2026 Festival Lineup
April 29-May 3, 2026 〰️
BAM 〰️
Anthology 〰️
DCTV 〰️
Light Industry 〰️
Metrograph 〰️
April 29-May 3, 2026 〰️ BAM 〰️ Anthology 〰️ DCTV 〰️ Light Industry 〰️ Metrograph 〰️
opening night / wed, april 29
I Heard That They Are Not Going to See Each Other Anymore
Wednesday, April 29, 6:30PM
BAM Rose Cinemas
Followed by Q&A with Ka Ki Wong.
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I Heard That They Are Not Going to See Each Other Anymore (Ka Ki Wong, 2026 86 min.)
Parallel sets of (ill) fated lovers criss-cross Taipei in Ka Ki Wong’s chimerical feature debut, Prismatic Ground's 2026 Opening Night selection.Tao is infatuated with Shin, but can only express this affection by sending roving gangs to beat him up in public. Meanwhile, Melih, an immigrant from Istanbul who owns a noodle shop, receives an enigmatic, possibly omniscient flower from Yu-Ping, whom he falls hopelessly for. Connected in inexplicable ways, Melih and Tao search within and without for the ability to forge meaningful memories and relationships, leading them to wonder, “Is there a way to leave a mark without causing pain?”
wave 1: murder mystery of the mind
Cobre (Copper)
Wednesday, April 29, 9:30PM
BAM Rose Cinemas
Co-presented by Cinema Tropical.
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Cobre (Copper) (Nicolas Pereda, 79min)
Programming Censorship Workshop
Thursday, April 30, 12:30PM
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
REGISTER
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(Xiaolu Wang, 17min, Expanded)
An outsider from the future gets hold of a lost archive, sending us on a journey following associative clues in the movement of infinite yearnings. —Xiaolu Wang
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(Rajee Samarasinghe, 8min)
This film emerged from footage originally captured for a feature documentary on enforced disappearances among Sri Lanka’s Tamil population—specifically, an interview with a mother whose son vanished in the war’s final stages. In revisiting this footage, I also revisit the challenges of representing this particular testimony, which eluded me, one that could not be fully conveyed within the framework of the original film. This iteration reshapes the original context, exploring the divide between me and her, the intersection of ethnographic and colonial perspectives, and questioning cinema’s ability to bear witness. Through silence, rupture, and absence, the film attends not only to what can be shown, but to what remains unreachable, withheld, or lost. The text read in the film was sourced from Robert Gardner’s memoir, The Impulse to Preserve. —Rajee Samarasinghe
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(Sofía Gallisá Muriente, 24min)
A Bundle of Silences is an experimental documentary that circles around the 1983 Águila Blanca heist, when the Puerto Rican pro-independence revolutionary group Los Macheteros expropriated $7 million from a Wells Fargo depot in Hartford, Connecticut. At its center are two figures who remain out of reach: Víctor Gerena, the Puerto Rican employee who carried out the robbery and vanished beyond the FBI’s grasp, and his mother, Gloria Gerena, a community organizer, social worker and advocate for bilingual education who passed away in 2022. —Sofía Gallisá Muriente
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(Onyeka Igwe, 19min)
The University of Ibadan is an example of the university as a colonial project, one that sets the standard of success, of living the good life - the ‘civilised’ life. It was created in 1948 in south western Nigeria to produce docile and compliant colonial subjects, there to serve the interests of the imperial core. Post national independence, it flourished - proffering a new image conjugated by Nigerian thought and culture for a brief and bright moment. But then war came, British funding was withdrawn, and Nigeria’s economic independence was funneled into Western mandated streams, draining the university of its promise. Now it has become something of a shadow of its former selves, from the ‘Good old days to harsh reality’. And at the same time it is also the protagonist in a real life fairytale of social mobility that provides many, including my mother, the opportunity to assert an identity in contradiction to a predestined path. Allowing for self possession, mobility, independence and new horizons. How to reconcile these multiple and contradictory realities? What could this poisoned colonial chalice become if it is made in another image? Can it be made otherwise? Do we need to start again? What is an African university? How do I tell the story of the University of Ibadan? —Onyeka Igwe
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(Darryl Daley, 5min)
Through the circular dynamics of departure and arrival, arrival and departure, the ethnographic moving image observes the Black body in a circular state of transition, foregrounding its historical and metaphysical relation to the transatlantic through spirit, rhythm, and loop. Water functions simultaneously as memory, conduit, and an epistemological site of liminality. The crossing emerges as a structuring metaphor for the formation of modernity and, simultaneously, the moment of trance—arriving and departing—echoed through syncretic religion and ritual transformed within the New World. —Darryl Daley
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Afterlives (Kevin B. Lee, 88min)
Afterlives is a desktop documentary that critically engages with the historical and digital traces of extremist propaganda, questioning how images of violence circulate, mutate, and persist. The film moves between virtual investigations and real-world encounters with artists, activists, and researchers who seek to resist the toxic effects of such Media.
