CineSalon Experimental Film Festival 2026
Online Programme
CineSalon Online 1
CineSalon Online 1 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
Providence (Erica Schreiner)
A Dispensation for Lunacy (David Matthew Johnson)
I Will Help You Be Remembered (Mila Starosta)
Saving the World (Amin Heydari Fard)
nevertheless, nevertheless (Dana Yoon)
The Image Does Not Endure (Saeid Elyasi)
Providence is a beautiful example of Erica Schreiner’s distinctively immersive and intimate VHS pieces in which she creates allegorical, ethereal works that merge femininity, anarchistic themes, ritual and sensuality. It takes us inside the diary of her mind as she reflects on reconnecting with a romantic partner not seen in over 20 years. A Dispensation for Lunacy by 2024 CineSalon Artist in Focus David Matthew Johnson plunges into a memory recast by cinema as nightmare replete with his characteristically unsettling liturgical overtones. I Will Help You Be Remembered draws on elements of Polish folklore, particularly rituals connected to hair, and brings these older ritual gestures into a contemporary context. Saving the World generates an intense and troubling concentration of the psychic effects of war as a child plays in a confined domestic environment during wartime. But the future is still open… Shot on 16mm, nevertheless, nevertheless, follows a catalogue of emotional experiences that seeks to name the unnameable. This collection of testimonies performed through interconnected bodies fuses a visual allure and unease. Are we even allowed to witness them? The Image Does Not Endure explores the sleep of a cinephile—a sleep composed of fragmented, disjointed, and chaotic episodes that drift through unstable images and situations. The film’s title alludes to the transient and unstable nature of the cinematic image itself: images that emerge like apparitions, linger briefly before the eye, and then fade away and pass into oblivion.
CineSalon Online 2
CineSalon Online 2 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
Frank Stares at Celestials (Josh Weissbach)
Color Separation (Diane Nerwen)
Solo la Nutricion (Maj Rafferty)
The Rabbit Always Dies (Oona Taper)
Other Songs the Winds Have Sung Me (Parlour Collective)
The Ghost Image (Emmanuel Piton)
Seen With the Heart (Berta Canivell)
Frank Stares at Celestials captures an enchanted moment where people gather together to observe two passing celestials, conveying both its excitement and fleeting nature in suitably cosmic strokes. Diane Nerwan’s Color Separation celebrates the filmmaker’s father, artist and graphic designer David Nerwan, with an infectiously joyful style reminiscent of Norman McClaren. It weaves together found and shot footage to reflect on my David Nerwan’s creative work, his decline in health and the disorientation of losing a parent. Solo la Nutricion delves into the complexities of mental health, exploring the relentless dialogue between our inner voices and thoughts. It uses a powerful metaphor to represent the arduous journey of striving for mental wellness while grappling with the pervasive shadows of mental health challenges. The Rabbit Always Dies is a visually witty and striking experimental documentary that reveals both the facts and fantasies of the history of pregnancy tests from the 1930s-60s which relied on the use of live frogs and rabbits. Other Songs the Winds Have Sung Me weaves a mysterious contemplative spell as figures and scenes unfold, all of them trying to communicate the fleeting, impossible stories which ebb and flow through the Finnish landscape. Moments emerge, conflicting, confusing, with slow desperation and just as suddenly disappear in the winds which animate every moment. The Ghost Image is a dense and multi-textured immersion in and around the childhood home of filmmaker Emmanuel Piton which searches for traces of an apparition that still haunts his memory. Seen with the Heart develops surprisingly from a science fiction scenario of a solitary astronaut crashing on a mysterious planet into a powerful statement of existential affirmation.
