About the Event
Half of What You See (And None of What You Hear) | Experimental Short Films
Houston Cinema Arts Festival, Program by Michael Sicinski
Sunday, November 16
2:00 PM
Sarofim Hall, Pitman Cinema Theatre
To purchase tickets: cinemahtx.org/hcaf/
Half of What You See (and None of What You Hear)
A program of six new experimental films.
09/05/1982 (Jorge Caballero and Camilo Restrepo, Mexico / Spain, 2025) 11 min.
A damaged film shot in 1982 in a Latin American country documents the violence that took place on 9 May that year. Beneath its apparent banality, the film raises suspicions of manipulation of the truth.
Daria’s Night Flowers (Maryam Tafakory, Iran / U.K., 2025) 16 min.
Daria has written her first manuscript about falling in love with a mysterious girl called ‘abi’ [blue]. The night flowers in her garden hide the secrets of a country that has turned love stories into routine crime scenes.
In the Maritime Frequencies (Greta Snider, U.S., 2025) 16 min.
Inspired by the San Francisco Bay, dreams, and novelist Octavia Butler’s vision of a future California. This film embraces the aesthetics of a crumbling society – expired and cast-off film, backyard developing, hand cranked camera – because it is a premonition, a goodbye, and a last look over the shoulder.
Remote Views (Alexis McCrimmon, U.S., 2025) 15 min.
A televisual stream of consciousness assembled from archival footage set in the Black media explosion of the 1980s. A frenetic remix of public access television, video diaries, commercial mass media, and citizen journalism sequenced as short vignettes featuring musical and poetic performance, documentation of state violence, political theater, and expressions of Black love.
Full Out (Sarah Ballard, U.S., 2025) 14 min.
In 19th-century Paris at the Salpêtrière Hospital, patients were hypnotized onstage to reproduce the symptoms of hysteria for public audiences. Over a century later, high school cheerleaders are fainting en masse.
FELT (Blake Williams, Canada, 2025) 15 min.
A man sees mountains and sets out to recreate them. During a traverse across the Western United States, we observe familiar sites in a new light, and the world gets lost in the fold.
To purchase tickets visit: cinemahtx.org/hcaf/
Discounted parking available in West Lot 4.
$6 flat rate, credit card required.
