\nDonte McFadden\, PhD\, is a leader\, educator and mentor. Donte previously served as the Director of the Distinguished Visiting Scholars from 2021-2024. Prior to joining UB\, he served as the Senior Associate Director for Undergraduate Research and High Impact Practices for the Educational Opportunity Program at Marquette University. In this role\, he served as the Director of the Ronald E. McNair Post Baccalaureate Achievement Program. He has held other leadership roles with the Educational Opportunity Program at Marquette\, including serving as its Interim Director and Associate Director of Administration\, Curriculum and Evaluation. Donte received his PhD in English with an emphasis in Film Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He earned a master’s degree in English and a BFA/BA in Film/Film Studies also from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Donte is co-founder of Black Lens\, a showcase for African American filmmakers as part of the Milwaukee Film Festival. \nBorn in Accra\, Ghana\, in 1957\, to radical political activist parents\, John Akomfrah was widely recognized as one of the most influential figures of black British culture in the 1980s. An artist\, lecturer\, and writer as well as a filmmaker\, his twenty-year body of work is among the most distinctive in the contemporary British art world\, and his cultural influence continues today. As a teen\, Akomfrah was a Super 8 filmmaker and enthusiast. With several underground cine clubs in London\, he helped bring Asian and European arthouse cinema\, militant cinema from Africa and Latin America\, and American independent and avant-garde cinema to minority audiences. In 1982\, Akomfrah helped found the seminal\, cine-cultural workshop the Black Audio Film Collective. He directed a broad range of work for the group\, including fiction films\, tape slides\, single-screen gallery pieces\, experimental videos\, music videos\, and documentaries. Since 1987\, Akomfrah’s work has been shown in galleries including Documenta (Germany)\, the De Balie (Holland)\, Centre George Pompidou (France)\, the Serpentine and Whitechapel Galleries (UK); and The Museum of Modern Art (USA). A major new retrospective of Akomfrah’s gallery-based work with the Black Audio Film Collective premiered at the FACT and Arnolfini galleries (UK) and is now making a tour of galleries and museums throughout Europe. In 2000\, Akomfrah was awarded the Gold Digital Award at the Cheonju International Film Festival\, South Korea\, for his innovative use of digital technology. He has been an artist-in-residence at universities including\, most recently\, New York University\, and a jury member at festivals including\, most recently the BFI London Film Festival\, UK\, and the Tarifa International Film Festival\, Spain. He has lectured at institutions including CalArts\, the Art Institute of Chicago\, and the London Institute. He was a member of the Arts Council Film Committee\, and Governor of the British Film Institute from 2001 through 2007. John Akomfrah is currently a Governor of Film London\, a visiting professor of film at the University of Westminster (United Kingdom)\, and an officer of the Order of the British Empire. \nThe Justice for Geraldine and Martin campaign is an ongoing\, volunteer-led effort to exonerate Geraldine Pointer and Martin Sostre\, for their frame up and wrongful arrests at Buffalo\, New York’s Afro-Asian Book Shop July 15th\, 1967. Along with teaching the history of Geraldine and Martin’s struggle and sacrifice\, the campaign is raising funds to steward the site of the former Afro-Asian Book Shop at 1412 Jefferson Avenue\, a mural dedicated to Geraldine and Martin\, and forthcoming events. \nKevin Thurston is the Chef and General Manager of Tipico Coffee. Prior to that\, he co-owned Cafe Godot. In addition to his culinary work\, he wrote Color Me White (BlazeVox) which was illustrated by Mickey Harmon and has numerous publication credits. He has performed with the ensemble BuffFluxus for over 20 years. He lives with his wife and daughter in a Polish workman’s cottage on the outskirts of Buffalo. \n \n \nBanner image: A black and white still from Seven Songs for Malcolm X by John Akomfrah. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/bit-depth-episode-2-songs-and-justice/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:BitDepth,Special Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image3.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251114T193000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251114T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20251111T222306Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251114T205041Z UID:10001262-1763148600-1763154000@squeaky.org SUMMARY:A/V Club Presents DESCRIPTION:Come enjoy the work being made by the A/V Club! From documentary to music video to animation\, the variety of work created by this talented and prolific group will be on full display in this free screening. It’s also a great way to meet the artists and filmmakers that have been attending the meetings and to see if A/V Club is something you might want to be a part of yourself! \n \nArtists included in the screening: \nRebecca Fasanello \nTony Nash \nLisa Czapla \nEli Jarra \nAmanda Besl \nMichael Chernoff \nLukia Costello \n \n \n \n URL:https://squeaky.org/event/a-v-club-presents/ LOCATION:Journey’s End Refugee Services\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite #530\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/There-Was-still_9-Amanda-Besl.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251122T150000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251122T170000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20251022T200545Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251119T173815Z UID:10001261-1763823600-1763830800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Joan Nobile's Drop in the Ocean DESCRIPTION:Saturday\, November 22\, 3–5 pm\, artist talk at 4 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nSqueaky Wheel invites you for an afternoon to experience Joan Nobile’s visual novel video game Drop in the Ocean\, with an artist talk by the artist. The work provides audiences with a space to explore how women and marginalized communities resist hostile gaming environments dominated by white\, straight\, cisgender men while finding companionship\, community\, and solidarity. \nThe video game is about Emily\, a lonely gamer who struggles to find companionship. She finds an online community for her favorite video game\, finding friendship and community for the first time\, while simultaneously meeting a new potential love interest and catching up with an old offline friend. She struggles to balance these new social responsibilities when a new game comes out based on her favorite series. While online\, Emily and another female-identified player are harassed\, leading to the latter leaving the community and Emily becoming the target of continued harassment both on and offline. As Emily\, the player must choose how to respond to 1) social obligations\, 2) harassment\, and 3) finding ways to improve the situation\, if possible. The game will have multiple endings based on the player’s major choices along the way. \n“The project aims to immerse audiences in the experience of a woman who struggles to find community while simultaneously facing harassment in gaming spaces\, highlighting a sadly common occurrence in online spaces. For women and other marginalized people who might play\, I want to show them that they are not alone\, that this happens to other folks like them\, and to provide both solidarity and possibilities towards recovery and online/offline community reconnection. Choosing a visual novel format over more traditional action games ensures accessibility and intimacy for players of all skill levels\, utilizing text and simple imagery to explore themes of community\, connection\, resistance\, and cyberfeminism.” – Joan Nobile \nAttendees: Several computers will be available for audiences to experience the game. Squeaky Wheel is located in Suite 310 of Tri-Main Center. Take the elevator to the third floor\, and head left. Click here to see parking\, transportation\, and accessibility information. Light refreshments will be available. \nJoan Nobile’s Drop in the Ocean is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. \nBiography of the artist\nJoan Nobile (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar from Brooklyn\, NY. She holds a BA in Media Production from Buffalo State College and an MFA in Media Arts Production from the University at Buffalo. Her research and work broadly focus on media theory and critique\, gaming\, cyberfeminism\, and glitch aesthetics/feminism. Her practice involves work in film\, video\, zines\, and video games. When she’s not working or creating\, Joan enjoys visiting farmer’s markets\, reading & watching non-fiction\, and spending too much time playing video games. She currently lives in Buffalo\, NY with her partner. \nImage: A still from Drop in the Ocean. An illustration of an upset looking femme person in hoody in a woodsy area with autumn colors. On top of the illustration are selection boxes with the options “with caution”\, “with snark”\, “oh\, fuck this! I’m pissed” and a larger box with options and the text “I had to handle this…” URL:https://squeaky.org/event/joan-nobiles-drop-in-the-ocean/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Video Games ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Joan-Nobile-1.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251205T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251205T190000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20251122T175750Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251203T162837Z UID:10001264-1764961200-1764961200@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Olivia Ong Evans' Kota Hujan (City of Rain) DESCRIPTION:Friday\, December 5\, 7 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nSqueaky Wheel is excited to present a behind the scenes look in Olivia Ong Evans’ upcoming film Kota Hujan (City of Rain). \nKota Hujan is a collection of nostalgic memories and playful tales that trace the shifting meanings of home through time and across diasporas. The film features my mother’s narration of stories from her childhood in Bogor\, Indonesia during the 1960s and ’70s. These recollections are interwoven with scenes of the city and its landscapes from our return visit to her hometown in 2024. The soundtrack for the film features recordings from a live performance by the Nusantara Arts Javanese Gamelan group in Buffalo\, NY. \nThe artist will present on the process of making the in-progress film\, including traveling to Bogor in 2024\, editing the footage filmed at that time\, subtitling and translation\, as well as the challenges and insights that have come up through the process. The talk will feature selected footage of the work in progress to show how the film is taking shape. \nThis is the first of two events celebrating Evans’ work; on Saturday\, December 20\, CAO Collective (Chinese Artists & Organizers Collective) will lead a virtual writing workshop offering participants the chance to dive deeper into the film’s themes through their own reflections and connections. Learn more and register here. \nThis project is supported by a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. \nAttendees: Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Squeaky Wheel is located in Suite 310 of Tri-Main Center. Take the elevator to the third floor\, and head left. Click here to see parking\, transportation\, and accessibility information. \nBiography of the artist\nOlivia Ong Evans is an artist based in Buffalo\, NY. Her work often explores themes of diasporic identity and connection to nature. She was a 2021 Workspace Resident at Squeaky Wheel\, where she worked on the video art project Identity Karma. \nBanner image: A still from Olivia Ong Evans’ film Kota Hujan (City of Rain). A still of Bogor\, Indonesia at dusk or dawn\, with a pink and orange sky. Shorter buildings with flat roofs are on the bottom\, and skyscrapers and mountains are visible in the distance. A bird is flying through the frame. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/olivia-ong-evans-kota-hujan-city-of-rain/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Work-in-progress ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/oliviaongevansnysca.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251220T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251220T140000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20251202T174927Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251210T200736Z UID:10001265-1766232000-1766239200@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Writing Diasporic Dreams and Futures with CAO Collective DESCRIPTION:Saturday\, December 20\, 3–5pm ET / 12–2 PT over Zoom\nFree; register here\nJoin us in the deep of December as we welcome Chinese Artists & Organizers (CAO) Collective to lead a virtual writing workshop on dreams\, nostalgia\, and diasporic home-making. What alternative knowledges\, homes\, and futures can we access through dreaming and writing together? How do dreams and nostalgia open up a portal for future-making\, in connection with our own bodies and the bodies of land\, water\, and time? Join CAO Collective’s huiyin zhou and Laura Dudu for a virtual session on dreaming as a relational method and collective writing practice. Participants are invited to share bedtime stories\, dreams\, and reflect on their relationships to home/land\, rest and sleep. Through somatic practice\, guided writing activities and facilitated conversations\, participants are invited to weave a collective dreamscape for resistance and healing. \nPlease ensure stable access to the internet and writing tools such as journals\, pens\, and online collaborative documents. This event will be facilitated in English but participants are encouraged to write/doodle/create in whatever languages they feel called to. \nThe stories co-created in this workshop will be included in CAO Collective’s long-term social practice project\, “One Thousand and One Nights: A Queer Journey of Dreams & Diaspora”\, culminating in a collective dream archive. This event is presented as an invitation to deepen into Olivia Ong Evans’ upcoming film Kota Hujan (City of Rain) on December 5. This event is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and Teiger Foundation. \nAbout the artists\n \nhú-tu (Laura 嘟嘟 & huiyin zhou) is an artist duo with backgrounds in social practice and anthropology\, working across moving image\, photography\, performance\, and collaborative writing. Dedicated to multidisciplinary art and transnational organizing\, huiyin and Laura co-founded and co-direct the Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草. \nAbout CAO Collective\n\n \nFounded in 2022\, CAO Collective creates art to empower relational community healing. Their works investigate systems of discipline\, control\, censorship\, and capitalist extraction and reimagine memory/memorials\, rituals\, intimacy\, and queer/feminist kinship to (re)build sustainable community infrastructures. caocollective.com / @caocollective \nBanner image: Image courtesy of CAO Collective. Colorful handwriting in blue\, green\, orange\, and black in both Chinese and English. Someone with a red bracelet is seen writing on white rice paper. