Shorts Program: In the Mix: Rhythms & Motion
MAY 11, 2025 | 7pm - MAY 24, 2025 | MIDNIGHT
A collection of short films specially curated by Film at LACMA Intern Octavia Anderson that emphasize themes of music, dance, and performance. These films merge the commingled rhythms inherent in film and music that exist in the DNA of the cultures and stories being told.
A delivery man dreams of having a motorcycle. He was told that everything would be like a musical film.
Bio:
Leonardo Martinelli is a filmmaker from Rio de Janeiro. His film Fantasma Neon won the Golden Leopard for Best International Short Film at the Locarno Film Festival. His shorts have been selected at festivals worldwide, including Cannes, Locarno, Toronto, San Sebastián, BFI London, Clermont-Ferrand, Palm Springs, Montreal, Biarritz, Toulouse and others. He also holds a Master’s degree in Communication from PUC-Rio and is currently developing his first feature film, which was selected for the Locarno Residency and the Hubert Bals Fund.
Three generations of women and girls prepare to perform at the Cuban circus in Havana, Cuba, each for different acts, on different occasions, but all under the same enchanting red and white striped tent, an otherworldly space which pulses with reflections on age, femininity, and dreams.
Spanish translation: Tres generaciones de mujeres y niñas preparan una presentación de circo en La Habana, Cuba, cada una con diferentes actos y momentos, pero todas bajo la magia encantadora de la carpa de rayas rojas y blancas, en un espacio de otro mundo que las lleva a lidiar con reflejos propios de la edad, feminidad y los sueños.
Bio:
Elle Rinaldi is a director, cinematographer, and sound designer based in the Quinnipiac, Wangunks, Wappinger and Mohican lands of Connecticut. Elle likes to tell documentary and fiction stories which explore spectacle, myth, age, and the natural world. After studying film at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Elle has screened at prestigious film festivals such as DOC NYC and NFFTY for their directing work. Elle’s sound design has shown at festivals such as Tribeca and is even floating somewhere in space. She has worked as a union assistant sound editor at Warner Brothers Sound, as MoMA PS1’s Digital Marketing and Media Fellow, and is currently freelancing as a sound designer and a documentary director and editor. They are currently working on their first feature documentary and are trying to find the joy of life in the joy of handstands.
A fugitive flees from both a ghost and the police (as written by harepa [music] player Johannes Mokgwadi in 1974). Before we ask why, what if Tsodio is fleeing from neither the ghost nor the police?
The character of Tsodio as lyrical fiction/mythology travels through orature and storytelling in black musical and sonic histories of the past, present and future… Traveling banners, thinking and sounding with three locations – Meadowlands, Mamelodi and Mahikeng – serve as backdrops for oral histories with “people as libraries”, on site. These situated lens-based performative conversations trace Tsodio’s multiple umbilical cords and drive the essay videos through a journey in sonic, optic and phonetic black world un/making.
Sesasedi sa Tsodio takes a kwaito [music] classic, Tsodio [Lebo Mathosa, 1999], as a song-being that narrates movements and biographies; conquests and namings; defeats and reclamations; returns and ancestries…In a method similar to that of The Otolith Group, Sesasedi sa Tsodio starts from a place of criticism, and grows into fiction.
Conceived and led by Rangoato Hlasane, narrated by Masello Motana with cinematography by Bhekisisa Pilot Biller, score by Siya Makuzeni and Azah Mphago, featuring Vusi Mahlasela, Motlapele ‘Mo’ Molemi’ Morule, Galefele Molema, Stacey Lee, Intellectuals Pantsula, Mandla ‘Spikiri’ Mofokeng, Azah Mphago and sonic cameo by Gillian Fleischmann and Maftown Pantsula Nation.
Bio:
Born 1981, Polokwane, South Africa, is a cultural worker, artist, educator and co-founder of Keleketla! Library, Johannesburg (est. 2008), working between Johannesburg and Cologne.
Transdisciplinary and practice-led, his artistic work is a bold concern and commitment to co-creation of meaningful impact at the intersection of cultural work and socio-spatial justice.
His artistic research and practice is an interdiscursive intervention into Indigenous Knowledge Systems, as seen through the lens of African Popular Culture and Black Public Humanities. He completed a PhD in African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the recipient of the (South African) National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences Awards 2025 (Best Visual Art) for ‘Sesasedi sa Tsodio’ and ‘Sa Koša ke Lerole’. Currently he is assistant professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany.
Opening Night follows a young jazz musician who relives childhood trauma during his first performance, ultimately discovering how jazz becomes both his voice and his liberation. The film explores the intersection of memory, music, and healing through performance.
Bio:
Joshua Rodriguez is an Indigenous creative from Los Angeles (El Sereno). Growing up in a vibrant community, his inspiration stems from the rich culture of his Indigenous heritage. He is particularly drawn to the themes of identity, community, and the intersection of traditional and contemporary narratives. As an artist deeply immersed in both film and music, he strives to merge these mediums to tell compelling stories and evoke powerful emotions. Looking ahead, he is committed to developing projects that inspire new conversations around identity, belonging, and innovation in film and music.
Motivated by a desire to capture an aspect of Los Angeles’s queer nightlife, in haven, filmmaker Ciara Zoe follows a group of friends absorbing a rave as it unfolds through a series of hazy, stylized vignettes. Commissioned by The Academy Museum, this film was captured on iPhone for the Shifting Perspectives: Vertical Cinema exhibition.
Bio:
Ciara Zoe is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Primarily a Director and Photographer, Zoe’s artistic practice also spans Writing, Illustration, Curation and Design. Her adventures in directing have been video work for Apple, photographing and directing Nike LA’s Redefine Sports campaign, working with the Huntington Museum of Art to create a 16mm short film for their Borderlands exhibition, developing a short for Frieze Art Fair’s Los Angeles Film Award, and realizing a short film for the Academy Museum’s Shifting Perspectives: Vertical Cinema exhibition. She is currently in production for a documentary series focusing on the four main elements of Hip Hop featuring local pioneers to global legends.
“D.I.Y” is a short film about a musician and artist who quit their jobs at a diner to pursue their creativity in the city of Los Angeles.
Bio:
Guinevere Alcaraz (she/ they) is currently a rising senior at the UCLA Design Media Program. She is a Filipino-American director and producer born and raised in Los Angeles. She is a 2021 Ghetto Film School alumnus, and one of her most recent directorial projects is a music video for Audrey Mika. She hopes to make offbeat, silly, and experimental work highlighting the value of community in the socio-political context of the world around us.
A visual and sonic journey through the interior landscapes of a Jornalero’s dreams, his waking reality in L.A., and what it looks like when a group of people relegated to serving others labors for their own elevation of body and spirit. An homage to the unique, idiosyncratic, and customized old pick-up trucks driven by Latino day laborers and the intimacy that is cultivated in and around them.
Bio:
Jazmin is a filmmaker, photographer, and music curator based in Mexico City and Los Angeles. She has been developing her craft through music videos, short documentaries, and commercial work. Her work aspires to live within the visual realm of transformative justice, as a space that holds and uplifts memory, exploring themes around identity and freedom, focusing on immigration and the American pressures of cultural assimilation.
