Thursday June 4 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are pleased to present an evening of films by Margaret Rorison (Baltimore), who will be present for a discussion with the audience following the screening. Margaret Rorison is a filmmaker, artist and educator from Baltimore, MD. Her work incorporates 16mm film, alternative photographic processes, poetry, and sound to explore her interests in portraiture, memory, and landscape. Her films have been exhibited at Miami PULSE Art Fair, Microscope Gallery, The Museum of The Moving Image, The National Gallery of Art, and The Walker Art Center. Her short films have shown at film festivals including Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, Open City Documentary Film Festival, & FICUNAM in Mexico City. From 2012-2022, she directed Sight Unseen Screening Series, an experimental film series that brought contemporary filmmakers and curators to Baltimore to present their work.

Thursday May 7th * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Polari & Carry On: A Queer Film Gathering curated by Brandy Creek

In the spirit of Polari—the playful, coded lingo of queens, creatives, and kindred souls which reached its height in 1960’s London —this screening celebrates a living tradition of queer storytelling. Polari wasn’t just slang, it was how we found each other and a survival necessity. It was camp, it was clever, it was connection.

These films carry that legacy forward. Different words with the same heartbeat. Themes that echo the familiar rhythms of chosen family, resilience, desire, joy, and the quiet magic of being understood.

The language may evolve, darling—but the message? We’re here, we’re together, and we’ve always had each other. Join us as we gather, not just to watch, but to recognize ourselves in one another —to keep the conversation alive, vibrant, and unapologetically ours.

Alright, my dears—let’s have a little BONA CELEBRATION!

Thursday April 2 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are pleased to present an evening of animated short films by, and followed by a remote Q&A with, Lynn Ochberg.

Thirty years ago, VHS tapes containing striking Commodore Amiga animations started showing up at parties, micro cinemas, and living rooms across the country. Each copy was made to satisfy the audience's thirst for more of these narratively diverse films showcasing fairy tales, dinosaurs, consumption, play, politics, and even the Bosnian War. Those holding their tapes were left hungry in their pursuit of figuring out the true identity of its creator, Nanny Lynn. In the late 2010s, renewed interest led to the discovery of Lynn Ochberg, an Octogenarian Grandmother living in Florida whose oeuvre of animated wonders was created for her grandchildren. 

Thursday March 5 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are pleased to present an evening of films by Sara Kazemimanesh & Shahriar Shafiani, both of whom will be present for a discussion with the audience following the screening.

Sara Kazemimanesh (b. 1988, Rasht, Iran) is a writer, filmmaker, and educator. Her work moves between interpretative and critical writing and expanded art practice. In her films, and often through restrained, formally attentive storytelling, she explores displacement, agency of women, and the nuanced ways private lives collide with larger socio-political forces. Sara’s films have been showcased and recognized internationally. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Ohio University.

Shahriar Shafiani is a film director, scholar, and educator. Born and raised in Iran, Shafiani began his career as an independent filmmaker before relocating to the United States for graduate study. Shafiani holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts and an MFA in Film from Ohio University. He is an Assistant Professor of Film at Howard University, where he also coordinates the Graduate Film Program. Alongside his academic work, Shafiani continues to direct, edit, and coach performers for film and television.

Thursday February 5 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

I create documentaries about ordinary lives, nostalgia, and memory in rural China: micro worlds you don’t see on the news. I want to protect what existed before the Internet: an old style of life that has quietly continued for thousands of years but is now about to disappear in modern life.

This is my first Chinese documentary series, Before Disappearing. It records the unique dialects of my hometown through my grandma’s experience. I want to show you the voice and language that AI cannot recreate: spoken within a small town, carried through daily life, rarely found online, and vanishing as generations change.

Thursday January 8 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are pleased to present an evening of films by Jim Doran, who will be present for a discussion with the audience following the screening.

Jim Doran is a Baltimore artist, musician and filmmaker. He earned a BA in music composition at Washington College, and an MFA in studio art at Towson University. His work has been exhibited/screened in the United States, Europe, and in the American Visionary Art Museum. 

Thursday December 4 * 7:30pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Rhizome’s microcinema presents: 20 Years of Heritage Film Festival

The Heritage Film Festival is a community-based, volunteer-driven DMV event that brings together short films and videos of all subjects and genres to celebrate independent media. The short films are from novice and seasoned filmmakers alike, who come from the US, Canada, Asia, Europe, Africa and beyond.

Festival founder and director, O.Funmilayo Makarah, will be here in person to present a selection of films screened throughout the 20 year history of the Festival. Heritage encourages viewers to bring canned goods which will be donated to people in need.