CineSalon Online 3
CineSalon Online 3 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
Frienemy (Ben Montague)
Drunk on I-35 (Michael McCurdy)
H2H (Hesam Rahmani)
She’s Just Like You { ORIGINAL } innit (Krystle Patel)
Maria Henriqueta Was Here (Nuno Pimental)
A Shoe Is... (Eddy Falconer)
Frienemy is an eloquently minimal animation that joins a series of mundane vignettes together to tell a brief tale of interpersonal shame and anxiety. Drunk on I-35 blends experimental form with narrative storytelling and deadpan comedy to dissect American mythologies and systemic rot. In it, a drunk driver cruises along the Kansas interstate and calls his ex-girlfriend on the eve of their high school reunion. H2H - ‘horn to horn’ - is a quiet confrontation between the human gaze and the animal’s stare. In the mist of a cowshed, death looms like a smoky shadow and time is suspended as a fatal decision is made. An unresolved feeling hovers between reality and dream, wrapped in the breath of a cow that is no longer just a cow. She's Just Like You { ORIGINAL } innit investigates a second generation Asian immigrant's bittersweet relationship to 'Britishness' utilising the history of indentured servitude and the cultural moment that jungle music was born into as material. The film touches on cycles of repression and violence alongside the flicker of acknowledgement that results in a disintegration of your reality when coming into contact with racial violence. Maria Henriqueta Was Here is a phantasmagoria of the senses. A good haunting. The Emperor of Brazil traveled to the city of Porto in 1872 and stayed at the Grand Hotel du Louvre, property of Maria Henriqueta. In the present day, this attempt to make a film about this episode becomes an invocation. Maria Henriqueta is with us. Memories, sounds and sensations take over the screen, and build an emotional geography of the invisible protagonist. A Shoe Is… is a delightfully indescribable time travel narrative in which an Italian shoe designer of incarnations of yore is confronted with a contemporary Belgian rival who cites and critiques his work.
CineSalon Online 4
CineSalon Online 4 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
Tides of Time (Guadalupe Arellanes)
Counselle (Brice Stan Bowman)
Good Morning, Cardinette (Maximus Silva)
I’m Not Jean-Luc Godard (Ehsan Shookh Bamshad)
Chimera (Marlow Magdalene)
‘Cut’ - Confrontational (Massimo Usai)
I Fed It Napalm (David Matthew Johnson / Tristan Turner)
Tides of Time is a 16mm trance film depicting an empress ritualistically performing Gisuborān, an embodiment of grief, impermanence, and release, as the ocean’s waves rise and fall. Counselle visualises the thoughts of a counselle as experienced by way of a rushing stream-of-conciousness of celluloid fragments while being counselled. Good Morning, Cardinette also employs abrasive formal strategies to plunge into a state of consciousness. In this case, the Cardinette is trying hopelessly to hold on to a tranquil dream that is slowly but surely being torn away to wake up in the midst of heavy industry. In I’m Not Jean-Luc Godard, Ehsan Shookh Bamshad pursues his goal of dissolving all intermediaries between the character and the camera to create what is both a self-portrait as a teenage filmmaker and a reflection on the Iranian ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement. Chimera is a gorgeously stylised and fragmented part dance film and part cheeky thriller that follows the lead character’s internal and interpersonal duet with revenge as she heals from betrayal. Cut is a visually and sensorially super-saturated video for the eponymous song by Confrontational. I Fed It Napalm is an anguished psychodrama tapping into the agonies and fleeting joys of creating.
CineSalon Online 5
CineSalon Online 5 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
The Moon is a Cheese (Sebastian Vaccaris)
death doula Ames Meeks chose this color to represent their feelings about climate change (Adda Farcus)
Eternité (Fred Périé)
As the Crow Flies (Helle Monne Huisman)
Dead March to Paradise (Evelyn Haixuan Cao)
The Moon is a Cheese turns a 16mm camera back on the omnipresent gaze of surveillance to eloquently and urgently pose the questions: Is a system of surveillance a system of censorship? Is a system of surveillance a system of safety? death doula Ames Meeks chose this color to represent their feelings about climate change addresses emotions related to the effects of climate change in Arizona, USA. Adda Farcus’ research and production is driven by partnerships and interviews with people in death- and grief-related professions regarding their feelings about climate change. It gives form to the complicated intersections of climate change and psychoterratic emotional states such as eco-grief and climate-driven anxiety. Eternité looks at eternity as always being from a given time, a time made of cities, ancestors and the present with its destiny. By mixing contemporary takes and images from personal and familial archives, the film is a poem in mourning of an eternity. Ours? As the Crow Flies is a poetic, meandering journey of discovery through the worlds we inhabit and how they shape our sense of connection. What happens to our own identity when we are always on the move? What do we hear and what do we listen to in a world of digital noise? Dead March to Paradise is an impressionistic experimental essay film that offers a personal perspective on the painful history of the first Chinese women to set foot in America. This is a history that few people know - and no one remembers.
