Séance Film Festival – Soda Jerk / Herb Shellenberger / Garden Gate

Saturday, September 14, 2024 at 7:00pm
Theatre 514, Civic Theatre of Allentown
514 N 19th St, Allentown, PA 18104

Séance Film Festival – Soda Jerk / Herb Shellenberger / Garden Gate

Lehigh Valley Cinema Club presents the first Séance Film Festival, a weekend film festival (Friday, July 5 – Sunday, July 7, 2024) celebrating cinema as séance and portal to the afterlife, and the parallels between film projection and reincarnation.

This program features the work of three artists: 

Soda Jerk, the renegade remixologists of film, present their series of works titled Séance Fictions, which stage an encounter between the younger and older selves of a deceased screen star—River Phoenix, Judy Garland and Bette Davis—using sampling as a means of re-animating the dead.

Herb Shellenberger presents Barn Talk, the world premiere of a performance which combines archival audio and projected subtitles alongside film and slide projection to stir up the ghosts of Olde New England, one bawdy tale at a time.

Garden Gate, the North Country, New York project of artist/musician Timmi Meskers, presents the world premiere of They Walk With Us, an original video collage and live experimental electronic music performance. 

Tickets: $10 per night
Weekend pass: $18
Supporter pass: $40

Soda Jerk's Séance Fictions
–The Phoenix Portal, dir. Soda Jerk, 2005, US, digital, 5'
–After the Rainbow, dir. Soda Jerk, 2009, US, digital, 7'
–The Time That Remains, dir. Soda Jerk, 2012, US, digital, 12'

Herb Shellenberger
—Barn Talk, live performance, vinyl records, shellac records, digital projection, 16mm projection, 35mm slide projection, 30 minutes

Garden Gate
—They Walk With Us, live performance, digital video collage with live music, 30 minutes

Total running time: 100'

Please note! Tickets include entry to this program and the following Séance Film Festival program—Morgiana—at 9:00pm in the same theater. 

Thanks to Francisco Aguilar & Haley Arnold (Civic Theatre of Allentown), Brian Belovarac (Janus Films), Bret Berg (American Genre Film Archive), Canyon Cinema Foundation, Rick Charnoski, Jesse Pires (Lightbox Film Center), Chris Regec & Steak (National Sokol's), Doug Roysdon (Ice House Performing Arts Collaborative), Drew Swedberg, the University of Texas at Dallas and all the filmmakers, performers and audience members who have supported this event.