​Ticket minimum $5, suggested $25. Please consider paying more to help our participating filmmakers continue their artistic practice!

​You’ve probably heard that the divisive and isolating time we’re living in right now is historic, unprecedented, and wholly new. But to what extent is that true, if at all? The Solidarity Short Film Series attempts to intervene mainstream, one-dimensional narratives of isolation, apathy, and severance by showcasing ways that individuals and groups of people relate across self, nationality, time, history, race, sexuality, religion, gender, and other demarcations of fragmentation.

​Through the lenses of racial justice, transcontinental identity, intergenerational kinship, queer and feminist empowerment, pro-Palestine advocacy, historical interrogation, and consciousness-raising through firsthand storytelling, this Short Film Series features artists who ponder, confront, action, and represent some of the many dimensions of what “Solidarity” means today.

​12:30PM : Doors open. Water and light food will be available throughout the day.

​12:50PM : Opening Remarks

​SECTION 1: Unrestful Ghosts

​BEGIN AT 1PM* SHARP

​*Start times for subsequent films and panel are estimated to allow for transition time between acts.

​The first section of the SOLIDARITY SHORT FILM SERIES features works that contemporaneously retell the past through interjection, imagination, and reclamation. These films pose a series of critical, inquisitive questions: How can we possibly honor the largeness of life and severity of suffering of our forebears? How can we cope with the knowledge of their tragedies, recognizing that their sacrifices were made for their survival and afforded our own modern-day presences and privileges? How can we create a more expansive, equitable, and embodied future through personal recognition and historical confrontation? How can we recognize our inheritance of injustice and anguish whilst maintaining hope for a better tomorrow?

​1PM: MLK & Beyond, Directed by GOODW.Y.N

​You cannot ERASE OUR PAST with WHITEWASH. WE WON'T ALLOW YOU TO.

​GOODW.Y.N.(she/they) is an Interdisciplinary Artist and Writer living and working in New York, New York. Her work spans different techniques all to arrive at the intersection between Public Art and Social Justice.

​1:15PM: DEAD MARCH TO PARADISE, Directed by Evelyn Cao

​DEAD MARCH TO PARADISE is an experimental film about the first Chinese women to immigrate to San Francisco in the latter half of the 19th century.

​Evelyn Cao (they/them) a filmmaker and fine artist, a recent graduate from RISD with a BFA in Film/Animation/Video. They make experimental films about the relationships between body and land; self and other; past history and the present. They made this film, “DEAD MARCH TO PARADISE”, to acknowledge and reconcile with the unresolved history of the first Chinese women who immigrated to America. Their twin sibling, Alison Cao, stars as the protagonist. Instagram: @saltinthesea

​1:45PM: A Litany for Survival, Directed by Simona Andrioletti

​Canti delle donne in lotta is an album released in 1975 by the feminist movement in Rome, Italy. Five FLINTA* singers — Mavi Phoenix, Lucrezia, Fitza, Gündalein, and Francamente — give the songs new life and meaning through contemporary feminist and queer perspectives by performing in architectural sites that celebrated the fascist ideal of the white athletic, virile man. Across the Olympiastadion and Olympia-Schwimmstadion in Berlin, the Stadio dei Marmi and Piscina dei Mosaici in Rome, and the Haus der Kunst in Munich, each performance becomes an act of resistance, transforming spaces of oppression into sites of empowerment, visibility, and reclamation.

​Simona Andrioletti (she/they) is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in research and explores social and institutional structures through immersive installations, video, writing, and music. Her work investigates socio-political activism, systemic violence, and psychological defense mechanisms, with a particular focus on the experiences of marginalized communities, especially within the FLINTA* community. Through a transfeminist and intersectional perspective, she explores gender-based violence, identity, and the structural conditions that shape different experiences of vulnerability and exclusion. Her works reflect on solidarity, resilience, and collective forms of resistance. Instagram: @simona.andrioletti

​2:15-3:15PM: Conversation + Public Q&A

​3:15-4PM: Intermission/Social Hour

​SECTION 2: Restless Bodies

​BEGIN AT 4PM* SHARP

​*Start times for subsequent films and panel are estimated to allow for transition time between acts.

​The second section of the SOLIDARITY SHORT FILM SERIES features works that force us to confront how seemingly-bygone systems of inequity, division, and oppression are vividly experienced today. These films provoke a series of uniquely existential questions: Burdened by intergenerational, intersocietal, intersectional pains from plexuses of domination that in so many ways feel inescapable and overwhelming, how do we live? How can we overcome the past when it is anything but, when the sorrows of yesteryear are simply modernized, rebranded versions of what has always been experienced? If storytelling is a driver of educational activism, empathic connection, and collective action, what more can we do from here?

