2025 Festival Pre-Party

Bowery Film Festival is proud to screen the following selections:

• Clown Song

  Directed by Brady Dowad
  

  An exploration of the inability to escape our own DNA, Clown Song examines the modern masculine American dream under a darkly-comedic lens.

• Horsemaning

  Directed by Luc Leclerc
  

  Horsemaning presents a rigorously controlled study in disembodied identity: a head separated from its suit‑clad corpus delivers an algorithm‑generated rap across meticulously constructed surreal tableaux, culminating in a devastated urban panorama that interrogates the psychic fallout of contemporary conflict and the evolving dialogue between human authorship and machine formation.

• Forgiveness

  Directed by Eric Arsnow
  

  Forgiveness is a music video for the Milwaukee post-punk band Seances from the album Power Is A Phantom (2025).
  
  Following a car accident, the ghost of the passenger travels through the haunted house they reside in to find a key to resurrect their past lover.

• PARANOIA

  Directed by Aiden LaBruno
  

  A betrayed lover turns jaded and is thrown into a deep paranoia after realizing she was the other woman all along.

• Day 34

  Directed by Karen Haglof
  

  The Day 34 animated video is a meditation on events of vivid remembrance but possibly doubtful reality. A woman alone in her over-large bed watches old movies on an open laptop, ruminating on significant moments of a doomed relationship. The edges of reality loosen during fitful sleep and dozing into splintered memories and uncertainty. The video is rotoscope-based and digitally hand-drawn, using intertwining and overlapping abstract and representational images to set the mind-mood. The song Day 34 is a hard-edged and riff driven rocker with an interlude that segues to a lush and dreamy time and place, lyrics suggesting tropes of an old B movie.

• Girl Loves Me

  Directed by Anja Plaschg & Ioan Gavriel
  

  “Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.” –
George Orwell
  
  To look at the outside world from your hideout, while madness reigns around you. Emotionally in the thick of it, yet fully paralyzed and sinking into inaction. Spinning and spiraling.
A harbor, a safe place, yet a deadly prison at the same time. Does “breaking out” mean committing to the direct opposite state of being? Surrendering to the allure of chaos? Tying oneself to the unstoppable pull of destructive stimulation?
  
  Two relationship models, two spheres of consciousness, collide, leaving behind hollow shells clinging to themselves while wandering off into the dark night.
  
  We encounter a person encased in a chestnut tree. This evokes ancient mythical symbolism and metaphors, like Artemis, the goddess of the forest, who transformed herself into a chestnut tree to escape the desires of Zeus.
The tree was named “chestnut” because Artemis remained chaste. To Christians, the plant became a symbol of hidden virtue, righteousness, and honesty, while also symbolizing fertility.
George Orwell famously picked up on this in 1984, with the rebellious “chestnut-tree café” and the quote:
“Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me.” We meet a frail old man, moving and acting in strange ways. He seems to exist only as a vision, peeking outside of a tree hole. A fantasy? A ghost? There is a strong resemblance to the late David Bowie. But is it him?
Or could it be the madman from One Hundred Years of Solitude, who was tied to the said tree until he died?
  
  “Where the fuck did Monday go?
I’m cold to this pig and pug show
I’m sitting in the chestnut tree
Who the fuck’s gonna mess with me?”
 – David Bowie
  
  And finally, we race with a giant, alluring, but apocalyptic monster of steel. Smashing and flattening everything that cannot escape its enormous wheels. Never stopping, marching on and on — day and night — while carrying us with it. Ultimately, this monster will eat the tree, and the circle of life will abruptly be interrupted.

• Staircase Stomp

  Directed by Aaron Louis
  

  With “Staircase Stomp”, I set out to craft a visual narrative that echoes the tension and complexity of the song. The video transforms a storm-battered cabin into a surreal psychological space, where the male and female puppets embody the fragmented pieces of a single identity. Through tactile, inherently unsettling stop-motion animation and haunting digital imagery, the story explores the push and pull between external pressures and internal struggles, inviting the viewer into a world that feels both intimate and otherworldly.
  
  Collaborating with the incredibly talented Jody McKee and Scotty Hull was essential in bringing this vision to life. Their work added depth and nuance to the story, allowing the visuals to complement the lyrics in a way that’s as unsettling as it is introspective. My hope is that the video invites viewers to reflect on the storms we navigate within ourselves and the complex process of confronting those unseen parts of our identity.