SEEN/UNSEEN: Oklahoma Contemporary serving up eclectic experimental film festival

From a a live cinema event incorporating music, narration and film to an abstract scratch film made by laser etching abstract patterns onto the film itself, Kim Voynar has prepared an eclectic experimental film feast for her hometown.

“Oklahomans, we like our buffets, right? A little bit of this, a little taste of that, a little bit of vegetables but not too much,” said Voynar, an Oklahoma City native who last year received deadCenter Film’s Oklahoma Film Icon award. “I wanted to make it a well-balanced diet.”

Voynar is the curator for SEEN/UNSEEN: A Festival of Experimental Film, a new showcase of experimental and avant-garde filmmaking styles set for Thursday-Saturday at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center’s State Fair Park location.

“I think it’s important for a city like Oklahoma City, especially one that is currently undergoing kind of a renaissance of art (and) culture right now, to have exposure to different kinds of cinema," she said.

SEEN/UNSEEN will show nearly 40 experimental films, including a free family-friendly block on Saturday afternoon, and feature visiting filmmakers Vanessa Renwick, Sabine Gruffat and Brent Green as well as musician Brendan Canty of punk-rock band Fugazi.

"The way that we understand film is a pretty narrow slice of what the medium can be and what it can do. If you look at the way we receive film, it’s really a two-hour, 2 ½-hour, three-act structure narrative film, usually about one character’s arc. ... But really, the medium itself is extremely malleable. It’s just as malleable as painting or sculpting is; you can do lots of different things with it,” said Oklahoma Contemporary Artistic Director Jeremiah Matthew Davis.

“So, I do think as a contemporary arts center, one of the core missions we have is to expand people’s understanding of what art is and what it can do.”

Array of possibilities

Davis said he favors a broad definition for “experimental film”: any film or filmmaker pushing the boundary of the medium or introducing new techniques, new ideas and new styles.

“There are non-narrative, very visually-driven works that are part of it, there are works that are using color or composition in fresh and exciting ways, and there are also films combining different styles, different forms and also new ways of telling stories,” he said. “Many people might encounter that title ‘experimental’ and want to run the other way, but I think this is a really fun and inviting slate.”

A former film critic, Voynar is now CEO and chief imaginator of WonderTek Lab, a Seattle-based creative producing partner in VR/360 storytelling and digital contemporary art. For SEEN/UNSEEN, she wanted to offer a slate that would be engaging to both experimental film newcomers and established fans of the art form.

“There are a lot of really cool ways to tell stories that aren’t traditional narratives, and there’s a lot of ways that film and video as a media can be used as a moving canvas,” she said.

Foundational and emerging

The slate for SEEN/UNSEEN will include groundbreaking 20th-century filmmakers like Sara Kathryn Arledge, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage along with current established and emerging artists.

Each night will have a theme and a special guest. “Cinematic Disruption” on Thursday will culminate in a Renwick retrospective, followed by a discussion between the Portland, Oregon-based filmmaker and Voynar.

The Friday night slate, titled “Breathing Room,” will feature a showcase of films by and a discussion with Gruffat, who sometimes uses film as a literal canvas, as with her “Framelines,” an abstract scratch film she made by laser etching abstract patterns on the film emulsion of negative and positive 35 mm film.

The “Animation as Art”-theme Saturday will include an afternoon block of free family-friendly screenings, followed by the ticketed evening slate recommended for teenage and adult viewers. The festival finale will be Green’s “A Brief Spark Bookended by Darkness,” an hourlong live-cinema experiment.

“Brent performs this story and the soundtrack to his animations, with Brendan Canty of Fugazi as his musical accompanist. Brent has this very kind of kinetic, gothic storytelling style that’s very riveting,” Voynar said. “I’m really excited to present this program.”

GOING ON

SEEN/UNSEEN: A Festival of Experimental Film

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday.

Where: Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 3000 General Pershing Blvd.

Tickets: $15 each Thursday and Friday and $25 Saturday; a three-day pass is $40.

Free family-friendly program: 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Tickets and information: oklahomacontemporary.org.