2026 Dates and Guests

Courtney Stephens is the director of four feature films.The American Sector (with Pacho Velez) documents slabs of the Berlin Wall installed around the US. Terra Femme, composed of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic’s pick and has toured widely as a live performance. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office(with Michael Almereyda) explores the life of neuroscientist and psychedelics pioneer John C. Lilly, and Invention is a hybrid fiction film about an esoteric healing device. Both The American Sector and Invention were named among The New Yorker‘s best films of the year. Her work been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Fondazione Prada, Jeu de Paume, ICA London, the Performa Biennial, The Academy Museum, and film festivals including the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Locarno, Viennale, New Directors/New Films, IDFA, Visions Du Réel, Hong Kong, and the New York Film Festival. Her work has been released theatrically in the US, UK, and France and she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and grants from the Sloan Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. 

She has co-curated the miniature cinema Veggie Cloud since 2014, and organized film programs for The Getty, Museum of the Moving Image, Flaherty NYC, and Human Resources. Her writing has appeared in Film Comment, BOMB, Filmmaker, The New Inquiry, and Cabinet.

Ana Vaz is an artist & filmmaker whose films, installations & performances speculate upon the relationships between myth & history, self & other through a cosmology of references & perspectives. Assemblages of found & shot materials, her films combine ethnography & speculation in exploring the f(r)ictions imprinted upon cultivated & savage environments. A graduate from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology & Le Fresnoy, Ana was also a member of the SPEAP (School of Political Arts), a project directed by Bruno Latour. Recent screenings of her work include the NYFF, TIFF, Courtisane, Cinéma du Réel (Grand Prix) & specific focuses dedicated to her work at the Flaherty Seminar (USA) and Doc’s Kingdom (Portugal). Her work has featured in major group shows such as the Moscow Biennial of Young Art & the Dhaka Art Summit. In 2015, she received the Kazuko Trust Award presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in recognition of artistic excellence and innovation in her moving-image work.

Trương Minh Quý (Vietnam, 1990) creates films at the intersection of documentary and fiction. He graduated from Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts in France, in 2021. His narratives and images balance the personal and the impersonal and draw on the landscape of his homeland, childhood memories, and the history of Vietnam. His films have been selected for international film festivals and exhibitions such as Cannes, Berlinale, Locarno, IFFR and the New York Film Festival. Việt and Nam (2024) premiered at Cannes and was selected for Un Certain Regard. His latest film Tóc, Giấy và Nước… [Hair, Paper, Water…] (2025), a sensorial and poetic documentary co-directed with Nicolas Graux, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won, among other prizes, the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present competition.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who has been active since the 1990s. A multidisciplinary artist, she has directed nearly forty works that question social codes using unconventional cinematic devices. She reflects transversally on history, mythology, science, technology, and security and surveillance mechanisms.

Between documentary essay and experimental cinema, Stratman’s films present dense research and function through free association. The result is poetic and free-flowing works that are not without a systematic political relationship to reality.

Deborah Stratman’s work has been presented internationally at prestigious venues such as the Whitney Biennial, MOMA, and the Centre Georges-Pompidou. Her films have also been widely screened at most major international festivals. She is currently an associate professor at the School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner are artists, filmmakers and writers. Their collaborative work has been presented globally, including at the  Berlinale, Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, Courtisane, EXiS Seoul film festivals, CAC Vilnius, Los Angeles Filmforum, Museum of the Moving Image NY, Transmediale, Sonic Acts, Berlin Atonal and Impakt Festivals, the Moscow Young Art and Wroclaw Media Art biennales, the Baltic Triennial and was featured on the Criterion Channel. Their films have won numerous awards including the Silvestre Best Short Film at IndieLisboa and Best Short Documentary at Guanajuato Film Festival. They are the authors of All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film (Sonic Acts Press: 2021). Beny Wagner is currently a PhD candidate at the Archaeologies of Media and Technology Research Group at Winchester School of Art, and was a researcher at Jan van Eyck Academy in 2015-6. Sasha Litvintseva is a senior lecturer in film at Queen Mary University of London, and holds a PhD in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths

sashalitvintseva.com , benywagner.com