CineSalon Online 6
CineSalon Online 6 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
A Cat's Eye (Florence Audet)
Enter the End (Sonya Stefan / Steffé Castonguay)
Mortal Copy (Meesh Kislyakov)
Hiding Places (Magdelena Bermudez)
du soleil, que ca existe (Charlotte Clermont)
Gombaut (Maite Alonso Cuadrado / Unai Ruiz Ameztoy)
(for once I dreamed of you) (Kate Solar)
A Cat’s Eye is a gorgeously textured and hallucinatory account of a day in the garden experienced through the eyes of a cat. Enter the End is a short 16mm by the Montréal duo Technologies of Consciousness which asks: “Where does the conscience reside in the body?” In doing so, it uses several contact printing processes including plants for their photosensitive capacity and ability to generate phytograms, and alternative methods of film development. Mortal Copy explores the strange afterlife of Lenin through the images that survived him. Filmed on 16mm and using processes of rephotography, collage, risograph degradation, and 3D printing, it traces how Lenin becomes a “living statue,” preserved to appear unchanged while continuously reconstructed. Hiding Places is an elusive and graceful account of a historical moment in which women pretend to be rocks, military operations masquerade as art education and one woman deserts to pursue a more radical act of unselfing. du soleil, que ça existe examines the temporalities through which the body forms, stores, and creates what we translate as the real. Focusing on longing, distance, and language, this text-based project explores the expansiveness of both language and landscape, by installing spaciousness in the dialogue and by considering landscapes as bodies. Gombaut evokes an imaginary island where childhood inhabits a time without hierarchies. Among ancient trees, scattered branches, and a ship wrapped in mist, the film explores ways of coexistence that require no armour or systems of control. (for once I dreamed of you) is a pastoral nocturne turned inside out where a woman looks into unknown areas: the space after a poem, the distance between map and territory, the darkness between film frames. This 16mm work was shot at Film Farm in Mt. Forest, Ontario, then re-photographed with flashlight contact-printing. Intuitive processes consider the image and soundtrack as a living thing that breathes and decays.
CineSalon Online 7
CineSalon Online 7 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
Acceleration Protocol (Davey Whitcraft)
Exsistire (Alparslan Çelik)
In the Acceleration Protocol, Davey Whitcraft imagines a plant-human hybrid to explore three modern sites: solo endurance sports, outdoor lifestyle culture, and electronic dance music. Through these practices, we draw on our bodies, access "nature" through consumer products, and seek meaning in exhaustion as transcendence. The ritualistic Exsistire traces the uncanny journey of the seven basic elements of existence, returning to their pagan origins in an ‘outsider’ feature that will appeal to admirers of Jodorowsky.
CineSalon Online 8
CineSalon Online 8 can be viewed here between September 12th and 28th.
R!pples (Duke Tsui)
The Cerebral Organoid (Ian Haig)
CineSalon Online 8 takes a trip through dystopian experimental science fiction in focusing on the future implications of AI. R!pples is an allegory about ripples of information in the age of AI, how systems self-correct, and how individual choices shape the collective future. Through a visual design infused with Eastern aesthetics and geometric spaces, it transforms abstract themes of technology, power, and responsibility into an accessible story. The Cerebral Organoid takes place in the research Institute of Advanced Neuroprosthetics which is undertaking a series of experimental brain implants and bodily corrections to address the issue of ongoing brain rot due to exposure to AI. This work explores neurological degradation under algorithmic, AI exposure, presented through institutional surveillance, speculative medical interfaces, and invasive sensory correction procedures.