Random blurs of colors and images. There is static. The screen goes blank. The audience is confused.
These are just some of the misconceptions that Roger Beebe said are associated with experimental film.
"It is not just surreal crap or random images," Beebe said. "I can't say how different from that it is."
Beebe is the artistic director and one of the founders of FLEX, the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival. FLEX will kick off its fifth annual international film festival Saturday at the Hippodrome State Theatre.
The opening weekend will consist of eight programs of short experimental films and videos. Each program lasts roughly 75 minutes.
The rest of the festival will consist of a series of feature films and special events that will last until Feb. 26. Tickets are $5 per screening, and a full festival pass is $30.
FLEX organizers chose 65 out of more than 500 submissions from filmmakers on six continents.
"We only wanted to put work in we were passionate about, confident and stood behind," Beebe said.
One of the most perplexing entries he recalled is a film featuring a mime giving a blowjob. He believes mimes are one of the clichés people can't give up on.
Beebe stressed that this kind of work will not be featured. He also doesn't want such abstractness to be associated with experimental film and video.
"It's not 20 minutes of flickering color," he said. "There is stuff going on."
One of the opening night films is called "Yard Work is Hard Work" by Jodie Mack, a Chicago-based artist.
The film is a 28-minute animated musical based on eight songs, stop-motion animation, cutouts and various sound objects. It focuses on issues about the stress of buying a house and dealing with the mortgage crisis.
"I'm not nervous," Mack said. "I'm actually really happy to bring it back to Gainesville; that is where I started making films."
Penny Lane, a first-timer at the festival who currently lives in New York, has two films that will be featured.
"Sittin' On A Million" is a 26-minute documentary that tells the story of Mame Faye, who ran a world-famous brothel house for almost 40 years in Troy, N.Y. The film is a collection of stories told by an array of people in the community who remembered Mame Faye.
"Sittin' On A Million" took Lane two years to make. Within that time she also made six short films. "She Used To See Him Most Weekends" is one of those six and will also be screened at the festival.
The film, which took Lane one weekend to make, is a four-minute animation film made entirely of clip art and Google images. It focuses on childhood with an absent father and is an epilogue to her documentary "The Abortion Diaries."
Lane, who describes herself as "a maker of things," is looking forward to her first trip to Gainesville. She is also looking forward to how the audience will react to her films.
"You make the film, you want people to see them and you want to see people seeing them," she said.
Beebe is also excited about the festival being hosted at the Hippodrome. A $2,500 grant allowed festival organizers to rent out the theater and equipment needed.
Jodie Mack, who is also an original founder of the festival, said it has come a long way from previous years.
"The first year we were in a different venue every night, a kind of scrappy situation," Mack said. "It's like a cinematic landmark in Gainesville, the Hippodrome."
For more information, visit www.flexfest.org.
