Ross Meckfessel

Directing

Ross Meckfessel

Known for

Directing

Credits

15 titles

Ross Meckfessel is an artist and filmmaker who works primarily in Super 8 and 16mm film. His films often emphasize materiality and poetic structures while depicting the condition of modern life through an exploration of apocalyptic obsession, contemporary ennui, and the technological landscape.

Known for

Behind the camera

Zero Length Spring poster
NR

A walk through corridors and rooms culminates in a familial Reiki session – what’s underneath and within. Zero Length Spring is an apotropaic film, imprinted by rituals and symbols, basking in ruptures of the body and the earth. ASMR brush tracks and the language of self-help therapy, film surface abrasions and alleged paranormal photos, all help give shape to various unseeable forces. You’re worth it, you deserve love, you can grow.

Zero Length Spring

2020

Untitled (Times For) poster
NR

An homage to Gregory Markopoulos (specifically the film Himself as Herself) by Lyra Hill and Ross Meckfessel. This film was made for the Bride of Super 8 screening at the 2011 Chicago 8 Small Gauge Film Festival.

Untitled (Times For)

2011

Cheryl poster
NR

2011/2012, 16mm, Optical Sound, B&W, 17 min

Cheryl

2012

Flowing poster
NR

“The life of a flower is short Only bitter things are many” – Fumiko Hayashi “If they don't see happiness in the picture at least they'll see the black” – Chris Marker Sans Soleil

Flowing

2018

The Air of the Earth in Your Lungs poster
NR

The real and the virtual fold together and apart until space itself is rendered immaterial in this slipstream of digital-modulated environments that brings together landscape photography, video game interfaces, and drone-conducted land surveys in brisk montage.

The Air of the Earth in Your Lungs

2018

Gita poster
NR

A diary film of blue sunlight, digitized faces, and neon.

Gita

2012

untitled (I) poster
NR

16mm, Optical Sound, Color.

untitled (I)

2012

He, She, I Was poster
NR

He, She, I Was captures strangers on the street as I tell their, and my own, supposed life stories. By switching between presumed fact and fiction, the film calls its own validity into question. Can movies ever be trusted to tell the truth?

He, She, I Was

2010

Estuary poster
NR

Inescapable forces intersect in Ross Meckfessel’s Estuary when the increasingly unreal landscape of everyday life is invaded by the hyperreality of computer graphics and AI social-media influencers. The analog and the digital vie and blend with each other as Nature, dissected and repackaged, reemerges in pixel form.

Estuary

2021

Invocation of Uzi poster
NR

Ostensibly an abstracted portrait of actress Jojo Hill as she portrays five different characters in this behind-the-scenes documentary of Uzi’s Party: an experimental pagan teen drama by Lyra Hill. However, the film is also a ritual in and of itself; it captures the energies within the pagan temple used as a filming location, while visually portraying the disintegration of identity that occurs throughout the narrative of Uzi's Party.

Invocation of Uzi

2014

Spark from a Falling Star poster
NR

A forbidding soundtrack of horns and distorted noise sets the scene for Ross Meckfessel’s Spark from a Falling Star, where shots of grocery store parking lots and dimly lit suburban roads breed atmospheres of low-level menace. At the other extreme, smooth digital renderings promise a shiny, spectral future utopia of clean lines and mirrored grids.

Spark from a Falling Star

2023

The Golden Hour poster
NR

The stink of seaweed permeates the streets. I’ve heard there’s growing dissatisfaction among the youth. Do you feel content? How often do you dream? Are you better off alone?

The Golden Hour

2014

All My Star Wars Cards poster
NR

Every Star Wars card I owned. A eulogy.

All My Star Wars Cards

2016

What Home? Pt. 3 poster
NR

A silent film by Ross Meckfessel.

What Home? Pt. 3

2010

A Century Plant in Bloom poster
6.0

"I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn't enough. I was exploding inside." - Ingrid Bergman A cry for help in the form of a pop song. A village cast as a simulacrum of the past by Oliver Stone and Ridley Scott, Pasolini and Scorsese. As the future starts devouring the present, how can we hope to remember the past? Pics or it never existed. For Ingrid and Roberto

A Century Plant in Bloom

2016