At its core is the figure of Medusa—a victim of violence whose gaze turned viewers to stone—invoked as a symbol of both the dangers and transformative potential of looking. From museum archives to AI-generated reconstructions, the film explores how power structures, spanning from the colonial past to the digital age, shape the way we see and remember violence. Can we ever truly look without being complicit? And is there another way to care? —Odd Slice Films
Let Them Be Seen + The Creatures of Darkness
Thursday, April 30, 7:30PM
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
Short film + feature followed by Q&A.
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The Creatures of Darkness (Dir. Lisa Malloy, Ray Whitaker, 2026, 15min)
Darkness settles over Little Egypt. Brielle, Karri, and Nunu wander among the limestone outcrops and sandstone spires. In a cave that sheltered freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad, their uncle shares a story of a creature that stirs at night. —Lisa Malloy, Ray Whitaker
Let Them Be Seen (Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi, 2026, 75min)
In Tapoleng, a small forgotten and profoundly religious South African village tethered to three borders that form a kind of holy trinity, a new religion emerges. Once the church served as refuge during the old apartheid order, later giving way to communion in taverns. Now, this evolution culminates in the camera... A sacred spectacle that subtly supersedes the spiritual, where no other authority offers anything worth believing in but themselves. —Brown Flamingo Productions
Swing Swish Sway + Uchronia
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Swing Swish Sway (TT Takemoto, 2026, 7min)
Inspired by Rosalie 'Rose' Bamberger (1921-1990), the mixed-race Filipina American paintbrush maker and co-founder of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) in 1955. When DOB shifted their focus to becoming the first US lesbian political rights organization, Rose and her partner Rosemary faded from the historical record. What they truly sought was a 'secret society for lesbians' -- a space to dance, drink, and dine without fear of police raids. —TT Takemoto
Uchronia (Fil Ieropoulos, 2026, 97min)
The ghost of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud travels through history, encountering revolutionary figures such as Emma Goldman, David Wojnarowicz, and Marsha P. Johnson. These encounters create a multilayered collage that raises questions about identity, the meaning of revolution, and the role of the artistic avant-gardes. —FYTA Films
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(Chae Yu, 2025, 15min, Expanded)
Inspired by The Feynman Lectures on Physics, 1964: The fact that there is an enhancement of contours has long been known; in fact it is a remarkable thing that has been commented on by psychologists many times. In order to draw an object, we have only to draw its outline. How used we are to looking at pictures that have only the outline! What is the outline? The outline is only the edge difference between light and dark or one color and another. It is not something definite. It is not, believe it or not, that every object has a line around it! There is no such line. It is only in our own psychological makeup that there is a line; we are beginning to understand the reasons why the “line” is enough of a clue to get the whole thing. Presumably our own eye works in some similar manner—much more complicated, but similar.
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(Michael Barwise, 2026, 10min)
A documentary crew take a pub crawl through 1990s Derry (N. Ireland), observing the young revellers who give themselves to the night while the eyes of the security forces watch on. Using archive, ‘That sanity be kept’ explores being young, being watched and getting drunk during a ceasefire. —Michael Barwise
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(Ka Ki Wong, 2026, 10min)
During a casting session, an actress auditions to play a shrimp. As her performance unravels, so does her certainty. Watching from behind the glass, the shrimp begin to question not only her, but also what it means to be represented — and whether something truly real can ever be performed. —Ka Ki Wong
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(Angelo Madsen, 2026, 6min)
How shall I cater best to your desire for me to be visible? Set up as a confessional-cum-guided meditation, My Structuralist Film uses performance artist Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance (“Time Clock Piece”) as a framework to illustrate the filmmaker's (presumable) insides. How thoroughly should a trans body want or need to be visible? On what terms is the filmmaker obligated to narrativize, perform, or even fabricate visibility for the sake of an audience? Considering the limits and limitations of disclosure, this project positions the act of looking not as an offering or an exchange, but as an unyielding neoliberal, capitalist thirst to consume the trans body, to literally see from the inside. —Angelo Madsen
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(Eislow Johnson, 2026, 14min)
Need help? Crashouts, manifestation influencers and injury lawyers collide in this breakneck ride through the Midwest. 50 years after attorney ads were first legalized in the U.S., their ubiquitous self-portraits (allegedly) invoke a churn-and-burn economy of volume, velocity, fears and veneers. —Eislow Johnson
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(Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn, 2026, 15min)
Like two snakes chasing each other’s tails, time wriggles forward and backwards in Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn’s surrealist satire. In 2001, a pair of young investigators wander a mansion that is haunted by both its eastern relics and their western collector. Meanwhile, in the present day, they are watched by The Therapists, two Lululemon-clad researchers following metaphysical wellness rituals. A mysterious lo-fi kaleidoscope, with cameos by Condoleezza Rice, Shah Jahan, and Brendan Fraser. —Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn
wave 2: cinema is
All tickets to Light Industry events must be purchased in person day-of.
