SCREENINGS
​
The Unrestricted Life of Ted Fujioka, a film by Julian Semilian — 2017, 43 minutes
"The Unrestricted Life of Ted Fujioka" is an oral history documentary introducing Ted Fujioka, a second generation American of Japanese ancestry who, along with his family, relocated by government mandate to an internment camp in the Arkansas Delta during the Second World War. Incorporating historical footage, animation, and an original score by Laura Ingram Semilian, this intimate and engaging series of topical interview segments with Mr. Fujioka share his humor, dignity, and philosophical insight through memories of his time spent in camp, his postwar visit to his parents' original home in Hiroshima, his subsequent career as an inventor and artist, and his interpersonal experiences as a Buddhist spiritual mentor.
​
Music by Laura Semilian
Showings:
​
2017
Screening for UNCSA and Winston Salem community, Babcock Theatre
2018
Wake Forest University
​
​
​
2018
Walkertown Library
​
Gazing Oozing with Mendacity, a film by Julian Semilian — 2012, 36 minutes
"Gazing Oozing with Mendacity" is a surrealist exploration of ways in which images compel our eyes to view them, and ways in which our eyes are compelled to interpret them. It is composed of three episodes, each of which, in exploring its own theme, mirrors the format of a book of stories, such as Cortazar's Blow Up and Other Stories. The first episode is a study in the style of Antonioni's Blow Up of an event, accidentally shot, which, upon second viewing, testifies to mysterious agendas. Repeated perusal of the footage poses hypotheses concerning the nature of surveillance and the ethics of the eye. The second episode explores abstraction and beauty, using and distorting objects which figure in the first episode, and peers into the ways images constantly shift into fugitive meanings, with references to Jorge Luis Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings. The third episode, featuring documentary footage surreptitiously shot on the streets and subways of New York City interspersed with historical footage, all framed in experimental collaging in Max Ernst style and colliding with mathematical symbols, explores equivalences: what value systems do we each subjectively resort to in order to weigh the nature and meaning of images?
Music by Laura Semilian
​
​
​
​
Showings:
2014
Beyond Baroque, Los Angeles
​
University of Film and Video Association
2013
UNCSA Screening ACE Theatre
​
2021
Sulfur Surrealist Jungle
​
Figures in a Landscape with Butterfly, a film by Julian Semilian — 2014 , 27 minutes
"Figures in a Landscape with Butterfly" is an experimental documentary exploring the unintentional poetic resonance that occurs as a side effect of a happenstance incident of surveillance. A painterly look extracts the film out of the everyday and abstracts it so that the poetic becomes predominant. Captured within the unescapable time and space of the continuous frame, the viewer observes with the scientific lens of slowed-down time as the protagonists gradually reveal themselves.
In this film, Semilian reached out to music composition faculty Bruno Louchouarn, who worked with him providing the music.
Music by Bruno Louchouarn
​
​
Showings:
2014
Screening for UNCSA and Winston Salem community, Babcock Theatre
​
2014
University of Film and Video Association
​
​
The Dream Life of Cleo de Merode, a film by Julian Similian — 2010, 14 min
A surrealist inquiry into the oneiric journeys of the notorious femme fatale.
Festivals and showings:
​
2012
Filmmakers Showcase, Light Factory, Charlotte, NC
​
Exquisite Corpse, a Journal of Letters and Life
2011
Les 24 Instants Video Tour: Paris, Milan, Marseilles
​
Experimentation Mediatica: Galeria Candela, San Juan Puerto Rico
​
Objects of Desire: The Freud Museum, London
2010
Moving Frames Festival: Mytelene, Greece
​
Los Angeles Center for Digital Art
​
​
​
​
Devotees of the Precipitate, a film by Julian Semilian — 2009, 36 min.
Concerning selected ephemera of one Emuel Dnitsk, an aspirant to Man Ray's circle.
Foretelling Ray's derision, Dnitsk restricted the creation of his "moving paintings" (peintures fluides) to furtive yet copious notes.
Devotees endeavors to resurrect Dnisk's vision from the precipice of reticence. (Cameo apparition by Bruno Schultz).
Music by Laura Semilian
Festivals and showings:
​
2013
Halle Cultural Arts Center, Apex, NC
2012
Exquisite Corpse, a Journal of Letters and Life
2010
Gold Mine Gallery, New Orleans
​
Abstracta Film Festival, Rome
​
Relation du poème à son temps,
University of Haifa: Anthology Film Archives, NYC
2009
Rowan University , New Jersey
​
​
​
​
Tear Void Insomnia Mist, a film by Julian Semilian — 2007, 8 min
A hypnagogic voyage through visual and aural landscapes of longing and desire, color and abstraction.
The sinuous weave of juxtaposed, ordinary objects yields arcane meanings and reveals subversive prohibitions,
granting surrealist pleasure to ear and eye.
​
Music by Laura Semilian
Festivals and showings:
2008
International Xperimental Film & Animation Festival: Nicosia, Cyprus
​
​