A scene from Durham filmmaker Josh Gibson's “Light Plate,” a lush meditation on pasta making and magic hour light in Italy. Josh is a Lecturing Fellow in the Arts of the Moving Image Program at Duke University.
Every movie featured in the Strange Beauty Film Festival has one requirement: that it is strangely beautiful, beautifully strange or some combination thereof.
Festival organizers Joyce Ventimiglia and Jim Haverkamp have mixed fiction, documentary, experimental, animation, underground and works that can't possibly be defined to create a, well, you know, beautifully strange lineup.
"Strangeness is literally the bread and butter of our culture," Joyce says. "Our culture consumes more strangeness than any other culture in the world. You can look it up."
The festival includes both local and worldwide filmmakers, with six representing Durham and Chapel Hill. You can check out the entire lineup and complete list of artists here, and catch a preview of the festival in the attached video.
Some festival highlights include Durham Cinematheque's Tom Whiteside presenting archival explorations accompanied by the live instrumental band Arrows Out Friday, Jan. 25 at 8:15pm and The Strange Beauty Aural Fixation, the popular all-audio listening session curated by Durham audio producer and writer Jennifer Deer Saturday, Jan. 26 at 8:15pm. Audiences get to experience a mélange of cutting-edge audio art, documentary and experimental works in a dark room.
The fourth annual Strange Beauty Film Festival runs from Jan. 24-26, and is hosted at Manbites Dog Theater on Foster Street. Tickets, both for individual days and full festival passes, can be bought through this link.
