art Examiner, BOMB, and Afterimage magazines, to currently concentrat...

Lynne Sachs returns to The Experimental Film Podcast to discuss her film, Film About a Father Who . This cathartic adventure is a discovery of Lynne's father's activities and how they affected her family, which includes several new siblings. The footage spans more than 50 years and provides a unique insight into life that turns out to be sort of a longitudinal study in family dynamics. The film ha...

Christian Lauchenauer studied 5 years of Industrial Design. Afterward, he worked for one year as an Industrial and Human-Centered Designer in a Swiss design office. After several projects with no budget and actors, he decided to study film in Zürich. But he had already more preferences for video art and got inspired by artists like Bill Viola, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Serra, Peter Liechti, Steve M...

Richard Altman is the creator and curator of Winnipeg's McLuhan experimental documentary series and the dedicated YouTube channel . Richard and I discuss McLuhan philosophy and his experimental doc series in detail. Marshall McLuhan, for those of you who don't know, is a Canadian philosopher who coined the expression "the medium is the message" and the term global village, and predicted the World...

Dan Criblez and I discuss his experimental film, The 8ugs R 7ruit. Dan is a visual artist from New York who works in a wide variety of mediums including Animation/Film, Sculpture, Painting, and Drawing. Experimenting in those mediums, Dan has created surreal, abstract, figurative mind art using line and improvisation. His films have just started to branch out within the surreal abstract animation...

In this episode, I give you some general instructions on how to make an experimental film. For first-time filmmakers and for those first-time experimental filmmakers, this podcast was recorded with you in mind. I give you some pointers, some resources, and an assignment. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to create a three-minute experimental film from Public Domain footage and Pu...

It was my pleasure to interview experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs. Her body of work is not only vast, but her depth of knowledge of filmmaking and filmmakers is nothing short of phenomenal. Lynne is one of those rare filmmakers who you wish you could have known and worked with for the past 20 years. I love her films, her energy, and her enthusiasm for experimental film. Her work has screened at m...

Dexter Marsh-Taylor is an experimental filmmaker from the San Francisco Bay Area. He uses archival media, slow cinema, and narrative methods to investigate family history, nostalgia, and emotional geography. Dexter and I discuss his film, Not An Orphan, which is an experimental documentary film featuring found footage of his mother and other family members. We also touch on other influential filmm...

It is my pleasure to introduce an up and coming experimental filmmaker who is an internationally-screened filmmaker and winner of multiple (>50) filmmaking awards, Emma Penaz Eisner. Her film, “Beth’s three o’clock with Dr. Harlow” is an official selection in The Experimental Film Fest. We discuss her methods, her inspirations, and her films. Keep an eye on Emma Penaz Eisner. You will be seeing...

This first episode covers a lot of different topics from my philosophies and goals for the podcast, my experimental film creation process, The Experimental Film Fest, and some general info about myself, your host, Ken Hess. I hope you find this podcast useful and informative. The primary purpose of it is to highlight experimental filmmakers and their works. The film I reference in the podcast by M...