Past Film/Video | Documentaries | Series & Festivals

Unorthodocs Shorts

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A collage of 6 images from the Unorthodocs Shorts series.

Unorthodocs, our popular crash course in creative nonfiction filmmaking, returns with this showcase of acclaimed short documentaries.

This selection of shorts features films from up-and-coming filmmakers and established artists working in a dizzying range of forms and tones. Themes of community, isolation, memory, absence, presence, and witnessing create a through line among these remarkable films. (85 mins., digital video)

Program lineup

A black and white image of a person looking skyward through a pair of binoculars.

Cardinal © Kevin Jerome Everson, image courtesy of the artist; Trilobite-Arts DAC; Picture Palace Pictures

Cardinal
(Kevin Jerome Everson, 2019)

Mansfield, Ohio, native and past Wexner Center Artist Residency Award recipient Kevin Jerome Everson films birdwatchers looking for the state bird of Ohio. (2:30 mins., digital video). Please note that this film is silent.

Image of a Greyhound station. People milling around in front of it, to the left a pick-up truck sits on the street

Hunstville Station, image courtesy of the artist

Huntsville Station
(Jamie Meltzer and Chris Filippone, 2020)

Every weekday, inmates are released from the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, taking in their first moments of freedom with phone calls, cigarettes, and quiet reflection at the Greyhound station up the block. (14 mins., digital video)

Two Black women stand next to one another, holding hands and looking into one another eyes. The woman on the left wears a white blouse and the woman on the right wears a black blazer

Spit on the Broom, image courtesy of the artist

Spit on the Broom
(Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich, 2019)

This surrealist documentary explores the African American women’s group the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization formed in the 1840s during the height of the Underground Railroad. The film uses excerpts from the public record, over a century's worth of newspaper articles, and a visual tapestry of fable and myth as a way to introduce a secret history. (12 mins., digital video)

A photo of male students lined up on their backs and stretching their arms. They all wear red shirts, with black collars and white strips down the side of their sleeves.

Practice, image courtesy of the artist

Practice
(Iyabo Kwayana, 2018)

Filmed near the Shaolin temple in Henan, China, Practice moves from the mundane realm of repetitious rehearsal to fantastic fulfillment. Told nonverbally and without a main character, the film is an immersive guided meditation into a simple moment in time, conveying the diverse experiences of a group of students engaged in a collective process. (10 mins., digital video)

An image of a man pushing a wheelbarrow up on the street.

(((((/*\))))) (Echoes of the Volcano), image courtesy of the artist

(((((/*\))))) (Echoes of the Volcano)
(Charles Fairbanks and Saúl Kak, 2019)

Charles Fairbanks (a former Antioch media arts professor) and Saúl Kak (a Zoque artist and activist) capture the sounds of the Zoque community in southern Mexico as they build a network to return to their ancestral lands. The community was displaced by a devastating volcanic eruption in 1982. (18 mins., digital video)

A black and white image of a man with a tonsure haircut dropping tears from both eyes.

Apiyemiyeki, image courtesy of the artist

Apiyemiyekî?
(Ana Vaz, 2019)

Apiyemiyekî? addresses the genocide of the Waimiri-Atroari people in the 1970s when, during the Brazilian dictatorship, Indigenous lands were invaded for the construction of a national road and the installation of a mining company. An archive of illustrations about the period made by the Waimiri-Atroari reveal a traumatic history that continues to superimpose itself on the present. (29 mins., digital video)

FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Cardinal Health
Kaufman Development

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Rohauer Collection Foundation

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Greater Columbus Arts Council
L Brands Foundation
American Electric Power Foundation
The Columbus Foundation
Ohio Arts Council
Mary and C. Robert Kidder
Bill and Sheila Lambert
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Huntington
Nationwide Foundation
Adam R. Flatto
Arlene and Michael Weiss

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Michael and Paige Crane
Axium Plastics
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
Ohio State Energy Partners
Washington Prime Group
Lisa M. Barton
Nancy Kramer
Paramount Group, Inc.
Business Furniture Installations
CASTO
E.C. Provini Co., Inc.
M-Engineering
New England Development
Our Country Home
ProAmpec

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Unorthodocs Shorts