Hannah McSwiggen

Playland

Playland is a boundary-pushing, transdisciplinary, hybrid film centered around the raucous activity of a time-bending night in Boston's oldest and most notorious gay bar, the Playland Café.

Jules of Light and Dark

In present-day Texas, Maya and her on again, off again girlfriend Jules total their car after a night of backwoods raving and teen mischief. They're rescued from the wreckage by Freddy, an oil worker whose stoic facade crumbles as he comes to see himself, and his repressed desires, in Maya. As Jules recovers, Maya and Freddy develop a rapport that dulls the debilitating silence of their small-town lives. Together, they subtly encourage one another to chase after what they want the most (or at least figure out what that might be).

Étude 1a: Release (I)

Exploring the musical concept of "release," this film is a haunting found-footage study in the plurality of visual and auditory meanings of the term. A series of collaborative works pairing artists working in visual and auditory mediums, the Études meditate on individual musical concepts through experiments with sound and film. Étude 1a: Release (I) is the first in this series and is directed by filmmaker Russell Sheaffer and composer Aaron Michael Smith.