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/writing-diasporic-dreams-and-futures-with-cao-collective/ LOCATION:Virtual\, NY\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Virtual,Workshop ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-02-at-1.22.56-PM.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260126T000000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260227T235900 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260122T170529Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260227T214234Z UID:10001275-1769385600-1772236740@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Workspace Residency\, Summer 2026 DESCRIPTION:Application period: Opens January 26 2026. Deadline Friday\, February 27\, 2026.\nResidency dates: August 14–September 5\, 2026 (three-weeks)\nSupport provided: $1400 stipend\, $300 artist fees\, additional $500 artist fee for Silo City resident\, accommodations\, up to $400 in travel support for non-local residents\, up to $1400 optional financial assistance for childcare and/or disability support.\nNotification date: May 15\, 2026\nClick here to learn more and apply\nSqueaky Wheel is excited to share the open call for the Summer 2026 residency program. The short-term residency is open to applicants from Buffalo and across the United States who are seeking resources\, time\, and support for ongoing projects or the creation of new work. \nResidents have tailored access to facilities\, equipment\, technical consultation\, from Squeaky Wheel\, as well as our partners Buffalo Game Space\, The Foundry\, Mirabo Press\, and Silo City. Residents present on their work together in a public event\, present a workshop for the Squeaky Wheel community\, and participate in tailored activities\, such as field trips\, critiques\, among others. \nWe aim to support our residents’ careers and continue our relationships after the residency has concluded. Former residents have been invited to present exhibitions\, performances\, screenings\, among other activities. \nBanner image: A tour of Silo City with their Director of Ecology Joshua Smith\, and Squeaky Wheel residents Ahmed T. Ragheb\, Lily Ekimian Ragheb\, and Kathryn Ramey and her son. Behind them is a large grain silo\, Marine A. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/workspace-residency-summer-2026/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Open Call,Residencies ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-21-at-5.13.54-PM.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260126T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260126T130000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260121T222323Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260121T222411Z UID:10001274-1769428800-1769432400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Info-session: Workspace Residency\, Summer 2026 DESCRIPTION:Monday\, January 26\, 2026\, 12 pm ET\nVirtual on Zoom; register here\nJoin us for a virtual info-session with Squeaky Wheel Curator Ekrem Serdar on how to apply to Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency. The curator will go over the program\, the application questions\, how panels rating criteria\, and answer questions from the audience. A recording of the info-session will be released on the residency page a week after the event. \nClick here to learn more and apply to the residency. \nSqueaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency is made possible with support from Teiger Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. \nBanner image: A GIF of Jaehoon Choi working on a 3D mapped projection project in a dark room. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/info-session-workspace-residency-summer-2026/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Virtual ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/gif:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Workspace-GIF-Jaehoon.gif GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260203T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260203T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260122T174015Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260122T174015Z UID:10001276-1770145200-1770148800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Info-session: Workspace Residency\, Summer 2026 DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, February 3\, 2026\, 7 pm ET\nVirtual on Zoom; register here\nJoin us for a virtual info-session with Squeaky Wheel Curator Ekrem Serdar on how to apply to Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency. The curator will go over the program\, the application questions\, how panels rating criteria\, and answer questions from the audience. Click here to learn more and apply to the residency. \nBanner image: A GIF of Jaehoon Choi working on a 3D mapped projection project in a dark room. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/info-session-workspace-residency-summer-2026-2/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Virtual ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/gif:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Workspace-GIF-Jaehoon.gif GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260228T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260228T174500 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260219T220429Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260224T173556Z UID:10001293-1772294400-1772300700@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Dark City Beneath the Beat DESCRIPTION:Saturday\, February 28th at 4pm\nFree and open to the public\nthe University at Buffalo CAS Office for Diversity\, Equity\, and Belonging invite you to attend a screening of:\nDARK CITY BENEATH THE BEAT\n(followed by a virtual Q&A with TT the Artist)\nPart of the ANCESTRAL ECHOES celebration of Dance throughout the African Diaspora\nto celebrate Black History Month\n4:00-5:15pm—Screening\n5:15-5:45pm–Discussion\n\n \n\nRhythmic and raw\, DARK CITY BENEATH THE BEAT (dir. TT the Artist\, 2020\, 65 min.) is a Baltimore club musical experience highlighting local Baltimore club artists\, DJs\, dancers and producers pioneering the sound while rising above social and economic turmoil. Inspired by an original Baltimore club music soundtrack\, Dark City Beneath the Beat showcases Baltimore club music as a positive subculture in a city overshadowed by trauma\, drugs and violence. \nFollowing the film is a virtual conversation with the film’s director\, TT the Artist. As she states\, “Dark City Beneath the Beat is a unique journey through Baltimore. Some of the themes woven into the film include identifying social injustices that inner city youth face\, street violence\, marginalized groups such as the LGBTQ community and Baltimore’s underground creative hubs. I want to use this film as a window to those hidden figures who have defied the odds of growing up in Baltimore where there is the impact of trauma\, high crime and drugs. In my practice\, I work very closely with dancers and producers from all over the world. I am invested in using my resources and platform. As a leading figure in the local music scene\, I will be bringing more awareness to the need for professional spaces that can house more non-traditional art making practices such as Baltimore club dance and music.” \n(courtesy of Film Freeway) \n\n \nThis screening will follow the ANCESTRAL ECHOES: BLACK DANCE AROUND THE WORLD dance performance \n(Friday\, February 27th from 6:00-11:00pm at Pucho Olevencia Center\, 261 Swan St.\, FREE and open to the public) \n \nFor more information\, contact Dr. Donte McFadden\, CAS Unit Diversity Officer at dontemcf@buffalo.edu. \n URL:https://squeaky.org/event/dark-city-beneath-the-beat/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/DarkCityBeneathTheBeat1200x675.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260304 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260326 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T170400Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260325T162938Z UID:10001294-1772582400-1774483199@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance DESCRIPTION:Begins March 4\, 2026\nScreenings take place at Burning Books. Artist talk with Alex Rivera and Khaled Jarrar online.\nSqueaky Wheel presents four films\, by Alex Rivera\, Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra\, and Khaled Jarrar\, that take on the human toll of borders and the organized and individual ways people evade and resist them. Featuring both cult classic works and acclaimed documentaries\, the films – with Rivera’s work focusing on the maintenance and violence of the US border\, and Jarrar’s focusing on power struggles\, in particular as they relate to Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora – showcases the logistical\, ethical\, and bureaucratic logics of border regimes\, and points to intertwined solidarities. \nAll screenings will take place at our friends at Burning Books. This event series is supported by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Thank you to our co-presenters at Jewish Voice for Peace – Buffalo. Khaled Jarrar’s Infiltrators is courtesy of Third World Newsreel\, and his film Notes on Displacement is courtesy of Cinema Politica. Special thank you to Paige Sarlin and Leo Goldsmith. \nFor attendees\nThe screenings will take place at Burning Books located at 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, NY 14213. Street parking is available. For transportation by bus\, it is near stops for the 3\, 19\, 22\, and 101 bus lines. Seating is first-come\, first-serve. \nThe artist talk with Alex Rivera and Khaled Jarrar will take place online. The films and artist talk will be available online for a weekend on March 27–March 29. \nEvent dates\nWednesday\, March 4th\, 7pm\nKhaled Jarrar’s Notes on Displacement \nWednesday\, March 11th\, 7pm\nAlex Rivera & Cristina Ibarra’s The Infiltrators \nThursday\, March 19th\, 7pm\nAlex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer \nTuesday\, March 24th\, 7pm EST\nVirtual artist talk: Alex Rivera & Khaled Jarrar \nWednesday\, March 25th\, 7pm\nKhaled Jarrar’s Infiltrators \nFriday\, March 27–Sunday\, March 29\nOnline access | Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance \nBiographies of the artists\nAlex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization\, migration\, and technology. Rivera’s first feature film\, Sleep Dealer\, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border\, won awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival\, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art\, and had a commercial theatrical release in the U.S\, France\, Japan\, and other countries. Rivera’s second feature\, The Infiltrators\, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators uses documentary and scripted forms to tell the true story of Dreamers who ‘infiltrate’ a detention center to get immigrants out. Rivera is currently developing a few new cyberpunk projects and\, with support from the Ford Foundation\, a feature documentary on the history of deportation titled Banishment. Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow\, Sundance Fellow\, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. He is an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School. \nCristina Ibarra is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker with a 20-year practice rooted in her border crossing roots along the Texas-Mexico border. The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller about undocumented activists on a secret mission inside a detention center is currently being distributed by Oscilloscope. It won the Audience and the Innovator Award in the NEXT section at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019\, among other notable festival awards. The New York Times calls her previous award-winning documentary\, Las Marthas\, about wealthy South Texas border debutantes who honor George Washington in Laredo\, Texas “a striking alternative portrait of border life”. It premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2014 and is distributed by Women Make Movies. The Last Conquistador\, a documentary about the racially conflicted construction of a monument to a conquistador in El Paso\, Texas\, was broadcast on POV in 2008. USA Today describes it as “Heroic”. Her award-winning directorial debut\, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela\, was broadcast on PBS in 2001. She is the recipient of fellowships from Soros\, Rauschenberg\, Rockefeller\, NYFA\, CPB/PBS\, NALIP\, Firelight\, the Sundance Women’s Initiative and Creative Capital\, among others. \nKhaled Jarrar was born in Jenin\, Occupied Palestine in 1976. He lives and works in Ramallah. Jarrar completed his studies in interior design at Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996. Upon graduating he smuggled himself to work as a carpenter in Nazareth\, living as an underground “illegal” worker. In 1998 Jarrar enlisted in an intensive military training which resulted in working for Arafat as a personal body guard until Arafat’s death in 2004. Attempting to create a life between the military and an artistic practice\, Jarrar entered the field of photography in 2005. Jarrar graduated from the International Academy of Art – Palestine\, Ramallah in 2011 and completed an MFA in fine art from the University of Arizona in 2019. \nJarrar\, a multidisciplinary artist\, explores modern power struggles and their sociocultural impact on ordinary citizens through highly symbolic photographs\, videos\, film\, and performative interventions. His State of Palestine project was featured in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Where We Lost Our Shadows\, his filmic collaboration with Pulitzer prize winning composer Du Yun\, was shown at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Jarrar’s work has been featured at Maraya Art Centre\, Sharjah; the New Museum\, New York City; the University of Applied Arts\, Vienna; the 15th Jakarta Biennale; 52nd October Salon\, Belgrade; Al-Ma’mal Foundation\, Jerusalem; and the London Film Festival. Infiltrators\, Jarrar’s first feature length film\, was a documentary about the business of Palestinian’s “illegally” crossing and won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Documentary\, Jury Special Award and the Muhr Arab Documentary Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2012. Notes on Displacement\, his second feature length\, about a Palestinian refugee’s flight from Syria to Germany\, received a world premiere at the IDFA Envision Competition in November 2022. \nBanner image: A bright orange background with a jagged white line and white text. The text states “Screenings series | Starts March 4\, 2026 at Burning Books. INFILTRATORS. Films on borders and resistance” URL:https://squeaky.org/event/infiltrators-films-on-borders-and-resistance/ LOCATION:Burning Books\, 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, 14213\, United States CATEGORIES:Event Series ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Infiltrators-Card.