Junk Dump Film Festival 2025: Day Two

Museum of the Moving Image and Junk Dump Magazine will present Junk Dump’s fifth annual short film festival. Junk Dump Magazine is a not-for-profit arts organization that produces a semi-annual print publication and events like Junk Dump Film Festival, which highlights emerging and underrepresented filmmakers working at the intersection of video art and storytelling. The festival presents a curated program of narrative, animated, and experimental short films made by artists using unique processes to tell singular and engaging stories. 

This year’s selection was curated by guest judges from two New York-based production companies. Guest Judge Jessica DiMento represents Analoga, an independent New York City–based production company that champions emerging filmmakers by producing unconventional and offbeat narrative and commercial work. Guest judges Erica Pappas and Jake Silbermann represent Secret Beach Productions, a full-service production house based in Brooklyn that develops dynamic stories from visionary voices from idea to final cut. Together with a network of talented creatives, Secret Beach creates projects that are thoughtful, provocative, innovative, and unforgettable. Their award-winning films have been featured at festivals worldwide. 

Day Two programming will include the selection of fourteen experimental and animated shorts. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and a reception in the lobby.  Go to Day One, June 26.

Screening run time approx. 100 min. 

Featuring:

Threads 
Dir. Nic De Lucia, U.S., 2025, 12 mins. After encountering a familiar figure, Max is pulled back into the memories of his youth, reliving moments that shaped who he is today. 

Am I 
Dir. Gabby Zhong, U.S., 2025, 9 mins. Luke, the birthday boy, wakes up in a deserted house. While searching for his mom, a series of mysterious women invade his home and claim to be his mother. 

Counter-Reformation 
Dir. Caroline Johnson, U.S., 2024, 15 mins. The self-portrait. The sacred icon. The Incarnation. 16th-century Europe is at war with itself over questions of faith and form. Counter-Reformation observes these trends and tribulations, through the lens of the Renaissance painter, Sofonisba Anguissola, the first female court painter in Europe. 

Children Echo 
Dir Zuzu Hill, NiaSymone Bynoe, Rob Fox Rich, U.S., 2025, 3 mins. 

Blind Date 
Dir. Keith Leung, U.S., 2025, 5 mins. A man with poor eyesight breaks his glasses right before a date. 

Sit Down 
Dir. Camila Grimaldi, U.S., 2024, 5 mins. Spend the night on an old river boat. Rock away on the rolling ocean and let the waves lull you to sleep. Rain or shine, the wheel keeps spinning. 

Memory as Missionary Position 
Dir Brigitte Leilani Axelrode, U.S., 2024, 4 mins. A Pasifika femme dancer moves between two worlds with the narration of Kanaka ʻŌiwi poet Noʻukahauʻoli Revilla. 

Dreamland 
Dir. Maxfield Biggs and Tehya Jennett. U.S., 2024, 4 mins. An experimental, pseudo silent film using fragmented archival footage, prose, and propaganda to dissect the ecological devastation that came with the “American Dream.” 

Rajas and the Wolf Girl 
Dir. Camila Grimaldi, U.S., 2024, 14 mins. Rajas is a lonely teenage photographer who gawks at a circus freak show until he himself is transformed. 

Pomegranate 
Dir Livvy Seabrook-Wilkins, United Kingdom, 2024, 2 mins. A mother comes to terms with her Post-Natal Depression. 

The King of Antiques 
Dir. Esme Sacks, U.S., 2025, 8 mins. A stop motion film composed of short vignettes of a family over a few generations in Brooklyn and one evening in the Catskills. 

VOY SOÑANDO 
Dir. Valeria Perez, U.S., 2025, 5 mins. In 1950s Ponce, Puerto Rico, Zoraida dreams of becoming a bolerista singer while navigating a repressive political climate and the control of her machista brothers. As the island transforms over the years, so do her dreams. 

Tickets: $17.50 / $12 senior and students / $10 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.