STIMULATION THEORIES

FRAMES welcomes Chicago-based archivist & programmer Ben Creech to present a curated selection of experimental short films from the PICTURE START collection.

There is a frenzied pulse at the heart of each of these films, to speak or name the unnameable, to caress the intangible, that drives them to their own individual ends. Some of them linger on one detail, eating a fruit or articulating a relationship, and attempt to get closer and closer to understanding just the one thing, in all of its multitudes. Others yearn to contain the vastness of the infinite into the sensory container of a single film. Can every dirty word be enunciated, and what happens to their scandalous qualities, when made so objective? Yet other films pursue, doggedly, the erotic in all its surreal possibilities, knowing that even the body is not a limit, and intensities like these are experienced briefly, showing the full capacity of all that rests inside us. Each film, in its own way, accesses the curious frontier between vision and touch, between stasis and movement, in ways that actively invigorate us in the audience, stimulating our brains and bodies with constant transformation, and the provocative expansiveness of the erotic. — Ben Creech

Projected on 16mm film 

$10 admission : cash or digital payments accepted

Total Duration : 71 minutes + introduction & brief intermission 

Note : some films contain flickering images & sexually explicit material 

Program:

TEARING 

Katherine Li | 1981 | 1 minute

PENETRALIA

Karen Aqua | 1976 | 4 minutes 

WET 

Chel White | 1984 | 4 minutes 

SHE HAS HER MOMENTS 

Steve Estes | 1980 | 8 minutes 

ORANGE 

Karen Johnson | 1970 | 3 minutes 

DESIRE PIE 

Lisa Crafts | 1977 | 5 minutes 

— intermission —

BLUE STREAK

Mark Rappaport | 1971 | 15 minutes 

RANDOM POSITIONS

Jo Bonney & Ruth Peyser | 1983 | 8 minutes

OBJECT CONVERSATION

Paul Glabicki | 1985 | 10 minutes 

XFILM

John Luther Schofill | 1968 | 13 minutes 

This event has been made possible through a contribution by The Cambia Development Foundation through Forest City Gallery. 

Visit the FRAMES website for full program notes : 

https://framesfilmseries.com/2026/stimulation-theories