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260304T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260304T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260211T204239Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260225T194213Z UID:10001291-1772650800-1772658000@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Khaled Jarrar's Notes on Displacement DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, March 4\, 2026\, 7 pm at Burning Books (420 Connecticut St\, Buffalo\, NY 14213)\nFree or $10 suggested donation. Limited seating\, first-come\, first-serve\nThe news is full of disturbing images of overcrowded boats and vast tent camps. But how much do we really know about what refugees are going through? Khaled Jarrar’s Notes on Displacement (74 minutes\, Palestine / Germany / Qatar\, 2022) takes a deep dive by following a single family on a grueling journey: destination Germany. Their fear\, disorientation\, and solidarity is palpable. \nNadira\, an elderly Palestinian\, has been a refugee since the age of 12. Now she has to evacuate Damascus\, too. She and her daughter Mona feared for their lives there\, but the idea of a safe existence elsewhere is a distant dream. Filmmaker Khaled Jarrar receives unsettling videos and voice messages as they cross to the Greek island of Lesbos. He joins them there\, on the long road to a new life. \nJarrar has personal reasons for going through this experience in order to eliminate\, through his own images\, the distance so dominant in Western media coverage. He worms his way through the thronging crowds\, gets lost in the night with his group\, discovers how dangerous language barriers can be\, and wanders around in the dehumanizing camps. And in a sense he—along with the viewer— becomes a true member of this family. \nMy grandmother Shafiqa was forced to leave her home in Haifa\, her Jasmine tree\, her cup of tea on her balcony and her view of the sea. I inherited this pain print of hers through haunted memories both beautiful and painful at the same time. They chased me in my dreams like ghosts that never intended to leave. I tried to escape through geography\, through emotion\, through psychology\, but leaving the past behind proved impossible\, something always forced me back in time. Nadira’s plea brought me to the front lines; creating new memories by walking this new exodus together. We were real time inside the frame capturing the present to battle the past – creating a communication between the two. As the director from behind the camera I was driven to offer images of our own making\, outside the never-ending western paparazzi image onslaught of displaced refugees. This film is for us\, our values\, our knowledge\, our experiences. – Khaled Jarrar\, November 2022 \nFor attendees: The screening will take place at Burning Books located at 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, NY 14213. Street parking is available. For transportation by bus\, it is near stops for the 3\, 19\, 22\, and 101 bus lines. Seating is first-come\, first-serve. \nThis screening is presented as part of the series\, Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance. Support for this program is provided by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Film courtesy of Cinema Politica. \n \nAbout the filmmaker\nKhaled Jarrar was born in Jenin\, Occupied Palestine in 1976. He lives and works in Ramallah. Jarrar completed his studies in interior design at Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996. Upon graduating he smuggled himself to work as a carpenter in Nazareth\, living as an underground “illegal” worker. In 1998 Jarrar enlisted in an intensive military training which resulted in working for Arafat as a personal body guard until Arafat’s death in 2004. Attempting to create a life between the military and an artistic practice\, Jarrar entered the field of photography in 2005. Jarrar graduated from the International Academy of Art – Palestine\, Ramallah in 2011 and completed an MFA in fine art from the University of Arizona in 2019. \nJarrar\, a multidisciplinary artist\, explores modern power struggles and their sociocultural impact on ordinary citizens through highly symbolic photographs\, videos\, film\, and performative interventions. His State of Palestine project was featured in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Where We Lost Our Shadows\, his filmic collaboration with Pulitzer prize winning composer Du Yun\, was shown at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Jarrar’s work has been featured at Maraya Art Centre\, Sharjah; the New Museum\, New York City; the University of Applied Arts\, Vienna; the 15th Jakarta Biennale; 52nd October Salon\, Belgrade; Al-Ma’mal Foundation\, Jerusalem; and the London Film Festival. Infiltrators\, Jarrar’s first feature length film\, was a documentary about the business of Palestinian’s “illegally” crossing and won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Documentary\, Jury Special Award and the Muhr Arab Documentary Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2012. Notes on Displacement\, his second feature length\, about a Palestinian refugee’s flight from Syria to Germany\, received a world premiere at the IDFA Envision Competition in November 2022. \nBanner image: A still from Khaled Jarrar’s film\, Notes on Displacement. A man and two women are walking along train tracks on a cloudy day. The man is carrying an umbrella. One of the women has multiple bags hanging from her shoulder. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/khaled-jarrars-notes-on-displacement/ LOCATION:Burning Books\, 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, 14213\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Screenshot-2026-02-11-at-3.34.38-PM.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260311T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260311T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260211T171808Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260225T194248Z UID:10001289-1773255600-1773262800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra's The Infiltrators DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, March 11\, 2026\, 7 pm at Burning Books (420 Connecticut St\, Buffalo\, NY 14213)\nFree or $10 suggested donation. Limited seating\, first-come\, first-serve\nThe Infiltrators (95 minutes\, 2019) is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young undocumented immigrants who get arrested by Border Patrol\, and put in a shadowy for-profit detention center – on purpose. \nThe protagonists are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance\, a group of radical Dreamers who are on a mission to stop deportations. And the best place to stop deportations\, they believe\, is in detention. However\, when the activists try to pull off their heist – a kind of ‘prison break’ in reverse – things don’t go according to plan. \nBy weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with scripted re-enactments of the events inside the detention center\, The Infiltrators tells this incredible true story in a boundary-crossing new cinematic language. \nTaking place during the Obama years\, the award winning film (including Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Blackstar Film Festival)\, The Infiltrators is an in turn chilling reminder of long-standing immigrant rights activists and the history of the nation’s exclusionary migration policies. \nFor attendees: The screening will take place at Burning Books located at 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, NY 14213. Street parking is available. For transportation by bus\, it is near stops for the 3\, 19\, 22\, and 101 bus lines. Seating is first-come\, first-serve. \nThis screening is presented as part of the series\, Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance. Support for this program is provided by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thank you to Leo Goldsmith and Paige Sarlin. \n \nAbout the filmmakers\nAlex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization\, migration\, and technology. Rivera’s first feature film\, Sleep Dealer\, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border\, won awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival\, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art\, and had a commercial theatrical release in the U.S\, France\, Japan\, and other countries. Rivera’s second feature\, The Infiltrators\, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators uses documentary and scripted forms to tell the true story of Dreamers who ‘infiltrate’ a detention center to get immigrants out. Rivera is currently developing a few new cyberpunk projects and\, with support from the Ford Foundation\, a feature documentary on the history of deportation titled Banishment. Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow\, Sundance Fellow\, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. He is an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School. \nCristina Ibarra is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker with a 20-year practice rooted in her border crossing roots along the Texas-Mexico border. The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller about undocumented activists on a secret mission inside a detention center is currently being distributed by Oscilloscope. It won the Audience and the Innovator Award in the NEXT section at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019\, among other notable festival awards. The New York Times calls her previous award-winning documentary\, Las Marthas\, about wealthy South Texas border debutantes who honor George Washington in Laredo\, Texas “a striking alternative portrait of border life”. It premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2014 and is distributed by Women Make Movies. The Last Conquistador\, a documentary about the racially conflicted construction of a monument to a conquistador in El Paso\, Texas\, was broadcast on POV in 2008. USA Today describes it as “Heroic”. Her award-winning directorial debut\, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela\, was broadcast on PBS in 2001. She is the recipient of fellowships from Soros\, Rauschenberg\, Rockefeller\, NYFA\, CPB/PBS\, NALIP\, Firelight\, the Sundance Women’s Initiative and Creative Capital\, among others. \nBanner image: A still from the 2019 film The Infiltrators. A row of detainees in orange jumpsuits. Two people are clearly in focus. Image courtesy of Alex Rivera. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/alex-rivera-and-cristina-ibarras-the-infiltrators/ LOCATION:Burning Books\, 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, 14213\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/INFILTRATORS-KEY-LARGE.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260319T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260319T190000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T160038Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260313T160833Z UID:10001290-1773946800-1773946800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer DESCRIPTION:Thursday\, March 19\, 2026\, 7 pm at Burning Books (420 Connecticut St\, Buffalo\, NY 14213)\nFree or $10 suggested donation. Limited seating\, first-come\, first-serve\nSleep Dealer (90 minutes\, 2008) is a science-fiction film set on the U.S. / Mexico border that tells the story of Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña)\, a young man from Mexico who dreams of coming to the United States. However\, in this brave new borderland\, crossing is impossible\, and Memo ‘migrates’ in a new way — over the net. By connecting his body to the net Memo controls a machine that performs his labor in America\, sending his pure work without the body of the worker. \nA film that has gained a cult following since its release (when it was awarded awards at Sundance\, the Gotham Awards\, and the Berlin Film Festival)\, the films ideas on remote labor\, unmanned war\, and border maintenance remains terrifyingly prescient 18 years later. \nSleep Dealer is my first feature film. I made it\, in part\, because I love science fiction. I grew up watching Star Wars\, Brazil and Blade Runner. However\, at a certain point\, I realized that despite the genre’s wild stories and countless special effects\, there were some things that were unimaginable – and that maybe there was an opportunity to do something radically new with sci-fi… The paradox of a world connected by technology\, but divided by borders\, is the central concept of Sleep Dealer. Other present-day realities inspired my futuristic fantasy: violent reality shows like COPS\, private military contractors like Blackwater\, remote control drones like the Predator Drone\, the trend of outsourcing jobs over the web\, the impending global water crisis\, and the ubiquity of video sharing sites YouTube to name a few. This is a science-fiction with many anchors in today’s reality. Sleep Dealer is my first film. It’s not anything like a Star Wars or a Blade Runner. In many ways it’s a humble film. But it’s also an honest attempt to use science- fiction film to say something new\, and something true\, about our world today. – Alex Rivera\, 2008 \nFor attendees: The screening will take place at Burning Books located at 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, NY 14213. Street parking is available. For transportation by bus\, it is near stops for the 3\, 19\, 22\, and 101 bus lines. Seating is first-come\, first-serve. \nThis screening is presented as part of the series\, Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance. Support for this program is provided by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thank you to Leo Goldsmith and Paige Sarlin. \n \nAbout the filmmakers\nAlex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization\, migration\, and technology. Rivera’s first feature film\, Sleep Dealer\, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border\, won awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival\, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art\, and had a commercial theatrical release in the U.S\, France\, Japan\, and other countries. Rivera’s second feature\, The Infiltrators\, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators uses documentary and scripted forms to tell the true story of Dreamers who ‘infiltrate’ a detention center to get immigrants out. Rivera is currently developing a few new cyberpunk projects and\, with support from the Ford Foundation\, a feature documentary on the history of deportation titled Banishment. Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow\, Sundance Fellow\, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. He is an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School. \nBanner image: A still from Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer. A man with his mouth obstructed by some strange technology is connected to a larger machine by a mess of blue wires. He is looking intently ahead as if looking somewhere else. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/alex-riveras-sleep-dealer/ LOCATION:Burning Books\, 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, 14213\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Screenshot-2026-02-11-at-12.20.41-PM.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260321T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260321T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T155808Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260313T160918Z UID:10001301-1774119600-1774126800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer's EMPTY METAL DESCRIPTION:Saturday\, March 21\, 2026\, 7 pm ET\nat Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center\n$8 general\, $6 students/seniors\, $5 members of Squeaky Wheel and Hallwalls\n“Filled with energy\, rage\, and the smallest measure of hope\, Empty Metal is a new kind of political film for these extraordinary times” -Film Society Lincoln Center \nAn unsettling and cutting political thriller\, EMPTY METAL features an apathetic punk band who are ensnared to commit a series of assassinations by an Indigenous family whose mother communicates telepathically with her meditation companions\, a Rastafarian hacker\, and a Buddhist whose son is a member of a secret militia. These disparate actors are united by rage\, boiled in the history of the United States\, and finding itself at a point of no return in our contemporary moment. Inspired by Lizzie Borden’s classic Born in Flames (1983)\, Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer’s film has been widely acclaimed since its debut in 2018. It is an essential portrait of current day American violence and politics\, and posits its inevitable consequences. \nSqueaky Wheel and Hallwalls is excited to screen this modern day classic\, and to welcome co-director Bayley Sweitzer who will be in person for a post screening Q&A. Special thank you to Tammy McGovern and Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. \n\nAdam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer\, EMPTY METAL\, 83 minutes\, 2018. \nBiographies of the artists\nBAYLEY SWEITZER (b. 1989) is a filmmaker living and working in Brooklyn. His practice revolves around repurposing narrative film form in order to convey radical political possibilities. His work has been shown at Film Society Lincoln Center (New York City)\, International Film Festival Rotterdam\, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis)\, Museum of Modern Art (New York City)\, Tate Modern (London)\, Berlinale\, Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City)\, the Sharjah Biennial\, and numerous other galleries\, museums\, and film festivals. Sweitzer is the recipient of a 2021 Creative Capital Award\, a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship\, and has received moving image commissions from the Park Avenue Armory (New York City)\, Gasworks (London)\, and Spike Island (Bristol). \nSweitzer also works professionally as a focuspuller and is a member of the International Cinematographers Guild\, IATSE Local 600. \nADAM KHALIL (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist whose practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of image-making through humor\, relation\, and transgression. Khalil is a core contributor to New Red Order and a co-founder of COUSINS Collective as well as a frequent collaborator with Zack Khalil\, Bayley Sweitzer and more. Khalil’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art\, Sundance Film Festival\, Walker Arts Center\, Lincoln Center\, Tate Modern\, HKW\, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit\, Toronto Biennial 2019 and Whitney Biennial 2019\, among other institutions. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants\, including but not limited to a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts 2021\, Creative Capital Award\, Sundance Art of Nonfiction\, Jerome Artist Fellowship\, Cinereach and the Gates Millennium Scholarship. Adam Khalil is a core contributor to the public secret society New Red Order. \nThis event is presented with support from Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. \nBanner image: A still from EMPTY METAL. A person with gritted teeth\, singing into a microphone. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/adam-khalil-and-bayley-sweitzers-empty-metal/ LOCATION:Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center\, 341 Delaware Avenue\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14202\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Khalil-Empty-Metal-.jpg GEO:42.8937279;-78.8753531 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center 341 Delaware Avenue Buffalo NY 14202 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=341 Delaware Avenue:geo:-78.8753531,42.8937279 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260324T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260324T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T155902Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260313T160750Z UID:10001303-1774378800-1774384200@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Alex Rivera & Khaled Jarrar DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, February 24\, 7 pm ET\nOnline on Zoom. Click here to register.\nSqueaky Wheel presents a virtual artist talk with artists Alex Rivera and Khaled Jarrar to discuss their films that are screening as part of Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance\, and answer questions from the audience. The screening series take on the human toll of borders and the organized and individual ways people evade and resist them. Featuring both cult classic works and acclaimed documentaries\, the films – with Rivera’s work focusing on the maintenance and violence of the US border\, and Jarrar’s focusing on power struggles\, in particular as they relate to Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora – showcases the logistical\, ethical\, and bureaucratic logics of border regimes\, and points to intertwined solidarities. \nInfiltrators: Films on borders and resistance is supported by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Thank you to our co-presenters at Jewish Voice for Peace – Buffalo. Khaled Jarrar’s Infiltrators is courtesy of Third World Newsreel\, and his film Notes on Displacement is courtesy of Cinema Politica. Special thank you to Paige Sarlin and Leo Goldsmith. \nBiographies of the artists\nAlex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization\, migration\, and technology. Rivera’s first feature film\, Sleep Dealer\, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border\, won awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival\, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art\, and had a commercial theatrical release in the U.S\, France\, Japan\, and other countries. Rivera’s second feature\, The Infiltrators\, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators uses documentary and scripted forms to tell the true story of Dreamers who ‘infiltrate’ a detention center to get immigrants out. Rivera is currently developing a few new cyberpunk projects and\, with support from the Ford Foundation\, a feature documentary on the history of deportation titled Banishment. Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow\, Sundance Fellow\, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. He is an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School. \nKhaled Jarrar was born in Jenin\, Occupied Palestine in 1976. He lives and works in Ramallah. Jarrar completed his studies in interior design at Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996. Upon graduating he smuggled himself to work as a carpenter in Nazareth\, living as an underground “illegal” worker. In 1998 Jarrar enlisted in an intensive military training which resulted in working for Arafat as a personal body guard until Arafat’s death in 2004. Attempting to create a life between the military and an artistic practice\, Jarrar entered the field of photography in 2005. Jarrar graduated from the International Academy of Art – Palestine\, Ramallah in 2011 and completed an MFA in fine art from the University of Arizona in 2019. \nJarrar\, a multidisciplinary artist\, explores modern power struggles and their sociocultural impact on ordinary citizens through highly symbolic photographs\, videos\, film\, and performative interventions. His State of Palestine project was featured in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Where We Lost Our Shadows\, his filmic collaboration with Pulitzer prize winning composer Du Yun\, was shown at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Jarrar’s work has been featured at Maraya Art Centre\, Sharjah; the New Museum\, New York City; the University of Applied Arts\, Vienna; the 15th Jakarta Biennale; 52nd October Salon\, Belgrade; Al-Ma’mal Foundation\, Jerusalem; and the London Film Festival. Infiltrators\, Jarrar’s first feature length film\, was a documentary about the business of Palestinian’s “illegally” crossing and won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Documentary\, Jury Special Award and the Muhr Arab Documentary Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2012. Notes on Displacement\, his second feature length\, about a Palestinian refugee’s flight from Syria to Germany\, received a world premiere at the IDFA Envision Competition in November 2022. \nPhotographs of Alex Rivera courtesy of the artist. Photograph of Khaled Jarrar courtesy of Cinema Politica. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/alex-rivera-khaled-jarrar/ LOCATION:Virtual\, NY\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Virtual ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/alex-khaled.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260325T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260325T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T155757Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260313T161023Z UID:10001292-1774465200-1774472400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Khaled Jarrar's Infiltrators DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, March 25\, 2026\, 7 pm at Burning Books (420 Connecticut St\, Buffalo\, NY 14213)\nFree or $10 suggested donation. Limited seating\, first-come\, first-serve\nKhaled Jarrar’s stunning Infiltrators (70 minutes\, Palestine / United Arab Emirates\, 2012) is a visceral road movie that chronicles the daily travails of Palestinians of all backgrounds as they seek routes through\, under\, around\, and over a bewildering matrix of barriers and border walls in the highly militarized West Bank. Alternating between cigarette breaks\, detours\, waiting\, and moving\, Infiltrators depicts the cunning\, unnerving\, and constant struggle to defy captivity and occupation. \nFor attendees: The screening will take place at Burning Books located at 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, NY 14213. Street parking is available. For transportation by bus\, it is near stops for the 3\, 19\, 22\, and 101 bus lines. Seating is first-come\, first-serve. \nThis screening is presented as part of the series\, Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance. Support for this program is provided by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Film courtesy of Third World Newsreel. \n \nAbout the filmmaker\nKhaled Jarrar was born in Jenin\, Occupied Palestine in 1976. He lives and works in Ramallah. Jarrar completed his studies in interior design at Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996. Upon graduating he smuggled himself to work as a carpenter in Nazareth\, living as an underground “illegal” worker. In 1998 Jarrar enlisted in an intensive military training which resulted in working for Arafat as a personal body guard until Arafat’s death in 2004. Attempting to create a life between the military and an artistic practice\, Jarrar entered the field of photography in 2005. Jarrar graduated from the International Academy of Art – Palestine\, Ramallah in 2011 and completed an MFA in fine art from the University of Arizona in 2019. \nJarrar\, a multidisciplinary artist\, explores modern power struggles and their sociocultural impact on ordinary citizens through highly symbolic photographs\, videos\, film\, and performative interventions. His State of Palestine project was featured in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Where We Lost Our Shadows\, his filmic collaboration with Pulitzer prize winning composer Du Yun\, was shown at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Jarrar’s work has been featured at Maraya Art Centre\, Sharjah; the New Museum\, New York City; the University of Applied Arts\, Vienna; the 15th Jakarta Biennale; 52nd October Salon\, Belgrade; Al-Ma’mal Foundation\, Jerusalem; and the London Film Festival. Infiltrators\, Jarrar’s first feature length film\, was a documentary about the business of Palestinian’s “illegally” crossing and won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Documentary\, Jury Special Award and the Muhr Arab Documentary Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2012. Notes on Displacement\, his second feature length\, about a Palestinian refugee’s flight from Syria to Germany\, received a world premiere at the IDFA Envision Competition in November 2022. \nBanner image: A still from Khaled Jarrar’s film\, Infiltrators. The frames of several people can be discerned against a city backdrop at night time. Clouds are lit in orange from the city lights. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/khaled-jarrars-infiltrators/ LOCATION:Burning Books\, 420 Connecticut Street\, Buffalo\, 14213\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Infiltrators-film.00_54_22_06.Still007.