Doors 7:30p
Program 8:00p
Tickets $12

UnionDocs
352 Onderdonk Ave
Ridgewood, NY

We’re delighted to join with Airtime and Speciwomen to present PORTALS IN BETWEEN, a pair of short films that dance with hybridity to experiment with time, memory and the concept of home.

We invite Aslı Baykal’s Darkroom (2023) and Kim Torres’ Solo la Luna Comprenderá (2023) into a lyrical conversation that reimagines the transportive potentials of our everyday surroundings: nature, water, corn fields, windows, children’s games, red lights, stars and the moon.

These works invite the audience to the makers’ open archives that unfold alongside their making, bringing viewers into process as it develops.

As part of this responsive approach, we are inviting a third film into the program, shifting from a singularly selected viewing experience toward a community gathering where the boundaries between maker and audience are more porous, and the night is positioned more as an evolving encounter.

In the collective spirit in which both films were made, the team behind this night decided to put forth an open call to find an additional short film that may continue and expand their dialogue. Please find the prompt below and submit a film to join the lineup if you are inspired and feel like your work is a part of this conversation.

We invite you to join us for this expansive program that offers how imagination builds resilience and to join the conversation that these films begin.

Special thanks to program partners for tonight. Airtime, and Speciwomen. This program is organized in conjunction with the Magnet Residency, a funded artist-in-residence program hosted by Speciwomen welcoming artists from outside of New York to spend time and make work in the city.

Open Call Prompt

We invite you to submit a film to be screened for this evening!

We’re requesting submissions for a hybrid film that offers a portrait of home that constructs an alternate reality to reimagine time and memory.

Please fill the form here to share your work for consideration: SUBMIT FILM

Max runtime 30 min. | Deadline April: 18th | Selected films will receive a $50 honorarium for their inclusion in the program.

Program

Solo la Luna comprenderá / The Moon Will Contain Us by Kim Torres

18 min, 2023, Costa Rica, U.S, 16mm

In the small coastal town of Manzanillo, Costa Rica, filmmaker Kim Torres enlists the local teens and adolescents to share their stories, lies, and fantasies on the cusp of a cataclysmic event. Playing amid ruins and wreckages, and voicing their boredom at the lack of change, Manzanillo’s children engage in a collective fabulation, finding strategies for building a new world from the old.
— NYFF Programming team.

Darkroom by Aslı Baykal

14 min, 2023, Turkey, U.S, 16mm

At the modern-day crossroads of Turkey and Syria, the ancient city of Istasyon is taken over by children with cameras. Through their gaze, they transform cinder block villages into portals and roam freely across abandoned train tracks to Sirkhane Darkroom, an oasis of red light and pomegranate trees, where their images are born. Darkroom is an experimental and celebratory portrait of Istasyon’s youth and their capacity to forge an alternate reality within a conflict zone. Embedded in 16mm film, a co-creation between the film crew and these photography students is a reverence for the mysterious power and intimacy of analog image-making.

Program Duration: 74 mins

Bios

Kim Torres is a Costa Rican filmmaker. Through light, gesture, and atmosphere, her work investigates questions of transformation and becoming. Working across fiction and non-fiction, her films shift in form, drawing poetry from the natural world while forming deep connections with diverse communities and landscapes. Her films have screened at Festival de Cannes, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, San Sebastian International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films at MoMA and Lincoln Center, and the Eye Filmmuseum. She was a Guest Artist at CalArts University (2022), a Berlinale Talents participant (2023), and an alumna of the Locarno Filmmakers Academy (2024).

Aslı Baykal is a Turkish filmmaker and visual artist based in New York, working between documentary and experimental forms, often blending personal narratives with collective memory. She holds a BFA in Film & TV from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her short film Darkroom (2023), co-created with children from the Sirkhane Darkroom photography workshop along the Turkish-Syrian border, premiered at MoMA Doc Fortnight and screened internationally at festivals including Visions du Réel (Doc Alliance nominee for Best Short Documentary), Camden IFF, Ji.hlava, and Dokufest. She has collaborated with musical artists such as Sampha, Nick Hakim, Nourished by Time, and Karen O. Her work has been featured in MIT Press, Taschen, and Harvard Design Magazine. In 2018, she founded the Airtime Screening Series, later expanding into Airtime Online, a global hybrid platform focusing on curated screenings and artist collaborations.

About

About Speciwomen & Magnet Residency
Speciwomen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization committed to giving space to women and LGBTQIA+ artists for retreat, research, and making. 

Magnet is a funded artist-in-residence program hosted by Speciwomen welcoming artists from outside of New York to spend time and make work in the city. Our commitment is to provide a supportive environment where artists can delve into their work with unencumbered time, developing their practice and fostering relationships. 

About Airtime
AIRTIME is an artist-run film initiative dedicated to reimagining how we experience the moving image. Founded in 2018 as a pop-up screening series and expanded in 2023 with an experimental online global platform, it presents artists whose work pushes form and opens new ways of seeing and feeling. The initiative works closely with artists, valuing collaboration and dialogue throughout the process.