Thursday November 6 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

After successful forays into the visual arts, the CIA began to infiltrate “Easy Listening” music around 1959. They secretly funded many favorite artists as a way to bolster American global dominance & replace European classical music with Muzak. Many "Easy Listening" artists reflected American colonialism in their Hawaiian or Polynesian imagery. The CIA saw potential for weaponized sound in Erik Satie’s Vexations, an infamous piano piece that repeats a simple phrase 840 times, requiring 3 days to perform... One member of the Edith Piaf Fan Club (a romantic graffiti collective) with a toothache is turned into ethereal gas by a dentist. An X-Ray tech tries to break the news, and now investigative journalists are searching for the missing records. As human dogs walk the inverted world, only the Living Newspapers, swaying like trees in a park, have the chance to remember the whole story on their paper pulp bodies.

‍Matthew Thurber is a cartoonist and filmmaker based in NYC. He is the author of 1-800-MICE, INFOMANIACS, Art Comic, Looking For The Cat. He has performed at the Serpentine Gallery UK, Hammer Museum LA, and had a 2 person drawing show with William Wegman in 2017. Thurber’s films Fleegix (2019), The Sea Masons (2021), and Vexations (2024) are feature length narratives on 16mm, manifesting as performances. Mrs William Horsley is a cinema “band” in which the films, made in a role playing game process, are projected in ritual performance.

Hell by Gabriel Achilles Bellone - brand new short film with live score by Suburbanabuse (Gabriel & friends)

Friday October 31 * doors at 7, movie at 7:30 * In the backyard * Free / donations * RSVP

Please join us for a Halloween screening of Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922). We will watch a 16mm print courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.

Live musical accompaniment by two all-star ensembles in collaboration:

Umbilicus is an experimental percussion quartet from Baltimore. Playing bells: Tom Goldstein, Paul Neidhardt, Shelly Purdy, and Will Redman.

Satellite is a DC-based improvising ensemble hovering in the orbits of jazz-based traditions. Zach Dixon (sax), Nelson Dougherty (guitar), Will Tober (bass).

Thursday October 2 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Jayden Barber is an experimental sound artist, composer, and award-winning filmmaker from Providence, Rhode Island. Barber experiments heavily with large, exposed tape loops and granular synthesis. The ritualistic atmosphere and sonic intensity of his work is documented on Live at All Saints’ Memorial Church, the first-ever night of experimental music held in the historic 19th-century Providence landmark. Barber has shared the stage with artists such as Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails, Mute Records), Benoît Pioulard (Kranky Records), Daedelus, and was featured in Italy’s Radioaktiv as one of the hottest names in the international experimental scene, in praise of his EP Border Shift.

In Order Not To Be Here is an uncompromising look at the ways privacy, safety, convenience and surveillance determine our environment. Shot entirely at night, the film confronts the hermetic nature of white-collar communities, dissecting the fear behind contemporary suburban design. An isolation-based fear (protect us from people not like us). A fear of irregularity (eat at McDonalds, you know what to expect). A fear of thought (turn on the television). A fear of self (don’t stop moving). By examining evacuated suburban and corporate landscapes, the film reveals a peculiarly 21st century hollowness… an emptiness born of our collective faith in safety and technology. This is a new genre of horror movie, attempting suburban locations as states of mind.

Thursday September 4 7pm $10-20 * TICKETS

Rhizome DC and Filament present the second edition of A Night of Moving Images, a juried showcase of short film and video from the DMV. The screening will take place at Rhizome DC on Thursday, September 4 at 7:00 PM followed by a conversation with the selected artists. Prints of the films will be screened when possible.

The selected artists are: Gabriel Achilles Bellone, Adam Beuttler, Taylor Elise Colimore, Danielle d'Amico, Jeremy Drummond, Alexander Fingrutd, Brice Goldberg, Eva Grandoni, Jo Jovel, Nick Karpinski, Jessie Kraemer, William Love IV, Alex Menick, Mishkh, Sara El Moustakim, Vasilios Papaioannu, and Natasha Woods.

Wednesday August 6 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Jeff Krulik: Official Junk Collector is a business card created in Jeff Krulik’s 7th grade shop class. Over 50 years later, it’s still an accurate job title, and also the name for this evening’s program, a workshop of new video content, rumination on narration, and pondering thought balloons that may be part of an upcoming documentary presentation in early 2026. See and hear Jeff do his best to share what is swirling around his head on this new project, featuring Jeff’s 25-year plus relationship with a sometimes brilliant, sometimes deranged character. But who really is the deranged one in this mirror image journey?

