Mimesis 2024 In Review
Like copies in motion, our poor images resurrect the fallen avant-garde. Visual bonds emerge, linking us to the present. Come, hither - Now!
Artist-focused and community-oriented, the 5th annual Mimesis Documentary Festival was held in Boulder, Colorado from August 14-18. Featuring a captivating program of movies, workshops, installation, performance, and virtual offerings with artists, producers, and scholars from around the world, the 2024 edition of this unique festival marked half a decade of exhibiting documentary art at Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center and the first year of Expanded Documentary Arts at CMCI Studio.
For the first time, our Opening Night presentation featured the Expanded Documentary Arts category with a program entitled Movement Aloud spotlighting installation and live performance. Grappling with grief, power, and transformations of form, works by artists Dana Berman Duff, Kate Trumbull-LaValle, Alex Juhasz, Laura Conway, Noah Teachey, Neelansh Mittra and Yasmine Mahjoubi translated documentary into embodied experience. Closing Night featured Los dos lados de la tortuga (2024) by Oscar X. Illingworth and La Laguna del Soldado (2024) by Pablo Alvarez Mesa, a ground-breaking feature of intense aesthetic engagement with the politics and ecology of Colombia’s Páramo region.
Haitian-Canadian filmmaker and 2024 Artist-in-Focus Miryam Charles presented her debut feature Cette maison (2022) and conducted a deeply engaging masterclass on adapting rich sonic experiences into a filmmaking practice through sound mapping entitled Sound through time and space.
A key feature of this year’s festival was our partnership with the City of Boulder’s Cool Boulder campaign and the Endangered Species Coalition, who generously conceived and supported the Moving Creatures special programming category. Their support allowed us to provide generous cash prizes for documentary features, shorts, and performances that explore the restoration of the natural world, the interrelatedness of humans and non-human species, and how these subjects can provide solutions to climate change, a path to social equity, and a sustainable economy.
None of this could have been accomplished without the tireless work of our dedicated programming team who meticulously crafted programs to amplify artists’ voices and challenge dominant trends. Thank you, Sarah Biagini, Luiza Pârvu, Curt Heiner, and Jean-Jacques Martinod. Your work is deeply appreciated. The technical and administrative execution of the festival was made possible by imperturbable Festival Director Curt Heiner, Documentary Arts Coordinator Jean-Jacques Martinod, Live-Streaming Technician Anel Villalobos, Transitional Advisory Board Member Toma Peiu, Moderators Emilie Upczak, Hanna Rose Schelle, Devon Narine-Singh, and Mahda Purmehdi, and Magic Lantern Assistant Emett Casey. Thank you so much for all your work.
Thank you to all the staff at the Dairy, including Glenn Webb and Shay Wescott. Mimesis would not be possible without your support.
Thank you to our generous sponsors. Their support and your individual donations are the only way that Mimesis can continue to serve this wonderful community. Mimesis 2024 was made possible by the Center for Documentary Media, the College of Media, Communication, and Information, the Colorado Office for Film, Television, and Media, Cool Boulder, Create Boulder, Endangered Species Coalition, Stuart Conway and Jenny Bramhall, The Negative Space: Motion Picture and Photo Lab, Visit Boulder and by your individual contributions.
And most of all, thank you to Mimesis artists, who contributed their work to our community and who traveled to Boulder, either virtually or in-person, to be together. Your work and your presence are what makes this event so powerful.