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260327T000000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260329T235900 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260325T162050Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260325T162224Z UID:10001311-1774569600-1774828740@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Online access | Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance DESCRIPTION:Friday\, March 27–Sunday\, March 29 online\n$10 General / Free for Squeaky Wheel members\nFor one weekend only\, you can watch all four films as part of Infiltrators: Films on borders and resistance in the comfort of your own home! The four films\, by Alex Rivera\, Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra\, and Khaled Jarrar\, take on the human toll of borders and the organized and individual ways people evade and resist them. Featuring both cult classic works and acclaimed documentaries\, the films – with Rivera’s work focusing on the maintenance and violence of the US border\, and Jarrar’s focusing on power struggles\, in particular as they relate to Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora – showcases the logistical\, ethical\, and bureaucratic logics of border regimes\, and points to intertwined solidarities. Along with the films\, you will also receive a recording of the artist talk with Alex Rivera and Khaled Jarrar that took place on March 24th. \nThe films include: \n\nKhaled Jarrar’s Notes on Displacement\nAlex Rivera & Cristina Ibarra’s The Infiltrators\nAlex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer\nKhaled Jarrar’s Infiltrators (US viewers only)\n\nOnline access to the screenings are free for members of Squeaky Wheel. Not a member yet? Memberships start at $30/year (that’s $2.50/mo). Click here to sign up. \nFor online attendees: Private links will be sent to you; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the films through Sunday\, March 29. Please note that Khaled Jarrar’s Infiltrators is only available for US viewers. \nAccessibility: Spanish subtitles are available for Alex Rivera & Christina Ibarra’s The Infiltrators\, and closed captions are available for both The Infiltrators and Rivera’s Sleep Dealer. Khaled Jarrar’s films are in Arabic with English subtitles. \nThis event series is supported by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Thank you to our co-presenters at Jewish Voice for Peace – Buffalo. Khaled Jarrar’s Infiltrators is courtesy of Third World Newsreel\, and his film Notes on Displacement is courtesy of Cinema Politica. Special thank you to Paige Sarlin\, Jason Livingston\, and Leo Goldsmith. \nBiographies of the filmmakers\nAlex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization\, migration\, and technology. Rivera’s first feature film\, Sleep Dealer\, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border\, won awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival\, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art\, and had a commercial theatrical release in the U.S\, France\, Japan\, and other countries. Rivera’s second feature\, The Infiltrators\, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators uses documentary and scripted forms to tell the true story of Dreamers who ‘infiltrate’ a detention center to get immigrants out. Rivera is currently developing a few new cyberpunk projects and\, with support from the Ford Foundation\, a feature documentary on the history of deportation titled Banishment. Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow\, Sundance Fellow\, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. He is an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School. \nCristina Ibarra is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker with a 20-year practice rooted in her border crossing roots along the Texas-Mexico border. The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller about undocumented activists on a secret mission inside a detention center is currently being distributed by Oscilloscope. It won the Audience and the Innovator Award in the NEXT section at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019\, among other notable festival awards. The New York Times calls her previous award-winning documentary\, Las Marthas\, about wealthy South Texas border debutantes who honor George Washington in Laredo\, Texas “a striking alternative portrait of border life”. It premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2014 and is distributed by Women Make Movies. The Last Conquistador\, a documentary about the racially conflicted construction of a monument to a conquistador in El Paso\, Texas\, was broadcast on POV in 2008. USA Today describes it as “Heroic”. Her award-winning directorial debut\, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela\, was broadcast on PBS in 2001. She is the recipient of fellowships from Soros\, Rauschenberg\, Rockefeller\, NYFA\, CPB/PBS\, NALIP\, Firelight\, the Sundance Women’s Initiative and Creative Capital\, among others. \nKhaled Jarrar was born in Jenin\, Occupied Palestine in 1976. He lives and works in Ramallah. Jarrar completed his studies in interior design at Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996. Upon graduating he smuggled himself to work as a carpenter in Nazareth\, living as an underground “illegal” worker. In 1998 Jarrar enlisted in an intensive military training which resulted in working for Arafat as a personal body guard until Arafat’s death in 2004. Attempting to create a life between the military and an artistic practice\, Jarrar entered the field of photography in 2005. Jarrar graduated from the International Academy of Art – Palestine\, Ramallah in 2011 and completed an MFA in fine art from the University of Arizona in 2019. \nJarrar\, a multidisciplinary artist\, explores modern power struggles and their sociocultural impact on ordinary citizens through highly symbolic photographs\, videos\, film\, and performative interventions. His State of Palestine project was featured in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Where We Lost Our Shadows\, his filmic collaboration with Pulitzer prize winning composer Du Yun\, was shown at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Jarrar’s work has been featured at Maraya Art Centre\, Sharjah; the New Museum\, New York City; the University of Applied Arts\, Vienna; the 15th Jakarta Biennale; 52nd October Salon\, Belgrade; Al-Ma’mal Foundation\, Jerusalem; and the London Film Festival. Infiltrators\, Jarrar’s first feature length film\, was a documentary about the business of Palestinian’s “illegally” crossing and won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Documentary\, Jury Special Award and the Muhr Arab Documentary Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2012. Notes on Displacement\, his second feature length\, about a Palestinian refugee’s flight from Syria to Germany\, received a world premiere at the IDFA Envision Competition in November 2022. \nBanner image: An orange gradient overlaid with the text “INFILTRATORS: Films on borders and resistance. Online this weekend! Free for members of Squeaky Wheel.” URL:https://squeaky.org/event/online-access-infiltrators-films-on-borders-and-resistance/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Screenings,Virtual ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Online-Infiltrators.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260414T183000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260414T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T154915Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260326T193410Z UID:10001307-1776191400-1776198600@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Sound in the Margins: Drawing audio on 16mm film with Ajunie Virk DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, April 14\, 6:30–8:30 pm\nFree or $10 suggested donation; open to ages 16+.\nLimited seats available; register below\nJoin artist resident Ajunie Virk for a workshop that teaches participants how to create experimental audio by drawing directly onto the optical soundtrack of 16mm film\, a technique the artists uses herself to personalize sound and generate abstract audio layers within her own video works. \nThis hands-on workshop methods in mark-making\, sound reading\, and editing to craft unique sonic textures. Participants will be introduced to historical and artistic antecedents\, including the work of Daphne Oram and Arseny Avraamov\, and learn analog and digital tools – including 16mm projectors\, the Photosounder software\, among others. \nAttendees: Participants are welcome to bring their own laptops\, but can also request one in the registration form. You can install the Photosounder software here. Additional materials will be provided. We’ll be ordering a pizza for everyone. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main center after 7:30 pm. \nFunding for this session of Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency is provided by the Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Thank you to our friends at Rust Belt Books\, Buffalo’s largest used bookstore\, for sponsoring this session of the residency. Special thank you to the panelists of this session of the residency\, Alicia Hawkins\, Donte McFadden\, and Joan Nobile. Learn more about the program here. \nBiography of the artist\nAjunie Virk is an Indian-American writer-director and animator whose work investigates the relationship between surveillance\, identity\, and paranoia in a diasporic middle-America\, conjuring up narratives that force viewers to face uncomfortable truths only apparent after objects of nostalgia are stripped of their familiar contexts. An alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University\, Virk was an artist-in-residence at Bunker Projects\, Brew House Arts\, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture\, and the Yale Norfolk School of Art. A recipient of the Anne Dowden and Samuel Rosenberg awards\, she has recently screened works at the Coaxial Art Foundation\, Roski Mateo Gallery\, and Light Matters Festival\, among others. \nBanner image: A still from an animation by Ajunie Virk of a group of people crawling along the strings\, dampers\, and hammers of the inside of a piano. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/sound-in-the-margins-drawing-audio-on-16mm-film-with-ajunie-virk/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/AjunieVirk_GreenFruit_still5.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260416T183000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260416T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T154838Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260403T175326Z UID:10001308-1776364200-1776371400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Autotheory and the Poetics of the Self: Storying the Personal with Arielle Knight DESCRIPTION:Thursday\, April 16\, 6:30–8:30 pm\nFree or $10 suggested donation; open to ages 16+.\nLimited seats available; register below\nJoin Squeaky Wheel and visiting artist resident Arielle Knight for a short form writing workshop! This skill share invites participants to experiment with autobiographical storytelling and the practice of autotheory—the blending of lived experience and critical thought—to create new forms of narrative that collapse the boundaries between personal and intellectual inquiry. Drawing from practices in experimental film\, performance\, and essay-making\, this session will guide participants in transforming fragments of memory\, personal archives\, and embodied experiences into generative creative material. \nParticipants will engage in short writing and reflection exercises that explore how personal narrative can serve as both evidence and theory\, as well as how storytelling becomes a method for survival\, healing\, and critique. Examples of artists and thinkers who employ autotheory to reframe vulnerability as a tool for intervention will be presented\, including excerpts from texts by bell hooks\, Audre Lorde\, and Maggie Nelson. \nThrough group discussion and individual exercises\, participants will learn strategies for translating autobiographical material into multiple media forms—moving image\, sound\, installation\, and text—and discuss the ethics of working with one’s own story and the stories of others. By the end of the workshop\, each participant will have developed a short creative concept or fragment that reflects their own approach to merging self-experience and theory in creative practice. \nThe filmmakers presents this skill-share as an offering; centering on creating a supportive and exploratory environment\, where storytelling becomes a form of research and resistance\, allowing each participant to reimagine how the personal can illuminate the collective and the political. \nAttendees: Notebooks and pens for the workshop will be provided\, though participants are welcome to bring their own. We’ll be ordering a pizza for everyone. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main center after 7:30 pm. \nFunding for this session of Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency is provided by the Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Thank you to our friends at Rust Belt Books\, Buffalo’s largest used bookstore\, for sponsoring this session of the residency. Special thank you to the panelists of this session of the residency\, Alicia Hawkins\, Donte McFadden\, and Joan Nobile. Learn more about the program here. \nBiography of the artist\n \nDirector and producer Arielle Knight is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of GoodKnight Films Inc.\, acclaimed for her innovative storytelling that illuminates untold narratives across the Black diaspora. Working at the intersection of documentary and hybrid forms\, her films and collaborations examine how communities navigate social\, economic\, and embodied precarity. She draws on surreal interpretations of political\, social\, and domestic realities\, blurring boundaries between nonfiction and fantasy to create cinematic spaces of escape and freedom. Her work has been supported by the Sundance Institute\, Southern Documentary Fund\, Catapult Film Fund\, and the Ford Foundation\, among others. Through intimate\, personal narratives\, Knight continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary cinema with a vision rooted in Black futurity\, imagination\, and experimentation. \nImage: A still from And Counting\, a film by Arielle Knight. Two Black people laying on a wooden floor\, their heads next to each other. One of them is smiling while gesturing and talking\, the other has their eyes closed\, their head resting on their hands. The sun beams on them from a window. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/autotheory-and-the-poetics-of-the-self-storying-the-personal-with-arielle-knight/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Arielle-Knight.