Washington DC-based director/producer Jeff Krulik has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, the American Film Institute and on PBS. His resume includes work for Errol Morris, Discovery Networks, and National Geographic Channel. His commissioned work includes a one-hour documentary on carnival sideshow history for The Travel Channel. Krulik is also co-producer of cult documentary 'Heavy Metal Parking Lot' which was turned into a reality TV series for pop culture network TRIO called Parking Lot.' Other documentaries include ‘Tales of Belair at Bowie’, ‘Led Zeppelin Played Here’, 'Hitler's Hat,' 'Ernest Borgnine on the Bus,' and the award winning 'I Created Lancelot Link.' In 2008, he produced the Emmy Award-winning documentary Eatin' Crabs for Maryland Public Television's Chesapeake Bay Week.

Thursday July 3 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Are you having a hard time finding something to celebrate this July? Then join us at Rhizome July 3 to have fun celebrating the resilience of the American people as we screen a hodgepodge of films tangentially related to the holiday. Bring something to make music or noise! We want you to participate! We will also have films by Rebecca Reynolds, poems by Jasper Swartz and musical accompaniment by Mary-Victoria Voutsas and Robert DiLutis.

Thursday June 5 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Liz Downing: Shadow Mother is psychotherapy by way of Toy Theater with voice, banjo, and puppetry. The setting is the dark, infinite land of the Id. One puppet is "Self" who speaks and the other is “Shadow Mother,” who sings. 

Alicia Puglionesi and Carrie Fucile: Circles In Absolute Night is the story of descending into a cave with spoken word, live sound, and projected video. Why do we put faith in false promises and what is it like to be a rock? We will shed light on these questions.

Erik Ruin: All That Is Solid is an audio-visual environment that layers/juxtaposes quietly transcendentalist video observations of everyday life alongside hand-drawn animations and cut paper projections. A series of reckonings with the state of the state, the self, society, the environment, the interpenetration and complicity of them/us all. Live musical accompaniment by Jamal Moore, Nate Scheible, & Jeff Barsky.

Thursday May 1 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Screening music videos directed for Joey Bada$$, Mick Jenkins, DRAM & Lil Yachty, Foster the People, Honestav, and more. Also screening a collection of personal work and unreleased film excerpts, and his recent short film The Burger which premiered at Beyond Fest 2024. Stay for a discussion with the filmmaker following the screening.

Nathan R. Smith is a director, writer, and editor from Washington, DC. His career as a filmmaker began when he directed the viral music video for DRAM & Lil Yachty’s song “Broccoli,” which received two MTV Video Music Award nominations. Since that time, he has directed videos for artists such as Joey Bada$$, Mick Jenkins, Ali Gatie, Juice WRLD, Foster the People, and many others. His video "Temptation" for Joey Bada$$ premiered at the Sundance Next Fest, and his first short film "The Burger" recently had its world premiere at Beyond Fest 2024.

Wednesday April 9 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

M. Woods (He/Him/They/Them) is a multidisciplinary artist implementing avant-garde strategies under the studio name “Disassociative Productions”. M is a first-generation US citizen, born to a Costa-Rican/Ecuadorian mother. M uses immersive time-based spectacle and constructed trances to navigate the internalized socio-political topographies of addiction, mental and physical disability, malignant nihilism, and white supremacy. M’s work deconstructs the post-911 acceleration of hyperrealism and (media)drug dependency, documenting the spread of solipsism in a media environment dominated by corporate neo-fascism.

Commodity Trading: Dies Irae, 2022, HD video, 87 minutes

COMMODITY TRADING: DIES IRAE is a cinematic document chronicling the infectious American nightmare circa 2015-2020. When properly projected, this premium grade Media Rx induces trance states, priming the audience for the infiltration of the Numb Spiral. Using hyper media collage of digital and analog sources, this Disassociative production is best taken sober and in the dark. You are already in a hallucinatory zone of pure nothingness.

Thursday April 3 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

The featured short films investigate absent persons, missing knowledge, and impossible subject positions, laying bare the devastation—and enduring potential—of that which is unrealized, unreconciled, and unlived. Incorporating a range of traditional celluloid filmmaking techniques, the films enmesh the poetic and the mundane, always operating with acute self-awareness and an unswerving commitment to a forbidding formal logic.

