Friday, April 24 | 6pm | OKCMOA | 415 Couch Dr | FREE ADMISSION
Program 1:
What Words Can and Cannot Say
My Body Is a Lens I Can Look Through With My Mind, directed by Ellery Bryan
WOEFF 2026 starts off with a collection of films at two ends of a spectrum: Some utilize words as a catalyst for storytelling, while others use the lack of language to explore what occurs when words fail, when they dilute the true essence of a film. The films in this program support one another as capsules of meaning. This program leaves the spectator with words that must be said and experiences one could not possibly be put into words.
The films in this collection are dream-like, eclectic and explore the boundaries of memory and recollection. Many recollections begin with words, but words can be altered or forgotten, warping the recollection of an experience altogether, thereby replacing it with a completely new understanding. My Body Is a Lens I Can Look Through With My Mind, directed by Ellery Bryan, The Next World, directed by Grau Del Grau and apocalipsis, directed by Lauren Vick, are just three of the films in this program that communicate through written and/or spoken words to enhance the visual experience the spectator has from light, distortion, color and texture. The words become part of the artistic vision and provide a layer of poeticism that reaches forth to the spectator. The audience goes on miraculous journeys, all communicating understandings through the experience of abstraction.
Meanwhile, hiatus B, directed by Jenelle Stafford, Shapeless Variations, directed by Francisco Rojas, and The whitest shadow, directed by Damien Cattinari, are examples of purely somatic experiences of this program. For these films with no words, the spectator’s experience is one that de-emphasizes literal meaning and instead centers on what they experience and recollect of the film. These wordless films engage with the spectator using visuals that leave them with their thoughts, communicating not through language or text, but lived experience.
Program 1 invites the audience to be enveloped in the experience of abstraction and to allow memory and emotion to swell under the bubbling surface of the images on the screen. Various films in this program create an environment to support the spectator's own self-reflection and encourage the spectator to embrace the questions that each film seems to pose to the others: When does an image say more than a word? When can language, and only language, communicate an idea, emotion, experience? What do these films uncover in what words can and cannot say?
A full list of this program's films and their descriptions can be found below.
- Sophie Barroso, BFA On-Camera Acting '26 Oklahoma City University
The Next World, directed by Grau Del Grau
My Body Is A Lens I Can Look Through With My Mind
directed by Ellery Bryan
A diaristic film that begins at the solar eclipse, and uses planetary movements and geological records as jumping-off points for exploring meaning-making, subjectivity and memory.
hiatus B
directed by Jenelle Stafford
regarding passage
to the light house (B-theory of time)
the great ecstasy of nothing-much
The Next World
directed by Grau Del Grau
An estranged parent attempts to record their memories, only to discover that the past may not be as reliable as it once seemed.
Assets
directed by Christine Lucy Latimer
Hundreds of digitally generated filters and assets used by online content creators to simulate a "shot on film" aesthetic are collaged together on expired 16mm Ektachrome. Random contemporary approximations of film artifacts, ranging from industrial to experimental, move through the frame in impossible trajectories. A film of transitions that never transition, positioning moving image signifiers in a post-truth era.
(for once I dreamed of you)
directed by Kate Solar
As night falls over the fields, a woman looks into unknown areas: the space after a poem, the distance between map and territory, the darkness between film frames. A pastoral nocturne turns inside out. 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.
Shapeless Variations
directed by Francisco Rojas
A condensation of a handful of sunsets with various visual moods. Red and blue as opposites that still find a way to cohere. Concrete silhouettes over an ever-changing, expanding canvas. The horizon is invisible, there's no dividing line. Every moment is collective, molecular. A chance to meditate on the "speed" of water and the sea and also for a more fluid kind of editing.
You Do Not Exist
directed by Dwayne LeBlanc
In the stillness of his yard, Booker watches the sky fill and empty with passing planes. As the world moves around him, he lingers, circling a memory whose edges blur with time.
The whitest of shadows
directed by Damien Cattinari
One winter morning, crows are heard in the distance, a thick mist covers the shore. A world wakes up and makes another landscape sound.
apocalipsis
directed by Lauren Vick
A tracing of memory, debris, and definition found in the shadows of an ending and an exploration of what lingers in the leftover spaces between.