​4PM: I'm an Artist of Life, Directed by Yifan Liu

​A young college student who’s a vlogger on the side and recently moved to New York lives in a state of political depression shaped by constant exposure to online information. The film stays close to her hyper-awareness and her need to step away, tracing overanalysis, performance, and detachment as digital habits, nightlife, and meditation all take on the same role as ways of coping.

​Yifan Liu (she/her) is an artist working across video, movement, image, and paper. Her practice engages with gender politics, diasporic experience, and the mediation of information. She is particularly drawn to the ways moving images cultivate affective and seductive relationships to stories. She is currently pursuing a BFA in Film/Animation/Video and Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Instagram: @uilnafiy

​4:10PM : Surrendered, Directed by Marie-Josée Desharnais

​This experimental short explores psychological pressure, dissociation, memory, and survival through fragmented imagery, restrained narration, sound, and embodied perception.

​MJ Desharnais (she/her) is a Filipina-Canadian documentary filmmaker, writer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Montréal. Her work moves between experimental documentary, sound, archives, and embodied forms of storytelling, exploring memory, dissociation, adoption, diasporic identity, and survival. “Surrendered” (2025) has screened in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, receiving nominations for Best Experimental Documentary and the Experimental Vision Award at the 2026 Atlanta Experimental Fest. She is currently developing her first feature-length documentary, Weaving Identity (2025–2028). Instagram: @desmjz , @weavingidentityfilm

​4:15PM: My Mother's Keeper, Directed by Taj Kokayi

​Black women have taken care of our community for centuries, but they experience disproportionate pregnancy and birthing issues. Maternal mortality is much more than a surface-level issue. If my mother is everyone else’s keeper, then who is My Mother’s Keeper?

​Taj Kokayi (he/him) is an artist-activist who strives to tell stories that will usher in the Melanin Renaissance. In 2020, his Afrofuturistic experimental short “Woken From A Dream” was selected to 15 international festivals, winning awards including Best Experimental and Best VFX. His follow-up film, “White Mirror”, was a Twilight Zone style sci-fi that won awards including Best of Fest, Audience Award, and Best Short Screenplay. He moved to New York to work at The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, before becoming an NBC Page, working at The Tonight Show, Focus Features, and SNL. In 2024, he was a Quarter-finalist for the Black Boy Writes Mentorship Initiative. Now, he runs an independent production company, Ninth Floor, of young creatives who strive to create opportunities for themselves. Instagram: @tajkokayi

​4:25PM: this film was made by an outside agitator, Directed by Leo Koulish

​“This film was made by an outside agitator” is an essay depicting the events that led up to two students year-long political suspension from NYU post-2024 and the Gaza Solidarity Encampments. It is an attempt to remember.

​Leo Koulish (he/him) is an artist from Baltimore, MD. He makes work about the institutional violence that he and his loved ones endure in their daily lives. He loves to cook, listen to music, and hang out with his friends and his partner. Leo has a chihuahua and a tuxedo cat. Instagram: @pumpkinbanana.dog

​4:40PM: Ep.11: No to Discrimination, Directed by Ho Bin Kim

​Ho Bin Kim captures a hip-hop lecture performance by a 3rd generation Zainichi-Korean Rapper, Funi, done at Woori-Madang, a community of Zainichi-Korean grandmothers come to sing, learn, and hang out with one another. Funi raps about his childhood, facing racism and discrimination in Japan, yet he chose to use music as a guide to release his frustration and uses it as a medium to bring awareness not only about the systematic issues in Japan, but also around the world.

​Ho Bin Kim (he/him) is a novelist and multidisciplinary artist working across video, performance, and installation. His practice explores migration, diaspora, displacement through media and institutional systems, with a particular focus on residency structures and global art infrastructures. Moving between literature and visual art, he approaches all mediums as extensions of narrative inquiry. He is currently developing the long-term project Reality Sandwich, an ongoing, subaltern, place-responsive video series that unfolds through performative encounters with artists across diverse geographies. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 15th Gwangju Biennale German Pavilion, the 2nd Seoul Art & Tech Festival, the 7th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, 22nd Jecheon International Music and Film Festival, and the 24th Forum Film Dokumenter. Instagram: @ho_bin_kim

​5:10-6:10PM: Conversation + Public Q&A

​Accent Sisters closes at 8pm. People are free to stay and mingle as long as they want to until then!

​Accent Sisters has bathrooms and an elevator available on-site.