Ben Balcom
Ben Balcom (b. 1986, Massachusetts) is a filmmaker currently living and working in Milwaukee, WI. He is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee and is the co-founder and co-programmer of Microlights Cinema.
Notes from the Interior (2015)
Wandering through the body puzzling out a system of symbols. The trouble is, affect resists signification outright. The inside and outside become muddled when you start to feel your body in relation to the image. (more)
Wandering through the body puzzling out a system of symbols. The trouble is, affect resists signification outright. The inside and outside become muddled when you start to feel your body in relation to the image. (more)
A Symptom (2014)
A mirrored discourse. The object we see is that which craves articulation, but is never said quite right. We are looking at speech from both sides of the mirror, listening... (more)
A mirrored discourse. The object we see is that which craves articulation, but is never said quite right. We are looking at speech from both sides of the mirror, listening... (more)
Speculations (2016)
An affective portrait of place. An exploration of the city as abstraction. (more)
An affective portrait of place. An exploration of the city as abstraction. (more)
In a Circle Around Me, The Sequence of years (2017)
A feeling of forgetting rendered with first-person camera work, lens play, and image stabilization. I am old where I was born. It must have been magnificent once. The way it appears now is not how it used to be. It couldn’t be, otherwise this would be something ... (more)
A feeling of forgetting rendered with first-person camera work, lens play, and image stabilization. I am old where I was born. It must have been magnificent once. The way it appears now is not how it used to be. It couldn’t be, otherwise this would be something ... (more)
Garden City Beautiful (2019)
One sunny afternoon in the middle west, suspended in a time between, two commuters daydream of a life lived otherwise. Adapted from a letter written by Victor Berger in 1895. (more)
One sunny afternoon in the middle west, suspended in a time between, two commuters daydream of a life lived otherwise. Adapted from a letter written by Victor Berger in 1895. (more)
News from Nowhere (2020)
Two slow pans across a public park in Milwaukee. Words from Bernadette Mayer imagining the possibility of a perfect summer day. (more)
Two slow pans across a public park in Milwaukee. Words from Bernadette Mayer imagining the possibility of a perfect summer day. (more)
Looking Backward (2022)
Filmed on the former grounds of Black Mountain College, LOOKING BACKWARD is a brief elegy to the legacy of a utopian college and other impossible projects. (more)
Filmed on the former grounds of Black Mountain College, LOOKING BACKWARD is a brief elegy to the legacy of a utopian college and other impossible projects. (more)
Array (2013)
Wandering through the city, wondering about the potentialities of space, wishing and wanting a full experience of the virtual. These thoughts are rooted to spaces on the outskirts that have been rendered without detail. Listen to the code. An indecipherable ... (more)
Wandering through the city, wondering about the potentialities of space, wishing and wanting a full experience of the virtual. These thoughts are rooted to spaces on the outskirts that have been rendered without detail. Listen to the code. An indecipherable ... (more)
Dreaming In The Dark (2018)
For Dreaming the Dark: hands that see, eyes that touch, Ana Vaz invited artists and filmmakers whose work trust cinema’s capacity to transform relationships between the body and the camera to propose works that will engage with both perception and embodiment. Could ... (more)
For Dreaming the Dark: hands that see, eyes that touch, Ana Vaz invited artists and filmmakers whose work trust cinema’s capacity to transform relationships between the body and the camera to propose works that will engage with both perception and embodiment. Could ... (more)
Celestial Object (2014)
Here are the playful recordings of a naturalist—the observations of a difficult object. As the studio accelerates and numerous cinematic strategies are employed, the information gathered becomes noise; all these measurements become doodles. (more)
Here are the playful recordings of a naturalist—the observations of a difficult object. As the studio accelerates and numerous cinematic strategies are employed, the information gathered becomes noise; all these measurements become doodles. (more)
Growing Up Absurd (2023)
Growing Up Absurd is assembled from interviews conducted remotely with key members of the Tolstoy College community – Alex Van Oss, Peter Murphy, Chip Planck, and Paul Richmond – that speak to the ethos and history of the college, from its founding in 1969 to its ... (more)
Growing Up Absurd is assembled from interviews conducted remotely with key members of the Tolstoy College community – Alex Van Oss, Peter Murphy, Chip Planck, and Paul Richmond – that speak to the ethos and history of the college, from its founding in 1969 to its ... (more)