ouarda ourda: yet another flower film + Endless Ascent
Friday, May 1, 6:00PM
Light Industry
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ouarda ouarda: yet another flower film (Samy Benammar, with live musical accompaniment by Nicholas Ray, 2026, 25min, Expanded)
Endless Ascent (Félix Caraballo, 2026, 25min, Expanded)
From ‘Images and Sounds’ to ‘Frames and Cuts’
Friday, May 1, 8:00PM
Light Industry
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Isiah Medina, 60min, Lecture
Leather Graves + Desire Lines
Friday, May 1, 10:00PM
Light Industry
Short film + feature
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Leather Graves (Malic Amalya, 2025, 12min, 16mm)
Desire Lines (Dane Komljen, 2026, 107min)
wave 3: on the far side of twilight
Weh deh here + Joy Boy: A Tribute to Julius Eastman
Saturday, May 2, 11:00AM
Anthology Film Archives
Short film + feature.
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Weh deh here (Maybelle Peters, 2025, 7min)
Joy Boy: A Tribute to Julius Eastman (Collective Faire-Part, 2026, 64min)
11:15AM Shorts
Saturday, May 2, 11:15AM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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(Kioto Aoki, 2024, 3min, 16mm)
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(Vincent Guilbert, 2026, 14min)
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(Blanca García, James Devine, 2026, 3min, Super 8mm)
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(Dianna Barrie, Richard Tuohy, 2026, 10min, 16mm)
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(Željka Blakšić, 2024, 8min, 16mm)
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(Long Pham, 2025, 6min, 16mm)
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(Vanij Choksi, 2026, 6min)
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(Viktoria Schmid, 2025, 11min)
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(Charles-Andre Coderre, 2025, 20 min, 35mm)
ANother Birth
Saturday, May 2, 12:30PM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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Another Birth (Isabelle Kalander, 2025, 70min)
2026 GROUND GLASS AWARD 〰️
Kohei Ando 〰️
2026 GROUND GLASS AWARD 〰️ Kohei Ando 〰️
Ground Glass Award 2026:
Kohei Ando
Saturday, May 2, 1:15PM
Anthology Film Archives
Each year Prismatic Ground gives out only one award, meant to recognize an exceptional body of work. The sixth annual Ground Glass Award for outstanding contribution in the field of experimental media is awarded to Kohei Ando.
Followed by Q&A.
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(Kohei Ando, 1978, 3min, 16mm)
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(Kohei Ando, 1978, 3min, 16mm)
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(Kohei Ando, 1979, 7min, 16mm)
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(Kohei Ando, 1969, 10min)
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(Kohei Ando, 1973, 25min, 16mm)
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(Kohei Ando, 1994, 39min, 35mm)
June Givanni: The Making of a Pan-African Cinema Archive, with Onyeka Igwe
Saturday, May 2, 2:30PM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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(Maureen Blackwood, 1989, 30min)
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(Elsie Haas, 1989, 52min)
3:45PM Shorts
Saturday, May 2, 3:45PM
Anthology Film Archives
Short films followed by Q&A.
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(Kioto Aoki, 2026, 3min, 16mm)
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(Hu Didi, 2026, 8min, 16mm)
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(Mike Stoltz, 2026, 6min, 16mm)
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(Mike Stoltz, 2026, 6min, 16mm)
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(Joshua Gen Solondz, 2026, 15min, 16mm)
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(Lee Jangwook, 2025, 18min, 16mm)
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(TT Takemoto, 2min, 2026, 16mm)
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(Richard Tuohy, Dianna Barrie, 2026, 9min, 16mm)
Levers + Surrendur
Saturday, May 2, 5:00PM
Anthology Film Archives
Short film and feature co-presented by Triple Canopy. Followed by Q&A.
