Throughout the second half of 2024, several faculty members took their films across the country and abroad for a variety of film festivals and screenings.
Ben Balcom
Balcom’s recent work Growing Up Absurd screened several times this fall, including at the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Revolutions Per Minute Festival in Boston, and the Cactus Club International Film Festival in Milwaukee.
Sarah Ballard
Ballard had a busy Fall of screenings that took her from San Diego to Orlando and everywhere in between, as well as international screenings at Antimatter in Victoria, British Columbia, and Ribalta Experimental Film Festival in Vignola, Italy.
Notably, Ballard screened her work Heat Spells at CROSSROADS Film Festival in San Francisco. Her work was then featured in an article from 48hills, an independent San Francisco news outlet.
Ballard also screened work at the following film festivals: Otherwise Film Festival (San Diego, California), Peripheries Experimental Film and Video Festival (Chicago, Illinois), Engauge Experimental Film Festival (Seattle, Washington), TILT Movement on Film (Salt Lake City, Utah), Florida Film Festival (Orlando, Florida), Wide Open Experimental Film Festival (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), and Experiments in Cinema v19.8 (Albuquerque, New Mexico).
Jesse Malmed
Malmed had the following performances and solo exhibitions: My Incinerated Oracle Tune at Watershed Arts & Ecology (Chicago), My Arcane Dereliction Tune at The Lawn (Chicago), Togather To Gether at the National Museum of Mexican Art / Presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival (Chicago), Youou Arere Aa Lighght at Fox Den (Warren, ME).
Additionally, Malmed took part in the following group exhibitions: Yawn Sigh at Mayfield (Forest Park, IL), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Recognize That Your Name Is Already on Every Place You Place Your Feet at Patient Info (Chicago), Shades of at World of Variety (Chicago), Auto Spectacular at the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago), 69 for 69 at Side Street (Elgin, IL), Karaoke Night! at Troost Gardens with stop-gap projects (Kansas City).
Brian McGuire
McGuire’s short film Away 1973 was an official selection to screen in the highly prestigious Florence International Film Festival in Italy.
Grace Mitchell
Mitchell’s latest short film, The Year (Super 8, 2024) has recently begun screening nationally and abroad. Most recently, the film was screened at Light Matter Film Festival in Alfred, New York.
Mitchell also collaborated with filmmaker Sofia Theodore-Pierce for a film that will screen at the Wexner Center in March 2025. The filmmaking duo also attended a film residency at the Wexner Center in June and September 2024.
Yinen Wang
Following a successful Milwaukee Film Festival screening earlier this year, Wang took his work Decoupling 脱钩 throughout the rest of 2024. At the 47th Asian American International Film Festival in New York, the film received the Sikay Tang Critical Lens Award. Elsewhere, the film received an honorable mention for Best Feature at the Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival in Tampa. The film also screened at Otherwise Film Festival in San Diego, The Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Foundation, and Driftless Film Festival in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This list is as accurate and comprehensive as possible at the time of publication. If we missed a PSOA faculty member, please accept our apologies. Contact us and we’ll gladly update the article.
Story by Jason McCullum ’25