Film & Video Programming
Employees Only Cineclub + Tone Glow
Programmed with Joshua Minsoo Kim
Programmed with Joshua Minsoo Kim
GRIN AND BEAR IT: CINEMA OF THE DARK CLOWN
May 16, 2025 – 7pm
Elastic Arts
Employees Only Cineclub Edition 7
Tone Glow & Employees Only present Grin and Bear It: Cinema of the Dark Clown, a multimedia event centered on the figure of the dark clown in experimental moving image. The festivities are broken into three programs: 1) an analog film showcase of works by Jack Smith and Luther Price, 2) videos highlighting the dark comedy of Hester Scheurwater, Ximena Cuevas, Anne McGuire, and Paul & Marlene Kos, and 3) lyrical 16mm films from Jean Sousa, Donna Cameron, and Fred Worden. The evening will also include two live clowning and puppetry performances from local artist Justin D’Acci.
PROGRAM 1 (16mm & Super 8mm)
1. Mr. Wonderful (Luther Price, 1988)
2. Song For Rent (Jack Smith, 1969)
3. Hot Air Specialists (Jack Smith, 1980)
4. Clown (Luther Price, 1990-2002)
CLOWN PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM 2 (Digital)
1. Ensayo de un Crimen (Ximena Cuevas, 2005)
2. Poster Girl (Hester Scheurwater, 2003)
3. I Am Crazy and You’re Not Wrong (Anne McGuire, 1997)
4. Sirens (Paul Kos & Marlene Kos, 1977)
PUPPET PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM 3 (16mm)
1. The Circus (Jean Sousa, 1977)
2. The Clown (Donna Cameron, 1998)
3. Throbs (Fred Worden, 1972)
May 16, 2025 – 7pm
Elastic Arts
Employees Only Cineclub Edition 7
Tone Glow & Employees Only present Grin and Bear It: Cinema of the Dark Clown, a multimedia event centered on the figure of the dark clown in experimental moving image. The festivities are broken into three programs: 1) an analog film showcase of works by Jack Smith and Luther Price, 2) videos highlighting the dark comedy of Hester Scheurwater, Ximena Cuevas, Anne McGuire, and Paul & Marlene Kos, and 3) lyrical 16mm films from Jean Sousa, Donna Cameron, and Fred Worden. The evening will also include two live clowning and puppetry performances from local artist Justin D’Acci.
PROGRAM 1 (16mm & Super 8mm)
1. Mr. Wonderful (Luther Price, 1988)
2. Song For Rent (Jack Smith, 1969)
3. Hot Air Specialists (Jack Smith, 1980)
4. Clown (Luther Price, 1990-2002)
CLOWN PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM 2 (Digital)
1. Ensayo de un Crimen (Ximena Cuevas, 2005)
2. Poster Girl (Hester Scheurwater, 2003)
3. I Am Crazy and You’re Not Wrong (Anne McGuire, 1997)
4. Sirens (Paul Kos & Marlene Kos, 1977)
PUPPET PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM 3 (16mm)
1. The Circus (Jean Sousa, 1977)
2. The Clown (Donna Cameron, 1998)
3. Throbs (Fred Worden, 1972)
“Throughout the event, the clown is found in conceptual, queer, and feminine forms, in criminality and pranksterism, in metaphorical explorations of the circus’ beauties and sorrows. ‘Grin and Bear It’ will remind us that the dark clown is up for grabs as a multivalent cipher for contemporary alienation, one which sublimates our collective desires for revolution. He is a mythically charged trickster forced to wear a smile while wiping pie off his face. Despite his enduring status as the contemporary avatar of ironic detachment—popularized by the Joker archetype—he is difficult to pin down as a cultural singularity. He’s at once a foil to notions of order and justice, an anarchist driven to the outer reaches of sanity by undying capitalist structures, and a giddy nihilist enlightening us to the many hypocrisies of our cruel world. Ultimately, we keep a distance while admitting to his charms.” — David Whitehouse & Elise Schierbeek
Justin D’Acci (b. 1997) is a Chicago-based clown, artist, and puppeteer who experiments with found objects and techniques of automatism. Recent exhibitions include Survey (2025) at Unda.m. 93; Tenebrae (2024) at Weatherproof; Pressure Dome (2023) at SULK; along with a slew of happenings throughout Chicago’s parks. His puppetry has been presented most often for Rough House’s cabaret—Nasty, Brutish & Short—at Link’s Hall, and most recently at the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival. He holds irregular clown classes for the delirious among ye.
