Name: THE CAT LANDS ON ALL FOURS: SOME MOVING IMAGE WORKS BY KERRY LAITALA
Start: 2026-02-09T19:00:00-06:00
Location: FilmScene (on The Ped Mall)

THE CAT LANDS ON ALL FOURS: SOME MOVING IMAGE WORKS BY KERRY LAITALA

Kerry Laitala is an award-winning moving-image artist who uses analog, digital, and hybrid forms to investigate the ways in which media influences past and present culture with work that resides at the crossroads of science, history, and technology. This survey of her unique approach to expanded cinema traces an evolving inquiry into material film practices, perception, and the social and psychic conditions of their making. Featuring hybrid film/digital projection, live sound, 3D, and more, you can expect the unexpected.
FIRE FLY EYE
(2019, USA, 6min, 16mm)
A response to the devastating re-making of the world brought on by anthropogenic climate change and corporate "stewardship" of our natural resources. This expanded cinema work was made during the smoked filled days in San Francisco that made breathing the air difficult. It is, in essence, a ritual of reclamation in the face of overwhelming destruction, invoked through filming discarded consumer products, sifting spectacle out of catastrophe.
KNEE JERK
(2018, USA, 6 min, film/video hybrid)
This short piece responding to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings was created collaboratively with a group of students at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), including Sarah Aineb, Colleen Donovan, Daniella Parrado, Izabell Navarro Perez, Gautama Ramesh & Sequinette. This course had a modular element that provided opportunities for everyone to select certain workshops that they found most relevant to their artistic path. The students who elected to participate in this workshop all agreed to collaborate on a piece conceptualized while watching the 2018 hearings, each bringing ideas and hand manipulation to the final product.
CHROMATIC WHEELS
(2015, USA, 11 min, 16mm w/ live sound)
Pure shards of colorful light shimmer across the screen as the images are pulled through the projector like taffy in this abstract work that highlights the synthetic properties of the medium.
CONJUROR'S BOX
(2011, USA, 6 min, digital)
An amalgam of techniques in this piece evokes the shadowy beginnings of cinema. Sinuous abstractions (and a few recognizable objects) are photogrammed directly onto a filmstrip, then step-printed to introduce variations in tempo and bring emphasis to certain chance formations, as Stan Brakhage did with some of his hand-painted films.
OUT OF THE ETHER
(2004, USA, 11 min, 16mm)
Out of the Ether re-assembles disquieting images from decades-old hygiene and science films, merging them with the filmmaker’s own Bolex camerawork. It was re-photographed on the optical printer, toned and tinted to bring out pulsating hues of oozing greens and yellows.
AWAKE BUT DREAMING
(2000, 8 min, 16mm)
This completely hand processed 16mm film was shot in the Hirschgang Oberer, an extended arched hallway at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, creating the sense of an endless cyclical, dreamscape conjured up from the deep recesses of the imagination.
THE CAT LANDS ON ALL FOURS (a work in progress)
(2026, USA, 7min, 16mm)
Expect the unexpected.