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260421T183000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260421T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T154829Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260413T181837Z UID:10001309-1776796200-1776803400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Building Trust On and Off Camera: Ethical Practices with Film Participants with Jason Rhee DESCRIPTION:Tuesday\, April 21\, 6:30–8:30 pm\nFree or $10 suggested donation; open to ages 16+.\nLimited seats available; register below.\nTrust is the foundation of ethical and effective documentary\, participatory\, and community-based filmmaking. This workshop by visiting filmmaker Jason Rhee equips filmmakers\, media artists\, and researchers with practical strategies to build\, negotiate\, and sustain trust with participants—especially those from marginalized or vulnerable communities. Drawing on the themes of informed consent\, accessibility\, privacy\, and reciprocity\, participants will explore how transparent communication and mutual accountability can transform the filmmaker-participant relationship. \nThe filmmaker will introduce topics and facilitate discussion on power dynamics\, long-term relationships\, and anonymized case studies where trust broke down\, and also provide participants with toolkits such as sample consent forms and checklists for informed consent. Optionally\, participants are also welcome to introduce specific trust challenges in their own projects and workshop them with their peers. \nAttendees: Notebooks and pens for the workshop will be provided\, though participants are welcome to bring their own. We’ll be ordering a pizza to share. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main center after 7:30 pm. \nFunding for this session of Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency is provided by the Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Thank you to our friends at Rust Belt Books\, Buffalo’s largest used bookstore\, for sponsoring this session of the residency. Special thank you to the panelists of this session of the residency\, Alicia Hawkins\, Donte McFadden\, and Joan Nobile. Learn more about the program here. \nBiography of the artist\n \nJason Rhee (Director/Producer/Cinematographer) is a Korean American filmmaker with a passion for telling stories centered around his childhood and the AAPI community. Jason spent a decade in comedy prior to working on his feature film at institutions like The Onion and Conan. With a background in screenwriting and comedy\, he helped produce three one- woman shows with comedian Kellye Howard\, including directing a sold-out run at the Steppenwolf Theater as part of its 2022 LookOut series. Jason recently served as a cinematographer for PBS WTTW’s Firsthand webseries on migrants\, unhoused Chicagoans\, and peacekeepers. \nBanner image: A still from Jason Rhee’s in-progress The Untitled EJ Lee Documentary. Untitled A petit young Asian woman wearing a burgundy red jersey and dribbling a basketball in front of an opposing tall player in a white jersey\, all within the backdrop of a crowded arena. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/building-trust-on-and-off-camera-ethical-practices-with-film-participants-with-jason-rhee/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Residencies,Skill Share ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/EJ-Lee-Doc-Still-2.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260424T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260424T210000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260313T154904Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260417T175302Z UID:10001306-1777057200-1777064400@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Meet the Residents: Ajunie Virk\, Arielle Knight\, Jason Rhee DESCRIPTION:This event has been postponed due to unforeseen reasons. The new date is Friday\, April 24\, 7 pm ET\nIn-person at Squeaky Wheel and online\nFree or suggested donation; get tickets below\nSqueaky Wheel is pleased to present this hybrid artist talk with our Spring 2026 Workspace Residents! Ajunie Virk\, Arielle Knight\, and Jason Rhee will be presenting on their previous and current projects\, along with a Q&A with the residents moderated by curator Ekrem Serdar. \nFor in-person attendees: The event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Catering from Ali Baba Kebab\, with vegetarian options\, will be provided. \nFor online attendees: A private link will be sent to you; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here. \nAccessibility: If you’d like to request ASL interpretation for either in-person or the online viewing\, please contact ekrem@squeaky.org by April 2. You can view additional information on Squeaky Wheel’s accessibility information here. \nAjunie Virk will be working on A Foot Off the Windowsill\, a feature length experimental film which follows a recovering addict whose fragile first relationship and year of sobriety collide as she scours her house to destroy a shadow she judges to be a cockroach. The roach—an insect often seen as toxic\, despite its essential role in ecosystems to break down remnants and waste—enters the character’s pristine home\, disrupting their curated world and forcing a reckoning with societal expectation\, relinquishment\, and authenticity. The film blends the use of 3D animation\, green screen performance\, and motion capture to highlight the inconsistencies in the personas we build to dodge the shame inherent in pursuing perfection. \nArielle Knight will be working on an installation version of And Counting… a hybrid documentary and fiction film that conveys the fractured experience of “carceral time”. The film follows a mother and her formerly incarcerated son’s journey home\, confronting their wounds and their hopes to rebuild their bond. Knight’s approach draws on the power of hybridity not as artifice\, but as a means of approaching reality more truthfully. During the residency\, the filmmaker will repurpose and recontextualize materials that did not make it into the short film—outtakes\, archival footage\, and experimental sound pieces—integrating them into an immersive multi-channel environment. \nFilmmaker Jason Rhee will be working on The Untitled EJ Lee Documentary\, an intimate feature-length film that goes beyond basketball to unveil the untold story of Eun Jung “EJ” Lee\, a diminutive but powerful figure in the world of women’s basketball. The film tells a basketball story that’s never been told before: a female Asian immigrant in the southern U.S. who reached enormous heights on the biggest stages as a player and attempts to do the same as a coach. Following sports narratives such as Last Chance U\, The Heart of The Game\, and Hoop Dreams\, the film showcases intimate verité footage of EJ and the players on and off the court\, the societal issues that they faced\, and the historical journey of EJ becoming one of the best basketball players in the world. In a society that tends to worship male sports icons\, The Untitled EJ Lee Documentary seeks to inspire young women\, girls\, members of the AAPI community\, older adults\, and sports enthusiasts at large\, ushering a resilient and awe-inspiring woman into the pantheon of American sports heroes. \nFunding for this session of Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency is provided by the Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Thank you to our friends at Rust Belt Books\, Buffalo’s largest used bookstore\, for sponsoring this session of the residency. Special thank you to the panelists of this session of the residency\, Alicia Hawkins\, Donte McFadden\, and Joan Nobile. Learn more about the program here. \nBiographies of the artists\n \nAjunie Virk is an Indian-American writer-director and animator whose work investigates the relationship between surveillance\, identity\, and paranoia in a diasporic middle-America\, conjuring up narratives that force viewers to face uncomfortable truths only apparent after objects of nostalgia are stripped of their familiar contexts. An alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University\, Virk was an artist-in-residence at Bunker Projects\, Brew House Arts\, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture\, and the Yale Norfolk School of Art. A recipient of the Anne Dowden and Samuel Rosenberg awards\, she has recently screened works at the Coaxial Art Foundation\, Roski Mateo Gallery\, and Light Matters Festival\, among others. \n \nDirector and producer Arielle Knight is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of GoodKnight Films Inc.\, acclaimed for her innovative storytelling that illuminates untold narratives across the Black diaspora. Working at the intersection of documentary and hybrid forms\, her films and collaborations examine how communities navigate social\, economic\, and embodied precarity. She draws on surreal interpretations of political\, social\, and domestic realities\, blurring boundaries between nonfiction and fantasy to create cinematic spaces of escape and freedom. Her work has been supported by the Sundance Institute\, Southern Documentary Fund\, Catapult Film Fund\, and the Ford Foundation\, among others. Through intimate\, personal narratives\, Knight continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary cinema with a vision rooted in Black futurity\, imagination\, and experimentation. \n \nJason Rhee (Director/Producer/Cinematographer) is a Korean American filmmaker with a passion for telling stories centered around his childhood and the AAPI community. Jason spent a decade in comedy prior to working on his feature film at institutions like The Onion and Conan. With a background in screenwriting and comedy\, he helped produce three one- woman shows with comedian Kellye Howard\, including directing a sold-out run at the Steppenwolf Theater as part of its 2022 LookOut series. Jason recently served as a cinematographer for PBS WTTW’s Firsthand webseries on migrants\, unhoused Chicagoans\, and peacekeepers. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/meet-the-residents-ajunie-virk-arielle-knight-jason-rhee/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Hybrid,Residencies ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Residency-1920x1080-1.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260513T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260513T193000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260507T213918Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260507T213950Z UID:10001317-1778695200-1778700600@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Amya Carter's Gravitate DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, May 13\, 6 pm\nFree\nSqueaky Wheel presents a presentation of Gravitate by Amya Carter. Gravitate is an animation inspired by the cover art and song\, “Falling For You” by Louie Zong. It reimagines the song as a space inspired visual world that reflects the emotional process of being drawn to someone\, using floating forms\, subtle motion\, and cosmic design to express tone and feeling. \nBiography of the artist\nAmya Carter is an independent digital media designer originally from Baltimore\, Maryland\, and is currently based in Buffalo\, New York. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Buffalo State University\, where she developed a strong passion in visual communication and digital storytelling. Her work focuses on creating narrative-driven experiences\, most often through 3D design\, where she explores the relationship between motion\, environment\, and emotion. Drawing inspiration from atmospheric visuals\, Amya’s projects aim to immerse viewers in strategically constructed worlds that feel both expressive and intentional. She is particularly interested in how abstract concepts and subtle details can shape a viewer’s perception and emotional response. Through a combination of technical precision and creative experimentation\, her work blends storytelling with visual design\, resulting in work that is visually engaging and conceptually driven. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/amya-carters-gravitate/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Thesis presentation ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-5.35.05-PM.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260612 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260912 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260511T184347Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260522T165611Z UID:10001312-1781222400-1789171199@squeaky.org SUMMARY:With us at the center of our world: animals\, domestications\, dreams DESCRIPTION:Opening Friday\, June 12\, 2026\, 6–8 pm\nExhibition hours: Tuesday–Saturday\, 12–5 pm\, extended hours through 8 pm on Wednesdays\, and by appointment\nOn view through September 11\, 2026\nSqueaky Wheel presents an exhibition and public programs thinking through and on non-human animals. The artists – working in animation\, essay films\, speculative narratives\, installation work\, among other forms – address domestication\, colonialism\, extinction\, and conservation\, and the toll humans extract from our co-inhabitants on earth. The exhibition features work by Amy Ching-Yan Lam\, Annika Eriksson\, Cameron A. Granger\, Christina Corfield\, Deniz Tortum & Sister Sylvester\, G. Anthony Svatek\, Miranda Javid\, and Noor Abuarafeh\, with films by Serge Avédikian\, Chris Marker\, and Wiame Haddad in the screening program. \nThe title of the exhibition – with us at the center of our world – is from John Berger’s quintessential essay “Why Look at Animals?”\, describing the place and role humans placed animals: how we may have seen and defined ourselves\, our world through and with them. The works take on various perspectives\, looking with and at animals\, and how the forces of capitalism\, control\, colonialism\, and war are now intertwined in our relationships with them. Thinking through these forces\, the collected works in the exhibition ask: what is the world that humans and animals are at the center of\, and are other worlds possible? \n\nLeft to right: Annika Eriksson\, The Community (2010); Miranda Javid\, Little Winds That Died Immediately (2019); Noor Abuarafeh\, Am I the ageless object at the museum? (2018); Deniz Tortum & Sister Sylvester\, Our Ark (2022).