1000 MARYS (dir. Christina Gruppuso, Seekonk, MA) 3 minutes, 35mm
This is a whimsical animated film montage in which 1000 paintings of the Virgin Mary are seamlessly blended. A fluid, playful and affable work.

COPYSHOP (dir. Virgil Widrich, Austria) 12 minutes, 35mm
Academy Award Nomination for Best Live Action Short. A fascinating mind puzzle depicting a man replicating his living image on a copy machine until he fills his realm with bewildered selves. Made from 18,000 photocopied digital frames, then animated and filmed with a 35mm motion picture camera.

COUNTERFEIT FILM (dir. Brett Simon, Oakland, CA) 3 minutes, 35mm
An arresting conglomeration of mechanically reproduced images (xerox animation), incorporating vintage vignettes excerpted from Thomas Edison and Edwin S. Porter's seminal Western, The Great Train Robbery, and Edward Muybridge's Animal Locomotion Photo Series. Counterfit Film is an exuberant tongue-in-cheek celebration of the art of motion pictures.

DREAM WORK (dir. Peter Tscherkassky, Austria) 12 minutes, 35mm
The dreamer in this film careens through a staccato landscape of light and shadow, including clips from classic Hollywood films. Dream Work is the third in a trilogy evoking a thrilling nightmarish experience. The film is a stunning homage to the artist Man Ray, whose 1923 film, La Retour a la Raison employed ghostly "rayographs" (photograms) made by exposing light to film stock on which objects were laid.

STRANGE INVADERS (dir. Cordell Barker, Canada) 8.5 minutes, 35mm
Academy Award Nomination for Best Animated Short. This is an anarchical, high camp animation about a couple named Roger and Doris. The couple lives a quiet, comfortable life until they are awakened one night by the arrival of an alien child from "the beyond". The strange little being takes over, wreaks havoc and a suburban household is irrevocably deranged. From the maker of the classic animated short, The Cat Came Back.

FEAR OF BLUSHING (dir. Jennifer Reeves, Brooklyn, NY) 6 minutes 16mm
A hand-painted film infused with rich color, texture, and a haunting soundscape. The film's free association approach to sound and image evokes wrenching coming-of-age and identity crises. Fragments of sound and image erupt from the past and resonate with multiple implications. Maryland Film Festival hosted a retrospective of Jennifer Reeves' work in 1999.

NUCLEAR FAMILY (dir. Dana Plays, LA, CA) 22 minutes, 16mm
An arresting, deconstructed, yet nostalgic work that resonates with optically reprinted images from the 1950's. Vintage government films in which mannequins record the effects of nuclear blast experiments, science films depicting animal experiments, and home movies are interwoven so as to comment upon and recollect the notion of family during the era which gave birth to the nuclear age.

OR CLOUD (dir. Fred Worden, Silver Spring, MD) 10 minutes, 16mm
This is a rapturous abstract work in which poly rhythmic vectors interlace, intersect and overlap. Or Cloud is guided adventure for the eyeballs, yet not simply eye candy. It's a distilled, inundating, psycho-sensual experience for those who yearn for pure visual poetry.

SUBCONSCIOUS ART OF GRAFFITI REMOVAL
(dir. Matt McCormick, Portland, OR) 16 minutes, BetaSP
An award winner from last year's MicroCineFest. This "documentary" looks at the utilitarian over-painting of graffiti removal "engineers", and how it has become one of the more intriguing and important art movements of our time. Characteristics of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Russian Constructivism seen in the anti-graffiti "unconscious art" have secured a place in the history of modern painting. A wry piece offering an offbeat perspective on the meaning of art.