Throughout the event, the clown is found in conceptual, queer, and feminine forms, in criminality and pranksterism, in metaphorical explorations of the circus’ beauties and sorrows. Projectionists: Josh Mabe and Ben Creech. Film prints courtesy of Canyon Cinema and the Filmmakers Coop. Videos courtesy of Video Data Bank.
Justin D’Acci (b. 1997) is a Chicago-based clown, artist, and puppeteer who experiments with found objects and techniques of automatism. Recent exhibitions include Survey (2025) at Unda.m. 93; Tenebrae (2024) at Weatherproof; Pressure Dome (2023) at SULK; along with a slew of happenings throughout Chicago’s parks. His puppetry has been presented most often for Rough House’s cabaret—Nasty, Brutish & Short—at Link’s Hall, and most recently at the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival. He holds irregular clown classes for the delirious among ye.
Throughout the event, the clown is found in conceptual, queer, and feminine forms, in criminality and pranksterism, in metaphorical explorations of the circus’ beauties and sorrows. Projectionists: Josh Mabe and Ben Creech. Film prints courtesy of Canyon Cinema and the Filmmakers Coop. Videos courtesy of Video Data Bank.
Employees Only Cineclub + Video Data Bank
Programmed with Ben Russell
AGAINST TIME — Time as actual, time as embodied, time in-itself, time as myth, time as perception. Ben Russell in conversatin with Elise Schierbeek and David Whitehouse.
April 8, 2025 – 7pm
FACETS Film Forum
Employees Only Cineclub Edition 6
Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) – (16mm to digital, 2008, 6:37)
Black and White Trypps Number Three – (35mm to digital, 5.1, 2007, 11:30)
River Rites – (S16mm to digital, 2011, 11:00)
Atlantis – (S16mm to digital, 2014, 23:33)
Against Time – (S16mm to digital, 5.1, 2022, 23:00)
April 8, 2025 – 7pm
FACETS Film Forum
Employees Only Cineclub Edition 6
Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) – (16mm to digital, 2008, 6:37)
Black and White Trypps Number Three – (35mm to digital, 5.1, 2007, 11:30)
River Rites – (S16mm to digital, 2011, 11:00)
Atlantis – (S16mm to digital, 2014, 23:33)
Against Time – (S16mm to digital, 5.1, 2022, 23:00)
Employees Only Cineclub
Programmed with Esteban Alarcón + Andrea Florens
Programmed with Esteban Alarcón + Andrea Florens
SPECIES BEING, featuring experimental works by Mary Helena Clark + Mike Gibisser, Jesse Malmed + ONO, and Dana Dawud. The program focuses on the ways in which capitalism inscribes worlds and futures for living beings through codes, patents, myths, and other syntaxes. December 7 at 7pm, Sweet Void Cinema in Humboldt Park, followed by Q&A with Mike Gibisser and Jesse Malmed.
