Kenneth 'Ken' Hess hosts The Experimental Film Podcast, directs the Experiment Film Fest, and is a podcaster, experimental filmmaker, actor, photographer, and mischief maker.

You can check out some of his experimental films on his Vimeo channel.

Musician, composer, and filmmaker Kristina Dutton and I speak about music, her music compositions, her experimental films, and her inspirations and aspirations. Kristina also has some good advice for those exploring playing a musical instrument.

I sampled some of Kristina's compositions in the podcast. In the introduction, there is an excerpt from Biopixel's score co-written by Kristina and Nate Kinsella. In the middle of the podcast, I excerpted Kristina's Pas de Deux from her SoundCloud collection.

Walter Smits and I spoke in Season 1 of the podcast (Episode 22). Since that time (2021), Walter has been busy creating new works, many of which are feature-length experimental works they call playground absurdism.

In this podcast, we discuss their use of high-end photography/filmmaking equipment, their film school experience, story creation, directing techniques, development of "Queer New Wave" and their works in progress.

Evan Chester is the curator and creator of the KubrickLynch YouTube channel that highlights experimental, avant-garde, and art house films. KubrickLynch currently has more than 55,000 subscribers, and Evan has close to 200 videos featuring genres, filmmakers, movements, and individual works by experimental filmmakers.

I'm a huge fan of his work, and I hope you find his channel and enjoy the painstaking work he's done to collect and curate this information into one of the best YouTube channels I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. Evan's documentary style is well-paced, educational, and entertaining.

Duane Michals has a career of more than 60 years as a photographer. Michal’s work has been shown in galleries worldwide. Michal’s photographic work incorporates text and sequences to tell a story. In recent years, Michals has transitioned to creating short experimental films. If you aren’t familiar with his work, please take some time to explore it. You’ll find it unique in perspective and essential as inspiration for your work.

Mr. Michals and I discussed various topics, including his photography work, his foray into filmmaking, his meeting with Magritte, his time in the Army, and other random topics. I love how his mind works and am glad I’ve had the pleasure and honor of this interview.

Rating PG-13: Mild sexual references and mild expletives.

Gerald Habarth is an artist and animator, an Associate Professor of Art at West Virginia University. He heads the Electronic Media program in the School of Art and Design. He holds an MFA degree from the University of South Florida and a BFA degree from Parsons School of Design. His works have been screened at numerous national and international venues and festivals, including the Tampa Museum of Art, the Huntington Museum of Art, the Festival Les Instants Vidéo, and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media. In 2010, he founded the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival. He currently resides on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Madison Hill is a filmmaker and photographer based in Durham, North Carolina. She received a B.A. in Cinema Studies from Virginia Tech and an M.F.A. in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University. Currently, Madison is an Instructor for Cinematic Arts at Duke University, teaching theory and production in Documentary Arts, 16mm Film, and Moving Image Practice.

Through her film practice, Madison explores how the documentary medium can be transformed in an evolving 21st-century landscape. Madison utilizes various techniques such as 16mm filmmaking, digital cinematography, archival research, and photography to create work that blurs the boundaries of genre and cinematic expectations. Such work includes processing film in environmental contaminants to emulate their effects on the human body, utilizing fiction production techniques in the documentary genre, and manipulating archival material to question memory and subjectivity.

This podcast focuses on film festivals. I cover increasing your chances at getting Official Selection status, getting screened, and getting discounts. I also cover fee waivers, withdrawing your films, film editing, and some war stories from the Film Festival Director trenches.

Malaysian-born Shu Qin Lee was raised in Australia and initially encountered photography when his uncle in Singapore gifted him his first manual film camera in the 1990’s.

This love for photography led Shu to capturing simple moving images like a crystal ball rotating on a mini water fountain when the first Nokia phones were available. Here the seed of experimental filmmaking was planted. 

Many years later, after having studied languages, religion, philosophy and attained a Masters of Teaching, Shu started teaching humanities. Through the recommendation of a friend, he also took up background acting for films and commercials. It was on a movie set after an impressive mock performance as an extra that he met another extra who promised that they would make a film together and submit it to film festivals. That plan never materialized. In the face of this major ideological disappointment, Shu became determined to make his own films. 

As a passionate musician, he started making video recordings of his compositions to store his own music. Then he ventured into writing and producing mini skits where he would play all the parts. These short videos would include the people and environment within his regular social life. 

It was at a Kino screening that Shu watched his first experimental film. A film so obscure purely because it was unlike all the other shorts that had been screened. 

During his time as a relieving librarian, Shu rummaged through two books on film, paying particular attention to the chapter on “Experimental Films.”  With a fully inspired heart, he would self-produce seventy-plus experimental shorts that include elements of music, comedy, home theatrics, vlogging, travel, documentary, visual arts, nature, children, horror, sport, dance, and multiculturalism. His mainstream approach includes “spin-blending,” “juxtapositioning,” and the recurrent themes of nature and children at play. 

Most of his works are available for public viewing but are difficult to find. Interested parties will receive a Youtube link upon emailing [email protected].

Interdisciplinary artist Lisa Birke's work results from the collision of video, performance art, and installation. She is interested in the stories that we re-cite and re-brand and how these inform our conception of the world and the tragi-comic perception of ourselves. Recently, Birke has been exploring immersive multi-media approaches using special effects, AR, and 360 videos. Her award-winning video work has seen more than100 screenings and installations at film festivals, media centers, and in galleries and museums internationally, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, International Short Film Week Regensburg, TIME is Love, The New Museum of Networked Art, and Remai Modern. Birke is an Assistant Professor of Digital and Extended Media and area chair of the Digital and Integrated Practice area in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Saskatchewan.