Beyond Chicago Shorts: Strange Frequencies

ABOUT THE EVENT:

Something is getting in: or getting out! This collection of Lynchian vignettes lives in the liminal space between the grounded and the uncanny, where the supernatural arrives not to terrify but to reveal.

A poolside mystic dispenses unlikely wisdom to a man who has bet everything on a dream. A ghost awakens unexpected desires in a young woman. A young man escapes his basement prison and finds the tribe he never knew he had. A child summons something unseen and malevolent while his mother prepares dinner. A photographer at a metal show takes in the scenery and finds herself haunted in ways both erotic and existential. A desperate pilgrimage yields a miracle that may not be one. A waitress endures a man who won’t stop, and then watches impassively when he finally does. A woman sits in an interrogation room accused of unspeakable crimes and unravels between what she saw and what was real.

These are films about thresholds: identities in flux, bodies under pressure, psyches pulled toward the edge of what they can hold. The genre elements here are never the point; they’re the language, the cinematic shorthand for interior states that ordinary drama can’t quite reach. Spectral, surreal, sensual, and quietly destabilizing, this block travels somewhere strange, somewhere dark, and somewhere true.

ABOUT THE FILMS:

“Jacuzzi Man,” Dir. by Jesse Rothenberg, 8 Min, USA

Ronnie meets the mythical Jacuzzi Man.

FORMAT: DCP

“Spanked by a Ghost,” Dir. by Katelyn Douglass, 12 Min, USA

Alone in her home, a woman is spanked by an unseen entity, awakening a force she cannot control.

FORMAT: DCP

“Metal,” Dir. by Samuel McIntosh, 15 Min, USA 

A man in a metal helmet, chained up in a basement with nothing but cartoons to keep him company, escapes one night and finds himself searching for somewhere to belong.

FORMAT: DCP

“Rabbit,” Dir. by Nathan Catucci, 2 Min, USA

A child unleashes a malevolent force as his mother prepares dinner.

FORMAT: DCP

“Lichemoth,” Dir. by Carla Nichamin, 12 Min, USA

After inhaling a mysterious substance at a metal show, a young woman’s resistance to connection is penetrated by the arrival of an unexpected passenger.

FORMAT: DCP

“Burro,” Dir. by Hannah Lerner, 12 Min, USA

After IVF fails, a desperate nurse makes a pilgrimage to a sacred cave and returns miraculously pregnant. But as her body begins to change in inexplicable ways, she is forced to confront a terrifying question: is what’s growing inside her a blessing, or is it even human?

FORMAT: DCP

“Tame,”  Dir. by Will Schneider, 12 Min, USA

Near the end of a long shift, a stressed diner waitress has to serve an especially difficult customer.

FORMAT: DCP

“God Doesn’t Love Me,” Dir. by Thomas Miller, 16 Min, USA

Her sister’s dead and she’s got a wound that won’t heal. The police want to know what Amy Brandt said to her sister on the day she died. Amy can’t stop thinking about blood.

FORMAT: DCP