A. Moon is a Baltimore-based experimental filmmaker working with small-gauge, “amateur” technologies and found footage whose work has screened nationally and internationally over the past 25 years. Inspired by the goals and methods of political modernism, the cinematic avant-garde and feminist filmmaking of the 1970s, her work is intended to offer a corrective to the images and narratives of commercial media.  She has been the recipient of awards from the Princess Grace Foundation and numerous film festivals.  In recent years, she has also been a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow, a fellow with the Center for Asian American Media, and the recipient of grants from Maryland State Arts Council, Baltimore City Mayor’s Office, the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.

Wednesday March 5 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are pleased to present an evening of films by Joanna Raczynska, who will be present for a discussion with the audience following the screening.

Based in Baltimore, film programmer Joanna Raczynska organizes screenings and time-based media artist presentations for the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2009-present). She has worked with a variety of non-profit organizations including Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. She has served as a juror for many international film festivals including Animator, Poznan, Poland; Berwick, U.K.; Images, Toronto, Canada; and Oberhausen, Germany, and participated with a variety of funding agencies including the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts in their allocation of funding. Joanna earned her master’s degree in documentary by practice, Royal Holloway College, University of London (2001), attended classes in film at University of Maryland Baltimore County, and earned a BA in English Literature and Women’s Studies from University of Maryland College Park.

Thursday February 6 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Presenting short video works by students from American University's film program. The filmmakers will be in attendance for a Q&A following the screening. Films by: Lila Delaronde, Lilia Mitchell, E. Taemin Kim, Sarah Ebsworth, Tristan Au, Cody McLeod Rogers, Sara El Moustakim, Clare Miller & Will Gounaris, Shu-Tong Murray.

Thursday January 9 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are pleased to present an evening of films by O.Funmilayo Makarah, who will be present for a discussion with the audience following the screening.

O.Funmilayo Makarah is an award-winning filmmaker, installation artist, curator, media activist and educator from Los Angeles. She uses experimental and documentary conventions to intertwine social, political, and economic concerns with issues of history, gender, race, and identity. She is a member of the acclaimed LA Rebellion filmmaking movement, worked for the Berlin Film Festival and is the founder and Executive Director of Heritage Film Festival, a Maryland-based festival celebrating its 20th year in 2025.

Thursday December 5 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Earlier this Fall, Rhizome put out an open call for film and video submissions, and in response offered 4 micro-grants to local filmmakers working to complete short experimental films. Please join us to view the films (either completed or works-in-progress), along with earlier short films by the filmmakers and two runners-up. 

Micro-grant recipients: 
Amelia Mylvaganam
Andrew Tamburrino
Jade McCartney Arzu
Penny de la Calle

Runner-up:
Donavon Brutus

Thursday November 7 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are excited to present an evening of short experimental films by members of our current microcinema curatorial team: Alex Atienza, Pat Doyen, Rebecca Reynolds, and Vinny Terlizzi. Followed by Q&A with the filmmakers. Screening order to be determined.

Alexander Philip Atienza is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. He has an MFA from the University of Southern California, where he studied film and television production, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied cognitive science and philosophy.

Pat Doyen makes, preserves, programs and writes about films and other media arts. She works independently and as part of the Arsenic Cookie Film Collective in Baltimore, MD. By day she is a film archivist with a passion for home movies and orphan films. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and she has taught hand processing and filmmaking workshops for both children and adults. She is a contributor to "The DIY Guide to Film & Video" published by Parcell Press and editor of the book "Hell Yeah! Heavy Metal Parking Lot @ 30".

Rebecca Reynolds uses cinematic "parlor tricks" to construct and pervert systems of logic with surreal and provocative imagery. Ideas are played out through uncanny juxtapositions within a divided frame, created with 16mm Bolex camera and matte box. She is currently experimenting with phytogram image-making on 16mm and 35mm film.

Vinny Terlizzi - My work explores themes of perception, memory, and transformation, to reconsider the familiar. I use a mix of 16mm original negative, digital video, found footage, and visual effects to create new works. My process is driven by a fascination with how images, shapes and sounds can be deconstructed and reassembled, using repetition, color manipulation, digital glitches, and other effects to evoke something entirely new. I’m interested in reimagining the familiar and pushing the boundaries of footage while maintaining a sense of engagement.

Thursday October 31 * doors at 7, movie at 7:30 * In the backyard * Free / donations * RSVP

Please join us for a Halloween screening of Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922). We will watch a 16mm print courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Live improvised soundtrack by Novparolo.

