André Shannon

Caledonian Road follows Seb, who decides to meet up with Corey one rainy night. Seb has never slept with a boy before, and plans to fulfil some dream of conquering his desire. Little does he know what’s in store for him when he enters Corey’s house, as he’s thrown into a strangely unreal night.

Number Ones perceives all-the-time-friends, sometimes enemies, Stelly G and Kiki Oner, battling in the first sneaker category in Eora at March’s West Ball. Inspired by Akerman’s One Day Pina Asked…, the film collects shots and edited impressions of the day. Time isn’t linear, the past lives here alongside the future, and Stelly calls on both in the present. I think she knew she would lose the category, and I loved watching her humility, her perseverance, the process, throughout the day, and watching Kiki step even further into her power with the support that comes with the generative competition of a best friend who tells the truth. At one point, off camera, during make-up, Stelly gets her period and runs out to the car to find tampons. Ruffling through her overnight bag she asks: ‘Yes please, yes please, yes please, yes please’.

Mood Ring is a feature film by performance artist Sereima Adimate/Stelly G, Kiki Oner and Garden Reflexxx. The group examines female friendships, the idea of love letters, the challenge of unpacking heritage and the meaning of going home. In the ineffable shadow of taboo, Mood Ring is a radical sign of deliverance. In 2021 the group started a writer's room brainstorming ideas of 'First Times'. It led them to Mood Ring, a community funded project based in/on Fiji. The footage features moments from the location reconnaissance Sereima went on in early 2022. In a tangled visual poem that blends journal entries with travelogue, Kiki Oner and best friend Stelly G return to their island home Viti Lev. During this - their first trip together as adults - they make contact with a past that is unfamiliar to them yet shrouded in memories. What follows is a deeply felt trip that forces them to confront lives almost lived. There will be scenes of confronting pasts, and catastrophic futures.

Artist and filmmaker Bhenji Ra was talking about dating with us, talking about a chat she had with Kilia about when you’re swept up in someone new, and you have to ask yourself ‘is this a moment or a monument?’ Resourceful filmmaking is all about asking that; am I going to capture anything? Is there anything to say or film? And sometimes it’s more substantial with more direct discovery, creativity and accountability than anything that was made with years of processing, and meetings, and money stress, and creative differences. The real gauge for artistic relevance in 2021 is whether anyone cares about your early-Covid responses. Archiving monotony and mediocrity is all a part of survival. Last year when moments of connection were severed, a document of someone just being was life saving. So while Vlog Dreams is basically a Bhenji cough track, it’s also a safe space.

Based on real gossip and violence. Vibrant colour invites us into a bat forest as someone waits, strips, for trade. A drummer is interviewed about a violent confrontation as he smashes his kit. A slim figure limps out of the darkness covered in blood to the sounds of New York's underground popstar Macy Rodman. A car bangs along an old dirt road and picks up stragglers, lost overnight who seem less affected than maybe they should be considering... Grape Steak is a wishfully ambient portal, a love-poem of trauma and humiliation set in Sydney, a slow comedy for a come-down, made resourcefully and communally over five years.

It is a known, albeit spineless, belief to shake your phone or bring it to a higher ground when cellular reception doesn't pull through. When the means that make distance workable is difficult to operate one has to handle the actual physical distance oneself. This short follows a twenty something in sunny and windy Dhaka, trying to call someone on the other line, moving from place to place at the expense of getting lost in a sea of other people