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We are proud to be a Friend of the Festival for the Ashland Independent Film Festival (April 23–26), specifically supporting the RAIDERS OF THE ARCHIVES series. This program features experimental artists including Rick Prelinger, Soda_Jerk, and former SMA-featured artists Stacey Steers and Rankin (formerly Vanessa) Renwick. We invite our community to explore these boundary-pushing films that align with our mission to celebrate contemporary visual culture. Find the full schedule and purchase tickets at ashlandfilm.org.
RAIDERS OF THE ARCHIVES
AIFF pays tribute this year to two film archivists and their archives that have been indispensable resources for independent filmmakers who mine archival footage for their documentaries and experimental films. The program highlights experimental filmmakers and documentarians, many in attendance, who creatively remix found archival footage.
Rick Prelinger began collecting ""ephemeral” or “useful” films (films made for specific purposes at specific times, such as advertising, educational and industrial films) in 1983. 25 years ago, he partnered with Internet Archive to make a subset of the Prelinger Collection (now over 9,000 films) available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse.
Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema SF-based archive has, according to Rick Prelinger, “violated almost every rule that traditional archivists venerate…His collection resembles a Japanese antiquarian bookstore, where nothing exists by chance and the arrangement is an artwork of its own…Baldwin’s collection has introduced generations of filmmakers, artists, and community members to the idea of … what an archives might be.”
For tickets and the full AIFF2026 (April 23-26) program, visit ashlandfilm.org.
RAIDERS PROGRAM
Lost Landscapes of San Francisco with Rick Prelinger
The city shines throughout this wide-ranging panorama made from 128 years of San Francisco moving images, with a soundtrack narrated by Prelinger and audience
members as the film plays.
Sat 4.25, 1pm | Varsity 1 | 74 min.
The Other Cinema of Craig Baldwin with Jeremy Rourke
You’re Not Listening, a live music and animated tribute to Craig Baldwin, is followed by Baldwin’s short “pseudo-pseudo-documentaries” Tribulation 1999: Alien Anomalies Under America, and O No Coronado!, offering skewed histories of US and European interventions into the Americas.
Fri 4.24, 4:20pm | Varsity 3 | 110 min.
Jeremy Rourke’s Live Music & Animation
A stop motion bicycle tour, hot air balloons illuminated in the desert— Rourke accompanies his playful collage animations on 16mm film and video with the live performance of his songs and stories.
Sat 4.25, 3pm | White Rabbit Clubhouse | 60 min.
Fear & Anxiety: Some Films by Jay Rosenblatt with Jay Rosenblatt
Seven short personal works that explore our emotional and psychological cores. Twice Oscar-nominated, Rosenblatt fearessly interweaves found footage, animation, home movies, and more.
Sun 4.26, 1:20pm | Varsity 3 | 89 min.
Hello Dankness with Soda_Jerk
Hello Dankness is a political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021. Created with Soda_Jerk’s signature methodology, Hello Dankness has been grafted together from almost one thousand film, television and audio sources.
Sat 4.24 | 8pm | White Rabbit Clubhouse | 70 min.
Stars to Watch with Stacey Steers & Rankin Renwick
Four women filmmakers meditate on the power and allure of female star images: The Swirl of the Shine Pierced (2026, Dir: Rankin Renwick); The Stars Watch from Long Ago (2026, Dir: Stacey Steers); Meeting of Two Queens (1991, Dir: Cecilia Barriga); and Library of Babel (2024, Dir: Vicki Bennett).
WTO/99
An immersive archival documentary that depicts the four-day clash between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and the 40,000+ people who took to the streets of Seattle in 1999 to protest the WTO Conference.
Sun 4.26 | 4pm | White Rabbit Clubhouse | 102 min.
The Movie Orgy
In 1968, director Joe Dante (Gremlins) meticulously fashioned a trove of 16mm films into what is quite possibly the world’s first found footage megamix, comprised of commercials, news reels, clips from feature films, TV bloopers, and much more. This film has a running time of 4+ hours, audience is welcome to view it partially, or entirely.
Sat 4.25, 5-10pm | White Rabbit Clubhouse | 276 min.
Raiding the Archives: A TalkBack
Discarded reels, orphaned images, forgotten propaganda—the archive is full of history’s residue. Archivist Rick Prelinger and filmmakers Soda_Jerk, Jay Rosenblatt, Stacey Steers, Rankin Renwick, and Sam Green discuss how artists mine, transform, and respond to the moving image archive, turning the raw material of the past into urgent new cinema.
Friday 4.24, 12-2pm | White Rabbit Clubhouse | 90 min.
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