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Levers (Rhayne Vermette, 20min, Poetry Reading)
Surrendur (Karthik Pandian, 2026, 87min)
5:45PM Shorts
Saturday, May 2, 5:45PM
Anthology Film Archives
Short films followed by Q&A.
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(Invisible Scissors, 15min, Live Music)
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(Yusuf Demirors, 2026, 12min)
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(Alan Medina, 2026, 8min)
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(Kioto Aoki, 2024, 3min, 16mm)
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(Lee Jangwook, 2026, 14min, 16mm)
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(Jiayi Chen, 2025, 5min, 16mm)
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(Zhouyun Chen, 2026, 19 min)
Horror, or the Splendour Of
Saturday, May 2, 7:30PM
Anthology Film Archives
An Evening of Film and Poetry Guest Curated by Shiv Kotecha and Courtney Stephens
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Ft. Ed Steck, Joanne Kyger, charles theonia, Lily Jeu Sheng, Sato Stom, Benjamin Krusling, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Rotating Signals + Goblin Play
Saturday, May 2, 7:45PM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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Rotating Signals (Chae Yu, 2025, 10min)
Goblin Play (Chae Yu, 2025, 47min)
Chronovisor
Saturday, May 2, 9:30PM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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Chronovisor (Kevin Walker, Jack Auen, 2026, 99min)
An Afternoon with a Gnawa + Àwọ̀ ojú ọ̀run (The Color of the Sky)
Saturday, May 2, 9:45PM
Anthology Film Archives
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An Afternoon with a Gnawa (Meena Nanji, 2026, 12min)
Àwọ̀ ojú ọ̀run (The Colour of the Sky) (Judah Iyunade, 2026, 71min)
wave 4: before everything has a name
Computer Chess + sitrep
Sunday, May 3, 10:45AM
Anthology Film Archives
Short + feature followed by Q&A.
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Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013, 92min, 35mm)
sitrep (Blair Barnes, 2026, 20min)
Concealed and Denied + The Glass Booth
Sunday, May 3, 11:00AM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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Concealed and Denied (Jordan Lord, 2026, 35min)
The Glass Booth (Jenny Brady, 2026, 33min)
Atash, Aisha, Teyh: Three Films by Parine Jaddo
Sunday, May 3, 1:00PM
Anthology Film Archives
Co-presented by Arte East.Followed by Q&A.
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Atash (Thirst) (Parine Jaddo, 1995, 14min)
Aisha (Surviving) (Parine Jaddo, 1999, 32min)
Tayh (Astray) (Parine Jaddo, 2002, 21min)
My Friends in My Address Book + Every Contact Leaves a Trace
Sunday, May 3, 1:30PM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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My Friends in My Address Book (Kohei Ando, 1974, 3min, 16mm)
Every Contact Leaves a Trace (Lynne Sachs, 2025, 83min) + Q&A
Anomalies in a Landscape + In the Manner of Smoke
Sunday, May 3, 3:15PM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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Anomalies in a Landscape (Félix Caraballo, 2025, 8min, 16mm)
In the Manner of Smoke (Armand Yervant Tufenkian, 2025, 91min) + Q&A
WORLD ENTERPRISES + Aanikoobijigan
Sunday, May 3, 4:15PM
Anthology Film Archives
Followed by Q&A.
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WORLD ENTERPRISES (Anthony Banua-Simon, 2026, 14min)
Aanikoobijigan (Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, 2026, 80min)
before everything has a name + Masayume
Sunday, May 3, 5:45PM
Anthology Film Archives
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before everything has a name (An-li dīng, 2026, 17min)
Masayume (Nao Yoshigai, 2026, 110min)
The Land Lies Heavy: The Contemporary Chinese Avant-Garde
Sunday, May 3, 6:45PM
Anthology Film Archives
Co-presented by Tone Glow.
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Article 4 (Hsin-Yu Chen, 2026, 4min)
Branches From Concrete (Zhou Zhenyu, 2026, 14min)
Words Fly Back to the Black Earth (Xiao Zhang, 2026, 19min)
Redland Hooves (Kaiwen Ren, 2026, 27min)
closing night / sun, may 3
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Gangsterism (Isiah Medina, 84min.)
As he mulls over the budget for his new film, director-gangster Clem sends his artist cronies after an old comrade rumoured to be a leaker.
