Please join us, in partnership with ArtsThursdays, for a special screening of short films by Darol Olu Kae, Kendra McLaughlin, Tiff Rekem, and Svetlana Romanova—current fellows at the Film Study Center at Harvard. Following the screening, the filmmakers will participate in a conversation with Dennis Lim, Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival.

Tiff Rekem
: Trilogy (working title), 2026, work in progress, 15 min. Ten years ago, prominent director of Taiwan popular cinema Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) set out to make three historical epics set during the little-known 17th-century Dutch colonial period in Taiwan — until the production fell apart, unfinished, in 2025. This project refashions the visual and sonic traces of the Taiwan Trilogy into an alternative historical period piece that, during a time of rising nationalism in Taiwan, observes the construction of cinema as the construction of a national identity. A work in progress.

Kendra McLaughlin
: Lo que las olas no rompen (What the Waves Don’t Break), 2026, work in progress, 12min 30s. Along Lima’s southern coast, men fish, camels eat, and life cycles through death and back again.

Svetlana Romanova: Hinkelten, 2023, Russia, 15 min.
Filmed in the Yakutian Arctic and constructed out of personal poems and notes, this visual essay poses questions about our perception of contemporaneity and image production’s intersection with the creation of narratives around the idea of love (romantic, platonic, intimate, and maternal).

Darol Olu Kae: Keeping Time, 2023, USA, 32 min. Keeping Time is a kaleidoscopic audiovisual homage to musicians who pass on the magic and the communities that nourish them.
 

This event is co-presented by the Film Study Center at Harvard University and ArtsThursdays, a university-wide initiative supported by Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA).