Prismatic Ground festival in New York City runs for its sixth year and uses four separate waves to foreground global voices in contemporary avant-garde film. The founder and programmer likens curating to conducting music or slaloming, aiming to let viewers trace connections among programmed films. The festival’s opening feature debut, I Heard That They Are Not Going to See Each Other Anymore, follows two pairs of lovers: a filmmaker documenting or recreating her volatile relationship with her boyfriend, and a Turkish vendor whose melancholy draws him toward a kindred spirit. Improvisation during production gives the film a slippery, iterative momentum. The film blends neorealism, silent comedy, and essay-film elements into a meditation on how moving images transform intimacy and pain, though digressions sometimes overwhelm central themes.
"In its sixth year, New York City's Prismatic Ground festival doesn't show any signs of rote predictability. Founder and programmer Inney Prakash has used the festival, which most recently took place from April 29 through May 3, to foreground global voices in the contemporary avant-garde. He likens his curatorial process to "conducting a piece of music or slaloming down a mountain," but otherwise prefers to let the viewer parse threads and connections between the films he programs across four separate waves."
"Opening the festival with a buoyant, even insouciant flourish, I Heard That They Are Not Going to See Each Other Anymore is Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Ka Ki's feature debut. Building off the metatextual whimsy of her shorts, including A Shrimp's Daily Rehearsal (which also screened in this year's Prismatic Ground), Wong follows the travails of two pairs of lovers: a filmmaker (Tao) whose volatile relationship with her boyfriend (Shin) is documented (or perhaps recreated) in copious amounts of footage, and a Turkish vendor (Mehli) whose perpetual melancholy attracts him to a kindred spirit (Ping)."
"Wong's methodology of improvisation during production imbues the film's slippery nature with alternately iterative and wayward momentum. At its best, Wong mixes the generic signatures of neorealism, silent comedy, and essay film into an unapologetically distinct meditation on the moving image's transfiguration of intimacy and pain. Yet its flashes of poignant reflexivity are overwhelmed by digressions which feel more like affectations than developments of the central themes."
Read at Filmmaker Magazine
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