Novparolo creates cinematic scores for films which haven’t even been made yet, but which just through their sonic grace conjure a thousand images...It is chamber-synth-pop, but with gentle, futuristic electronica replacing the more traditional sounds and beats which seem only to guide and structure rather than drive the music.

Friday September 27 * 7pm * Free / donations * RSVP

Rhizome DC and Filament present A Night of Moving Images, a juried showcase of thirteen experimental digital and 16 mm short films by DC area filmmakers selected from the Fall 2024 Film and Video Open Call. The screening will feature a conversation with the selected artists followed by a performance by Providence-based A/V artist Jayden Barber. 16 mm prints of the films will be screened when possible.

The selected artists are Jillian Banner, Gabriel Achilles Bellone, Mark Burchick, Tushar Gidwani, CJ Hibbeln, Anna Hogg, Vasilios Papaioannu, Adrien Picquenot, Nathan R. Smith, Erik Sutch, Andrew Tamburrino, Timothy Wisniewski, and Tara Youngborg.

Filament is a new screening initiative building a community for independent film in DC. The Film & Video Open Call is organized by Alexander Atienza with film projection capabilities generously provided courtesy Osheen Keshishian.

Thursday August 1 * doors at 8, films at sunset (~8:30pm) * outside * FREE RSVP

Join us for a screening of 16mm experimental films by various artists, projected outside. Sound will be via FM radio headsets - radios with headphones will be provided, or feel free to bring a radio and headphones of your own.

Thursday May 2 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

We are pleased to welcome James June Schneider for a screening of The End Of The Light Age (aka 1,2,3 Whiteout) (2007) followed by Q&A.

Produced by Sphairos Productions (USA), La Huitième compagnie (France)
(2007, 16mm, color, 75 min, USA / France)
Starring Karine Adrover and Lou Castel

"This 'tone-poem' for darkness' mixes amazing scenes with diverse archive footage, an exceptional sci-fi sensibility and incredible soundscapes to form a blissfully imaginative retro-futuristic creation." - Leeds Intl. film festival, 2007

Thursday March 7 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Our microcinema program continues its focus on DC filmmakers this month with a collection of short films by Pam Kray. She has exhibited in the United States and internationally through numerous solo screenings and festival participation and has collaborated artistically with film and video makers, audio composers, painters, sculptors, and dancers.

Tentative program:

1. Six Degrees of High Plains Drifter (2011, 14 min., orig mini-dv)
2. Sanctuary: Last of the Artists (2003, 5 min., orig mini-dv)
3. Virtually Certain (2006, 5 min., orig mini-dv: 3-in-1 screen) OR
ALTERNATIVELY
Wanna Bet (2006, 10 min, orig mini-dv)
4. Small Town Dr. So and So (1993, 8 min., orig S-8)
5. Intermission 10-12 min OR not
6. Waiting For Godard teaser (2018, 10 min, digital)
7. Mushroom Seekers excerpt (2023/2002, 10-12 min., orig mini-dv)
8. Piss Mission (1990, 9 min, orig S-8)
9. Penis Puppets (1987, 12 min, orig S-8)

Thursday February 1 * 7pm * $10-20 sliding scale * TICKETS

We are excited to feature two films by Paul Bishow - CINEMA OF REVENGE and LAST ARTHOUSE ON THE LEFT - followed by Q&A with Paul Bishow.

Paul Bishow is an experimental filmmaker who along with fellow filmmakers Pierre DeVeaux and Pam Kray founded I AM EYE, a film forum dedicated to showing films and encouraging and supporting others who do the same. All three also worked as motion picture projectionists in Washington DC with IATSE local 224 projectionist union. CINEMA OF REVENGE shows union members picketing in front of The Key Theater on Wisconsin Ave. and the dismantling and removing of a wheel boot of car. The Biograph Theater was indeed the The Last Arthouse on the Left. It was located at 2819 M street in NW DC. The film is an intimate portrait of the last days the theater was open.

Paul Bishow moved to DC in the mid-70s. He has since made dozens of films, both feature-length and short subject, mostly in Super-8 format. They range from the film essay Anarchy and Chaos Prelude, DC to Bad Brains (1979) to the feature fiction film It’s a Wonderful Horrible Life (2001). Many DC punk bands have appeared in his films. Footage from his films has appeared many docs, including Don Lett’s Punk Attitude and Mandy Stein’s Bad Brains, Band in DC (2012). Paul was a member of the “I Am Eye” Film Forum, which ran an underground film series from 1982-1997. He (along with Sam Lavine and James June Schneider) was part of the team that made Punk the Capital (2019) about the DC music scene in the 1980s.