This program brings together two recent hybrid documentaries that prove that the botanical is political. In FIELD RESISTANCE, director Emily Drummer explores zones of contact between human and plant life in Iowa, from farmlands to laboratories to grain silos, using disquieting sounds and images of our artificial present to speculate on a post-human future. MAKE A DISTINCTION, the first feature by Chicago-based filmmakers Kera MacKenzie & Andrew Mausert-Mooney, confronts a series of American landscapes with an eye towards the carceral and imperial forces that shape them. Whether examining the endangered species harbored around army bases, or the power structures that make Chicago-based media productions like “Chicago P.D.” into real mechanisms of state power, MAKE A DISTINCTION represents experimental filmmaking at its most trenchant and impassioned.

Filmmakers Kera MacKenzie, Andrew Mausert-Mooney, and Emily Drummer will appear for a discussion following the screening.

About the films:

Field Resistance (Emily Drummer, 2019, 16 min, 16mm-to-digital)

Make A Distinction (Kera MacKenzie & Andrew Mausert-Mooney, 2021, 62 min, 16mm-to-digital)

This screening is supported by the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and the Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group.

FREE & OPEN TO ALL | RSVP