Light Leak

Nate Dorr | 2021 | 8 min 20 sec

(Possible strobe warning: gets mild-to-moderately flickery in a few scenes.)

Light is information, a signal more lasting than recollection. If there's anyone out there to receive the message.

Isolated in a sealed apartment, a lone observer regards an outside world become increasingly unreal or unreachable. Archaic illuminations, old slides and the pin-lights of the camera obscura, crawl across the walls. Connections fray. Time loses meaning. A science fictional essay film, or its inverse. A rumination on optics, memory, data, and endings.

Many thanks due to Maya Edelman, Dave Zackin, Zach Nader, and the Regional Plan Association.

Light Leak has now shown in over 30 film festivals around the world, including Cosmic Rays, Antimatter, Alchemy, and Science New Wave, and has won Best Experimental Film twice.

WORLD PREMIERE at the Imagine Science Film Festival (October 16 - 27, 2021)
Southern U.S. Premiere in opening night program "Light Leak" at Cosmic Rays (March 31, 2022)
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE in "Our Shape Apparently" at Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival (April 29, 2022)
Video installation in Frame & Frequency VIII (June 3 - August 7, 2022)
Scandanavian Premiere at Trånas at the Fringe (July 2 - 9, 2022)
ASIAN PREMIERE: Cinema in Transgression, Signs of the Night, Bangkok (July 23, 2022)
Screening in the Wild Out Video Festival, Taiwan (September 2022)
French Premiere at Signes de Nuit, Paris (October 8, 2022)
Canadian Premiere in closing program "Light Leak" at Antimatter [media art] (October 30, 2022)
Screening in "The Artists" at DocNYC (November 11, 2022)
NYC in-person premiere at Pool Party 2022 at Microscope Gallery (November 13, 2022)
Italian Premiere and Night Award mention at Segni della notte (December 2, 2022)
Best Experimental Film at the Fargo Film Festival (March 23, 2023)
Screening at Moving-Image-Arts, "Reflection", Toronto (March 30, 2023)
Latin American Premiere at Esto Es Para Esto - Exhibidora de Cine, Mexico (March 30 - April 6)
Screening at Magmart, Salerno, Italy (April 2023)
Screening in the West Virginia Mountaineer Film Festival (April 14 -16, 2023)
Screening in the Wide Open Experimental Film Festival, Oklahoma City (April 23, 2023)
Screening in the S hort Circuit Film Festival, Brighton, UK (April 27, 2023) + interview
Screening in the 23rd Coney Island Film Festival (May 6, 2023)
Screening in the 28th New Jersey Film Festival (June 4, 2023)
Screening in Video Art Miden, Kalamata, Greece (June 24, 2023)
Screening in "Watching the Dark" on Labocine (July 2023)
Screening in New Visions at the Mirror Mountain Film Festival, Ottawa (July 23, 2023)
Special Mention in Experimental and Art Film at MalatestaShort, Italy (August 1 - 4, 2023)
Screening in the Bridgeport Film Festival (September 8 - 10, 2023)
Best Experimental Film at the Desenzano Film Festival, Italy (September 14 - 17, 2023)
Screening in the 13th Bideodromo, Basque Country (October 17 - 26, 2023)
Screening in VASTLab Experimental (December 7 - 9, 2023)
Screening in the 13th Athens International Digital Film Festival (December 7 - 13, 2023)

Preview in Rogue Illuminations with Ken Brown and Maya Edelman (August 2021)
Included in the Science New Wave event at Harvard University (March 26, 2022)

[Best Experimental Film] goes to Light Leak by Nate Dorr for the innovative structure of the sequences that enhance the poetic and conceptual aspect of the relationship between optical physics and memory, overcoming the dominant taste for hybridization towards a synergistic and extremely formalistic use both of the devices, and of the disciplines involved, to the point where we could find ourselves faced with a seminal work of a new trend in progress.

-2023 Desenzano Film Festival