December 7, 2024 – 7pm
Sweet Void Cinema
Employees Only Cineclub Edition 5
Noah’s Ark – Dana Dawud (2024, 8 min)
WHIRRED, WHIRLED – Jesse Malmed + ONO (2015, 7 min)
A Common Sequence – Mary Helena Clark + Mike Gibisser (2023, 78 min)
TRT 93 min
December 7, 2024 – 7pm
Sweet Void Cinema
Employees Only Cineclub Edition 5
Noah’s Ark – Dana Dawud (2024, 8 min)
WHIRRED, WHIRLED – Jesse Malmed + ONO (2015, 7 min)
A Common Sequence – Mary Helena Clark + Mike Gibisser (2023, 78 min)
TRT 93 min
Peripheries Experimental Film & Video Festival 2024
Programmer
Programmer
Cloudwards: Waiting is a Dreaming ascends through various spaces of anticipation—pauses between strikes of lightning, a bus full of passengers nodding off, city alcoves in a downpour, reality TV elimination rounds, or the instructional stage of an indoor skydiving facility. Each work dreams in such spaces, steadfastly aspiring toward flight, progress, inflation, chance encounter, the taste of winning, dry ground, or a truer sleep. Documentarian sensibilities intermingle with found footage free-form experimentation and infrared interludes. By way of bats and pilots, rockets and space dogs, earthquakes and birds, the works of this program always tilt cloudwards. (1976-2024, 46 mins, Digital Projection.)
September 29, 2024 – 7pm
Sweet Void Cinema
Peripheries Experimental Film & Video Festival 2024
Laika – Deborah Stratman (2021, 4:33 min)
Helianthus Corner Blues – Jem Cohen (2013, 2:48 min)
Lightning – Paul & Marlene Kos (1976, 1:23 min)
ADARNA – Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan (2017, 1:00 min)
ROCKET – Katharina Bayer (2024, 5:00 min)
Somewhere only we know – Jesse McLean (2009, 5:15 min)
All Days Make Their End – Julian Flavin (2023, 13:30 min)
Life Without Dreams – Jessica Bardsley (2022, 13:30 min)
Memory Drum brings together memory, water, and family on 16mm film with a percussive throughline. The works of this program are elemental yet figurative, exploring kaleidoscopic relationships between parent and child, distortion and fidelity, rhythm and stillness. Leighton Pierce’s Glass (1998) initiates the program with an impressionistic tableau of children in the backyard through a glass menagerie of lens manipulation. Alee Peoples’ Hey Sweet Pea (2023) stages fanciful recitations that sweep us into a strange, hollowed-out nostalgia of sci-fi scripts and mama’s old voicemails in the LA suburbs. Carl Elsaesser’s How to Run a Trotline (2024) holds the drumline as the program’s luminous cornerstone, a spirited reflection on paternal tethers, both filmic and genealogical, that fishes for something alive and kicking in each of its brimming images. O Banho (The Bath) (2022) is Maria Inês Gonçalves’ turn to the phenomenology of water as filtered through childhood memories of bathing. As if beckoning us through amniotic fluid, toy boats and stuffed animals dunk and bob like repressed things, water goes where it shouldn’t go, and in the tumult we catch sight of Winnie the Pooh’s Heffalumps galloping through the ether, having long forgotten how they haunted us so. (1998-2024, 55 mins, 16mm Film and Digital Projection.)
September 29, 2024 – 5:30pm
Sweet Void Cinema, Projected by Ben Creech
Peripheries Experimental Film & Video Festival 2024
Glass – Leighton Pierce (1998, US, 16mm film, 7:00 min)
Hey Sweet Pea – Alee Peoples (2023, US, 16mm film, 11:11 min)
How to Run a Trotline – Carl Elsaesser (2024, US, 16mm film to digital, 18:10 min)
O Banho (The Bath) – Maria Inês Gonçalves (2022, Portugal/Spain, 16mm and 8mm to digital, 8:00 min)
Comfort Film
Programmer
Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) at Comfort Station alongside shorts by video artist Shana Moulton. Log into new age everyday animism, good old human connection and/or lack thereof.
April 10, 2024 – 8pm
Comfort Station
Whispering Pines 5 – Shana Moulton (2005)
MindPlace ThoughtStream – Shana Moulton (2014)
Me and You and Everyone We Know – Miranda July (2005)
April 10, 2024 – 8pm
Comfort Station
Whispering Pines 5 – Shana Moulton (2005)
MindPlace ThoughtStream – Shana Moulton (2014)
Me and You and Everyone We Know – Miranda July (2005)