Eye Stimuli

Short on running time but long on edgy deconstructions of contemporary life’s weird minutiae, the films slated for this year’s Optic Nerve promise an enticing poke in the peepers. MoCA’s popular annual festival spools short films and videos by talented homegrown auteurs and will feature fifteen films stretching from one to nine minutes in length. The offerings, chosen from an open call for submissions, incorporate a smorgasbord of techniques ranging from narrative and nonnarrative film to animation.

Alejandra Leibovich’s How Do You Call It? is a short animated musing on why we all can’t just get along. Duda Leite’s After the Fox slingshots the spectator back to the Sixties, where images of surfers are looped with cheesy Burt Bacharach numbers. Francisco Gonzales sets his How Long Is Forever against a gritty working-class background where tribal headbangers howl ecstatically in a ritual celebration of mysticism and lowrider culture. Clifton Childree’s Something Awful shanghais elements of silent pictures to tell the savagely funny tale of a sailor who impales a woman’s buttocks on his hook while angling for tuna. Optic Nerve VIII screens tonight at 7:00 and 9:00 at MoCA and will be also be presented Saturday, August 26, at 7:00 p.m. at MoCA at Goldman Warehouse, 404 NW 26th St. in Wynwood. RSVP is required. For reservations, call 305-893-6211 or visit www.mocanomi.org. Admission is free for MoCA members and children under twelve; $5 for adults; and $3 for seniors and students with ID.
Fri., Aug. 18, 7 & 9 p.m.