Melika Bass

Songs From the Shed

Melika Bass

David Cook, Ira Murfin

A fractured, makeshift family ekes out a meditative existence, their lives mysteriously intertwined through ritual and habit. Part musical, part melodrama. An enigmatic tale of eternal return, a decayed slice of Midwestern Gothic.

Shoals

Melika Bass

Carolina Gonzalez, Emily Irvine

A slow-burning prairie grotesque. On the grounds of a rural sanitarium, three young women search for wellness, as a cult leader seeks to control their bodies through labor and daily rituals.

Sigur Rós: Valtari Film Experiment

Clare Langan, Ryan McGinley

Shia LaBeouf, Denna Thomsen

Sigur Rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's album Valtari. The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom. These 16 films are the result. Sad, funny, beautiful and, occasionally, plain bewildering, they represent just some of the available emotional responses to this most contemplative album.

Princess Cyd

Stephen Cone

Jessie Pinnick, Rebecca Spence

High school athlete Cyd Loughlin lives alone with her depressive father in South Carolina, perpetually longing to get away from it all. When her aunt, famous novelist Miranda Ruth, agrees to host her for a few weeks during the summer, Cyd jumps at the opportunity. While there, she falls for a girl in the neighborhood, even as she and her aunt gently challenge each other in the realms of sex and spirit.

Creature Companion

Melika Bass

Selma Banich, Penelope Hearne

In the American suburbs, two women mysteriously and sensuously entwine in this slow-burning, saucy, abstracted fable on the longing and laboring female body.

The Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast

Melika Bass

Sarah Stambaugh, Bryan Saner

Bass takes over the upstairs Kanter-McCormick Gallery at the Art Center, expanding the territory of her gothic world in a new work The Latest Sun is Sinking Fast, an immersive, multi-channel installation incorporating 16mm film/video, sound, architecture, and featuring performances by Sarah Stambaugh, Bryan Saner, and Matthew Goulish. The solo exhibition features a spatial narrative installation that delves, through movement, texture, sound, and gesture, into the psychology of a recurring figure in Bass' previous films; while also introducing two new characters, blending the past into the present. Bass has designed the installation by altering the gallery, leading the viewer through a evocative memory of place, embedding us in a timeless society of lost souls in a haunted landscape. -Allison Peters Quinn, Exhibition Director, Hyde Park Art Center

Turn the Garden

Melika Bass

Brian Belak

Commissioned by the Chicago Film Archives, utilizing solely films from their collection.

Holguin

Melika Bass

A commissioned documentary chronicling an American dance company's collaboration with a Cuban dance company to create a site-specific performance for the Festival de la Cultura Iberoamericana.

Asleep in the Deep

Melika Bass

Ladies in waiting in a house of mirrors.

Bulb in the Head

Melika Bass

An earthen fairy tale. A feast for the living.

Story Ever Told

Melika Bass

Waking nightmare, dreamless sleep.

Waking Things

Melika Bass

Selma Banich, Mislav Čavajda

A mysterious, misfit family readies a feast for a group of visiting outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature- one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition.