Kelly Sears

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Sequential images sourced from dozens of massage books are activated to reflect on recent public conversation from this past year surrounding bodies, massage, and assault. Ease the pain from past physical and mental distress. The body remembers. Aches may linger. Lay prone, breathe deeply, release tension.

A mysterious disappearance on a late 1960s space journey entrances the nation. The ensuing search for the lost astronauts radically changes the nature of the country. This film reexamines the nature of our country's expansionist doctrines and the desire to push too far, too fast.

Images from recent hurricanes and the 1931 Miss Universe Contest are collaged into an animated séance that channels Galveston's haunted history

A key ingredient in any survival situation is the mental attitude of the individuals involved.

A haunted meteorologist dreams of storms that are both closer and further away than he thought. His unshakable bravado is undone through fast winds and high pressure systems and a sense of duty.

He Hates to be Second uses excavated fragments from a 1963 article about Robert Kennedy and images and advertisements from similar 1963 publications. The majority of the article is blacked out to highlight key phrases that speak to aggressive gestures that marked this era as a result of building tensions of the Cold War. The text functions as an antithesis to the practice of blacked out government documents that hide sensitive information. This piece focuses on revealing, rather than suppressing, illuminating moments from our past.

A series of terrible dreams unhinge a man in power. The Rancher is a parafictional newsreel film featuring an anonymous president during wartime. The reworked footage, sampled from newsreels about Lyndon Baines Johnson, presents a more fraught portrait of the daily life of this archetypical president. As he escalates military involvement, the president is plagued by terrible dreams that result in the unraveling of public opinion about the war. The narrative of The Rancher largely parallels LBJ’s administration as well as ones from more recent history.

In the near future, the forces of gentrification use sonic assaults on a vulnerable area of a city as protesters and activists find ways to resist.

As the world experiences its final winter, desperate measures to hold onto the season awaken a radical labor consciousness.

A version of how the following year can unfold, put into motion before the confirmation vote occurs.

Figures from archival films from the 1950s are recast in a large-scale secret operation that veers bizarrely off course. The film reflects on current and troubled relationships between the areas of national security, civil liberties and telephone companies. Voice on the Line explores how technology can be used to shape our fears, desires and how we feel connected.

In the Vicinity incorporates the spectrum of official, covert, occult and limitless reconnaissance protocols in an instructional guide.

The rise and fall of Jean Seberg, a great actress unjustly cast away. JEAN is part of Mike Plante's Lunchfilm series of commissioned shorts (made for the cost of a lunch between Plante and filmmaker Kelly Sears).

Unlikely instigators make a call to action for eco-revenge, as seen from airports across the United States.

The Call is an eco-revenge film featuring unlikely instigators who were observed and filmed over three years at airports across the United States. This is a call to action.

A chilling phantasmagoric journey into the paranoid soulless soul of right wing historical propaganda.

Once it started it could not end otherwise recounts terrifying and strange happenings that descend on a 1970s high school.

Animated instructional photographs from yoga and workout books reveal bewitched and frenzied bodies and maneuvers. Exercising women move through a possessed psychic space that distorts and mirrors some of our daily routines. Their bodies point to haunted forces may lay behind a fevered sense of wellness.