\nThe exhibition features multiple strands for visitors to think through our relationship with non-human animals. Miranda Javid’s characteristically spectacular animated work Little Winds That Died Immediately features small animals as they try to survive under the force of humans using the artist’s signature transformative style\, with its subtle and evocative soundtrack heard through the gallery. Amy Ching-Yan Lam’s Looty Goes to Heaven is written from the perspective of Looty\, a small Pekingese dog that was stolen by British troops and gifted to Queen Victoria. The speculative fiction work—with Looty’s life told in the book and her restful afterlife in the video work made with Emerson Maxwell—speaks tenderly and often humorously to the obscene legacies left by the British empire on China during the Second Opium War. Cameron A. Granger’s stunning Just Below Heaven imagines the dreams and inner life of a pigeon trained for the machinery of American control; while Christina Corfield’s installation Pony Players Review thinks through the connections and settlements enabled in the U.S. by the Pony Express. Cutting together technology advertisements across decades that feature animals and nature in selling televisions\, G. Anthony Svatek’s A Whole New Species harkens to the everpresent narrative of ownership\, spectacle\, and control over our world. Thinking through curated forms of animal collection such as zoos—what Berger called “living monument(s) to their own disappearance”—Noor Abuarafeh’s Am I the ageless object at the museum? considers zoos\, museums\, and cemeteries through an evocative narrative and footage of zoos in Palestine\, Switzerland\, and Egypt. Paired in the center of the exhibition with Abuarafeh’s work\, Deniz Tortum and Sister Sylvester’s Our Ark documents the possibilities and consequences of efforts to backup virtual replicas of the world. Finally\, Annika Erikkson’s video The Community features a carpet with several street cats in Turkey\, opening a space for us to consider the roles and responsibilities of domestication\, and the possibility of creating new spaces for human animals and non-human animals to gather. \n\nLeft to right: Cameron A. Granger\, Just Below Heaven (2025); Christina Corfield\, Pony Players Review (2020-Present); G. Anthony Svatek\, A Whole New Species (1956–2026); Amy Ching-Yan Lam with Emerson Maxwell\, Looty Goes to Heaven (2022).\nAdditional work will be shared with a screening of films\, including Chris Marker’s Chats Perchés (The Case of the Grinning Cat) accompanied by the short films Serge Avédikian’s Chienne D’histoire (Barking Island) and Wiame Haddad’s Sang Titre. Avédikian’s animated film\, Chienne D’histoire\, tells the story of the 1910 dog exile and massacre in Ottoman Istanbul\, where thousands of dogs were rounded up and sent to a nearby Island to die in an attempt to modernize the empire in its final years; the film quite clearly asks us to make the connection between the event and the Armenian Genocide. Meanwhile\, Wiame Haddad’s brief and subtle film\, Sang Titre features mysterious Super 8 footage of a donkey that mourns the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The short films will be screened with Chris Marker’s iconic documentary of the 2000s\, Chats Perchés (The Case of the Grinning Cat)\, where the filmmaker reflects on French and international protest movements and culture at the start of the Iraq War through the sudden appearance of alluring portraits of grinning yellow cats through Paris. Click here to learn more about the screening on its respective page. \nSqueaky Wheel is excited to feature the work of former Workspace Residents Deniz Tortum\, G. Anthony Svatek\, and Miranda Javid in this exhibition. Curated by Ekrem Serdar. This exhibition is supported by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thank you to Andreas Bertman at Filmform – The Art Film & Video Archive in Sweden\, Fırat Sezgin and Ecegül Bayram at the Institute of Time\, Luigi Loy at Sacrebleu Productions\, Bob Hunter at Icarus Films\, Carra Stratton\, Jenson Leonard\, Noor Abuarafeh\, Rachael Rakes\, Salome Kokoladze and Aurora Picture Show\, Sue Ding\, and Toleen Touq. \nVisitor and accessibility information:\nThe exhibition can be visited free of charge between 12–5 pm on Tuesdays\, Thursdays\, Fridays\, and Saturdays\, extended hours on Wednesdays from 12–8 pm. Appointments are also available; please email office@squeaky.org with the subject “Exhibition appointment”. \nSeating is provided for most work\, and additional seating is available upon request. See individual work descriptions for captioning and subtitle information. Works without captions have sound descriptions on wall labels. \nClick here for Squeaky Wheel’s parking\, transportation\, and overall accessibility information. \nPublic programs and extended hours\nFriday\, June 12\, 6–8 pm\nExhibition opening\, with brief remarks by Curator Ekrem Serdar at 7 pm. \nWednesday\, June 24\, 7 pm\nArtist talk: Cameron A. Granger and Christina Corfield (click here for more information) \nWednesday\, August 5\, 7 pm\nScreening: Chris Marker’s The Case of the Grinning Cat\, with short films by Serge Avédikian and Wiame Haddad (click here for more information) \nFriday\, September 11\, 6–8 pm\nExhibition closing with extended hours. \n About the artworks (click to expand) \nAmy Ching-Yan Lam\, Looty Goes to Heaven\nBook and video. Video made with Emerson Maxwell\, 4:30 min\, sound\, 2022 \n“Back at the gate to heaven\, Looty watched a hedgehog waddle its way through the hole in the thicket. Before she could go in\, she had to give the green-faced person a true account of her life. The green-faced person said\, in their gravelly voice\, ‘It can be as short or as long as you like. The only condition is that it must be absolutely true.'” \nA small Pekingese dog was taken from China at the end of the Second Opium War by British troops\, brought to England\, and gifted to Queen Victoria. This dog was renamed Looty\, in reference to how she was found during the looting of the Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) outside of Beijing. Looty lived for twelve years at the British royal palaces and died in 1872. It is not known where she was buried. \nThe Opium Wars were driven\, in part\, by the British demand for tea from China. In the 1800s\, the tea-drinking market\, including newly industrialized labour\, grew so big that British merchants cultivated a new\, exploitative opium industry to counter this trade deficit. Opium was grown by indentured labourers on plantations in South Asia\, then imported on a massive scale into China. Silver received from the sale of opium was then used to purchase tea. The objections of the Chinese state to this influx of cheap opium led to the Opium Wars. \nLooty was one of the first Pekingese dogs in England\, and her arrival informed new trends in chinoiserie\, dog breeding\, and eugenics. For close to fifty years\, Pekingese dogs were the most popular breed of toy dog in England.\nThis work was commissioned for the 2022 Commonwealth Games & Eastside Projects\, curated by Zoe Sawyer\, Tim Mills\, and Gavin Wade\, and supported by Canada Council for the Arts. Video: music by Hannah Guinan; sound mix by Michelle Irving; animation by Emerson Maxwell. \nNoor Abuarafeh\, Am I the ageless object at the museum?\nVideo Installation\, 15 mins\, Arabic with English subtitles\, 2018 \nThis video is based on a narrative developed through visits to various zoos and zoological institutions in Palestine\, Switzerland\, and Egypt. It is part of a larger body of work encompassing video\, video installations\, a novel\, and performances\, each exploring the concept of the museum from different angles. The projected video examines the construction of zoos and their historical relationship with museums\, as well as the connections between museums and cemeteries. These three entities share a common link to the discipline of history\, utilizing similar aesthetics in the representation and display of historical narratives. \nDeniz Tortum & Sister Sylvester\, Our Ark\nVideo\, 12:33 min\, English with open captions\, 2021 \nOur Ark is an essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world. We are backing up the planet\, creating 3D models of animals\, rainforests\, cities and people. We are archiving as if ecological collapse could be staved off through some digital Noah’s Ark of beasts and objects. Writer/Directors: Deniz Tortum\, Sister Sylvester. Producer: Fırat Sezgin. Editing: Sercan Sezgin. Original Music: Alican Çamcı. Associate Producer: Ecegül Bayram \nChristina Corfield\, Pony Players Review\nVideo installation with sound\, corrugated cardboard\, acrylic paint\, ink\, construction paper\, hot glue\, string\, Amazon boxes\, packing tape\, 2020–Present \nPony Players’ Review is a video installation project featuring re-enactments and reimaginings of film scenes\, and a series of cardboard installation sets that focus on the popular representation of the 19th century messenger\, the Pony Express. \nIn 1860\, the Pony Express was the fastest coast-to-coast messaging system in the US. It was in service for only 18 months after which the transcontinental telegraph replaced the pony with its almost instantaneous information relay. Looking back at the Express can give the process of information relay a form through which to imagine what it means to send messages and be connected. At the same time\, it also helps us think about how the systems and devices we use to send messages add something to how we feel about those messages. Sometimes\, the stories we attach to those messengers and messaging systems become more memorable or valuable than the messages themselves. \nThe installations that make up Pony Players’ Review look at stories and myths that surround the Pony Express — stories that communicate a specific (white\, masculinist) “official” national history of the United States and the role of western expansion to national growth. This project ties romantic images of the Old West to myths of progress\, efficiency\, and information circulation (otherwise known as message delivery) — these are potent myths that remain alive in tech industries and digital culture today. But myths are fictions none the less that can be re-written or over-written\, and most certainly challenged or torn down. \nCameron A. Granger\, Just Below Heaven\nFound wood\, pigeon feet\, rusted nails\, video\, 8:54 minutes\, English with open captions\, edition of 2 plus II AP\, 18 ½ × 55 ½ inches\, 2025 \nUsing behavioral theorist BF Skinner’s series of studies on the rock dove\, also known as the common pigeon\, Just Below Heaven recasts Skinner’s theory of behavior and control as a stage where the cultural scripts and modes that fuel the machinery of American life are brought under scrutiny. A pigeon has a dream\, and finds each one of us in it. \nAnnika Eriksson\, The Community\nDigital video\, 4:30 min\, 2010. Courtesy of Filmform – The Art Film & Video Archive \nIn Annika Eriksson’s The Community\, we encounter a story about Istanbul’s homeless cat community. For many years\, the cats were cared for by local cat lovers\, but today\, the cats have disappeared\, the result of a clean-up initiative that altered the cityscape. In Ray Oldenburg’s pamphlet The Great Good Place\, he refers to ‘the third place’\, where people gather and move between work and family affairs. It is as a place of good company and discussions\, the root of democracy\, and the vitality of society. The Community invites us to think about the implications of public space and third places for a city’s inhabitants\, both human and not. \nMiranda Javid\, Little Winds That Died Immediately\nGraphite animation on paper\, 6:20 min\, sound\, 2019 \nSmall animals struggle to survive under the force of disembodied\, human features. Some of these creatures are crushed\, smushed\, melted\, and sizzled\, while a resilient few withstand their encounter and amble on. Thousands of rendered and shaded graphite drawings on paper. \nG. Anthony Svatek\, A Whole New Species\nDigital video\, 1950–2026 \nA Whole New Species is a found-footage video installation that critically examines a trope in advertising: using spectacular nature imagery to sell television sets. In these commercials spanning several decades\, beautiful landscapes\, adorable butterflies\, and giant blue whales adorn glowing screens – imitating wildlife to be experienced indoors\, as biodiversity declines outside. A Whole New Species shifts the focus away from the device’s novelty and onto the nature used in the ad. \n \n Biographies of the artists (click to expand) \nAmy Ching-Yan Lam is an artist and writer. Her practice looks to recover shared experience and feeling from the ruling structures of violence. She uses quotidian materials (like institutional debris) and processes (like jokes). Books and memories are often at the centre of her projects. Exhibitions\, performances\, and screenings have been presented at The Goldfarb Gallery\, York University (2025)\, Richmond Art Gallery (2023)\, Eastside Projects (2022)\, Seoul MediaCity Biennale (2021)\, SFU Galleries (2021)\, Centre Clark (2019)\, Truck Gallery (2018)\, aka artist-run (2018)\, the Western Front (2015)\, Art Gallery of Ontario (2013)\, and others. She is the author of Baby Book (2023)\, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards in Poetry; Property Journal (2024); and 83% Perfect (2025). Amy teaches creative writing in the English department of New York University. She was born in Hong Kong and lives in Lenapehoking / Brooklyn. Click here to visit her website. \nAnnika Eriksson is originally from Malmö and lives in Berlin since 2002. At the center of her artistic practice is an interest in social interaction: how do we live together\, what kind of societies do we create\, and what happens in the margins or in the transition from one social order to another? In her work\, the social has always involved a key emphasis on the slippages between the one ME into others – with a return to questions of interaction and exchange\, circular forms of communication\, self-abnegation and empathy. Her project also engages with the relations between humans and animals; of our interdependence\, slippages and connection\, but also registers of violation\, and the animal as a distinctively human projection surface. She has been exhibiting since the early 90s in various biennales and institutions\, for example the biennales in Istanbul\, Venice\, Sao Paolo\, Shanghai and Vienna; in institutions such as Bonner Kunstverein\, Tate Liverpool\, Hamburger Bahnhof\, Berlin\, Hayward Gallery\, London and Moderna Museet\, Malmö and Stockholm. \nCameron A. Granger is Sandra’s son & came up in in the Euclid\, Ohio. He likes pigeons\, video games\, & memes. Lately he’s been thinking about how myth making and narrative have been used as a means to police the imagination\, and making movies with his friends. He’s a lifetime member of MINT Collective\, long may it live\, and an alumni of Euclid Public Schools. Granger is an alumni of the Studio Museum in Harlem AIR program (21-22) and Skowhegan School for Painting & Sculpture (2017). His film\, Before I Let Go\, was awarded Best Experimental Film and the Audience Award at the 2023 BlackStar Film Festival. Granger lives and works between Columbus\, OH and Queens\, NY. Granger has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions at Kate Werble Gallery in New York\, NY\, No Place Gallery\, Columbus\, OH (2022); and Vox Populi\, Philadelphia\, PA (2018)\, among others. He has shown in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1\, Long Island City\, NY (2022)\, The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in Detroit\, MI\, Jack Shainman The School\, Kinderhook\, NY (2022)\, and The Bemis Center for the Arts\, Omaha\, NE (2021). \nChristina Corfield is a British-born interdisciplinary artist and media scholar. She has published her research in academic journals such as The Journal of Early Popular Visual Culture\, and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Christina has exhibited her artwork in Europe and across the US\, most recently with a solo show at the Western New York Book Arts Center\, as well as Telematic Gallery\, San Francisco\, and Johansson Projects in Oakland\, CA. Her scholarly and artistic work focuses on media history\, media materiality and logistical media\, exploring how the perceived value of media and technology is negotiated through the stories we tell about them. \nDeniz Tortum (İstanbul\, 1989) works in film and immersive media. Among his recent work\, his feature documentary Phases of Matter (2020\, IFFR) explores a state-run teaching hospital in Istanbul; his essay video Our Ark (2021\, IDFA\, co-dir Sister Sylvester) reflects on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world\, a digital Noah’s Ark; and his virtual reality work Shadowtime (2023\, Venice Film Festival\, co-dir Sister Sylvester) explores the history of virtual reality and its relation to the climate crisis. Between 2014 and 2020\, he worked as a researcher at the MIT Open Documentary Lab and MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative. In 2019\, he was featured as one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine. His work has screened internationally\, including at the Venice Film Festival\, IFFR\, IDFA\, SXSW\, the Museum of the Moving Image among others. He is the co-founder of the interdisciplinary studio Institute of Time and the Istanbul-based film collective Görültü. He is currently leading a research project with Salt Istanbul about the 60s independent Turkish film scene; and developing Intrusions\, a film around spiritism and climate anxiety. \nHaving grown up at the foot of the Austrian Alps\, G. Anthony Svatek is awed by the living world and how it is increasingly impacted by our techno-urban lives. Anthony’s work screened at NYFF\, Intl FF Rotterdam\, Visions du Réel\, Ann Arbor\, Big Sky\, Prismatic Ground\, DOCNYC\, amongst others. Supporters include Ford Foundation JustFilms\, NYSCA\, Simons Foundation\, Austrian Cultural Forum NY. He is the recipient of the New Visions Golden Gate Award at SFFILM. Commissioned work includes projects for New York Magazine\, New York State Parks\, and Pioneer Works. He has staffed seasonally at the Flaherty Film Seminar\, The Climate Museum\, and the American Museum of Natural History. \nMiranda Javid is an animator\, curator\, and art educator living in the Hudson Valley of New York State. On her work\, collaborator Brendan Sullivan once said\, “Miranda’s work captures the pulsing network of the living\, the heft of bodies\, and the density of human experience. Her work is playful and also somberly scientific\, as it tracks time and decay with special attention to the body wading through it. There is a whole world in there\, traces of the big unknowables\, both the mystic and the muddled mess of human stuff. Within that unknowable mess\, ritual is the mark left in time.” Her films have shown nationally and internationally at festivals like the Ann Arbor Film Festival\, Slamdance\, Flatpack\, Images\, Eyeworks Film Festival\, The Maryland Film Festival\, and Animation Block Party. She is a former Kenan Fellow\, Denniston Hill and Squeaky Wheel resident\, a Sherman Fairchild grantee\, and a recipient of the Nancy Harrigan Prize\, given through the Baker Artist Fund. Her drawings have shown at The Baltimore Museum of Art\, and The Mint Museum of Art in North Carolina. \nNoor Abuarafeh is a Palestinian artist based between Jerusalem and Rotterdam. Her practice spans video\, performance\, publications\, and video installations\, with a focus on the themes of memory\, history and archives and the complexities of tracking absence. Noor’s videos and performances are based on texts and call the complexity of history into question: how it is formed\, constructed\, made\, perceived\, visualized and understood. She asks how all these elements are related and investigates the possibility of representing the past when the past is still present. Her videos and socially-engaged works are based on interviews\, workshops and other participatory encounters.\nIn the past Abuarafeh has shown in solo and group exhibitions at De Appel (2024)\, Art Jameel (2024)\, Jakarta Biennale (2024)\, Frieze Museum (2023)\, Venice Biennale (2022)\, Berlin Biennale (2020)\, and Sharjah Biennale 13 (2017). She also participated in the Off-Biennale Gaudipolis in Budapest (2017) and the Qalandia International in Jerusalem (2018)\, among others. In 2019\, she held her first solo exhibition\, The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost\, curated by Lara Khaldi in Jerusalem.\n \nFeatured image: Still of Amy Ching-Yan Lam with Emerson Maxwell\, Looty Goes to Heaven (2022). A digitally animated photorealistic depiction of a small Pekingese dog. The dog is upside down with his paws in the air in a relaxed state. One of its eyes is open and looking at you. URL:https://squeaky.org/event/with-us-at-the-center-of-our-world/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Exhibition ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Looty-Goes-to-Heaven.jpg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260624T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260624T200000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260512T144028Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260522T164339Z UID:10001318-1782327600-1782331200@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Artist talk: Cameron A. Granger & Christina Corfield DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, June 24\, 2026\, 7 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nYou can request an ASL interpreter for this event\, please contact ekrem@squeaky.org by June 1\nSqueaky Wheel presents a conversation with artists Cameron A. Granger and Christina Corfield\, moderated by Ekrem Serdar. The two artists will speak to their projects – Just Below Heaven (2025) and Pony Players Review (2020–present)\, respectively – as part of our current exhibition\, With us at the center of our world: Animals\, domestications\, dreams\, and answer questions from the audience. The exhibition presents the work of nine artists thinking through and on non-human animals. The artists – working in animation\, essay films\, speculative narratives\, installation work\, amog other forms – address topics of domestication\, colonialism\, extinction\, and conservation\, and the toll humans extract from our co-inhabitants on earth. The exhibition features work by Amy Ching-Yan Lam\, Annika Eriksson\, Cameron A. Granger\, Christina Corfield\, Deniz Tortum & Sister Sylvester\, G. Anthony Svatek\, Miranda Javid\, and Noor Abuarafeh. \nFor attendees: The event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Samosas from Ali Baba Kebab will be provided. \nThis event is supported by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. \n \nStill: Cameron A. Granger\, Just Below Heaven (2025)\nBiographies of the artists\nCameron A. Granger is Sandra’s son & came up in in the Euclid\, Ohio. He likes pigeons\, video games\, & memes. Lately he’s been thinking about how myth making and narrative have been used as a means to police the imagination\, and making movies with his friends. He’s a lifetime member of MINT Collective\, long may it live\, and an alumni of Euclid Public Schools. Granger is an alumni of the Studio Museum in Harlem AIR program (21-22) and Skowhegan School for Painting & Sculpture (2017). His film\, Before I Let Go\, was awarded Best Experimental Film and the Audience Award at the 2023 BlackStar Film Festival. Granger lives and works between Columbus\, OH and Queens\, NY. Granger has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions at Kate Werble Gallery in New York\, NY\, No Place Gallery\, Columbus\, OH (2022); and Vox Populi\, Philadelphia\, PA (2018)\, among others. He has shown in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1\, Long Island City\, NY (2022)\, The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in Detroit\, MI\, Jack Shainman The School\, Kinderhook\, NY (2022)\, and The Bemis Center for the Arts\, Omaha\, NE (2021). \nChristina Corfield is a British-born interdisciplinary artist and media scholar. She has published her research in academic journals such as The Journal of Early Popular Visual Culture\, and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Christina has exhibited her artwork in Europe and across the US\, most recently with a solo show at the Western New York Book Arts Center\, as well as Telematic Gallery\, San Francisco\, and Johansson Projects in Oakland\, CA. Her scholarly and artistic work focuses on media history\, media materiality and logistical media\, exploring how the perceived value of media and technology is negotiated through the stories we tell about them. \nFeatured image: Installation documentation of Christina Corfield\, Pony Players Review (2020–present). URL:https://squeaky.org/event/artist-talk-cameron-a-granger-christina-corfield-with-ekrem-serdar/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Artist Talk ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ponyplayer.webp GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260805T203000 DTSTAMP:20260524T234654 CREATED:20260310T185004Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260512T143250Z UID:10001316-1785956400-1785961800@squeaky.org SUMMARY:Chris Marker's The Case of the Grinning Cat\, with short films by Serge Avedikian and Wiame Haddad DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, August 5\, 2026\, 7 pm\nFree or suggested donation\nIn-person at Squeaky Wheel and online\nSqueaky Wheel presents a screening of Chris Marker’s iconic film\, Chat Perchés (The Case of the Grinning Cat)\, preceded by Serge Avedikian’s haunting short animated film\, Chienne D’histoire (Howling Island) and Wiame Haddad’s subtle and urgent film Sang Titre. The films think through past and current history with and through animals\, and depictions thereof: Avedikian’s Barking Island tells the story of the 1910 dog exile and massacre in Ottoman Istanbul\, where thousands of dogs were rounded up and sent to a nearby Island to die\, with clear resonances between the event and the Armenian Genocide. Meanwhile in The Case of the Grinning Cat\, Chris Marker reflects on French and international politics\, art and culture at the start of the new millennium through the sudden appearance of alluring portraits of grinning yellow cats through Paris. \nThe screening is presented as part of our exhibition\, With us at the center of our world: Animals\, domestications\, dreams. The exhibition presents the work of nine artists thinking through and on non-human animals. The artists – working in animation\, essay films\, speculative narratives\, installation work\, among other forms – address topics of domestication\, colonialism\, extinction\, and conservation\, and the toll humans extract from our co-inhabitants on earth. The exhibition features work by Amy Ching-Yan Lam\, Annika Eriksson\, Cameron A. Granger\, Christina Corfield\, Deniz Tortum & Sister Sylvester\, G. Anthony Svatek\, Miranda Javid\, and Noor Abuarafeh. \nFor in-person attendees: The event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm. Samosas from Ali Baba Kebab will be provided. \nFor online attendees: A private link will be sent to you; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here. \nThis event is supported by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thank you to Bob Hunter at Icarus Films\, Luigi Loy at Sacrebleu Productions\, and Salome Kokoladze and Aurora Picture Show. \nProgram\nTotal program duration is ~76 minutes \n\nLeft to right: Wiame Haddad\, Sang Titre (2024); the poster of Serge Avédikian\, Chienne D’histoire (Howling Island) (2010); Chris Marker\, The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004).\nSerge Avédikian\, Chienne D’histoire (Howling Island)\n15 minutes\, 2010 \nConstantinople 1910. Too many stray dogs in the streets of the city. The new government\, influenced by a Western model of society\, looks to European experts for ways to get rid of them before deciding\, alone\, to finally deport 30\,000 dogs to a deserted island off the coast of the city. Through the dual eyes of a dog who has just given birth and the policeman who cages her\, we follow the forced exile of these dogs\, most of whom will die of hunger and thirst\, to the great satisfaction of the authorities. Years later\, in an alley of the city\, our rescued dog will find her gendarme\, who has become blind…. Description and film courtesy of Sacrebleu Productions. Written by Serge Avédikian & Karine Mazloumian. Composer Michel Karsky. \nWiame Haddad\, Sang Titre\n2:55 minutes\, 16 mm on digital video\, 2024 \nSang Titre is an evocation of a post-twilight\, where the echo of an absolute\, indomitable\, and profound resilience resonates. Borrowing its title from Godard and Miéville\, this film emerges from a surge of anger and despair in\nthe face of the ongoing violence endured by Palestinians. Rooted in both urgency and mourning\, it echoes a long history of oppression while seeking a visual language to confront it. At its core lies a nocturnal encounter with a donkey\, suddenly appearing in the darkness—resilient\, bound\, and silently accusatory. Its piercing gaze\, both gentle and unyielding\, becomes a powerful allegory of dignity\, resistance\, and the enduring condition of oppressed peoples. \nThe film was created following an invitation from Narimane Mari as part of the project Some Strings\, which brings together filmmakers to engage with Palestine. The project has been presented in numerous institutions and festivals around the world\, and continues to evolve. \nChris Marker\, The Case of the Grinning Cat\n58 minutes\, 2004 \nFrench documentarian and cinema-essayist Chris Marker reflects on French and international politics\, art and culture at the start of the new millennium. In November 2001\, the filmmaker became intrigued\, as did many other Parisians\, by the sudden appearance of alluring portraits of grinning yellow cats on buildings\, Metro walls and other public surfaces. Marker’s cinematic efforts to document the mysterious materializations of this charming feline throughout Paris are a recurring theme of The Case of the Grinning Cat. \nThis engaging record of Marker’s cinematic peregrinations throughout the city\, visually energized by his free-association montage style\, chronicles strikes\, demonstrations\, memorials\, election campaigns\, celebrity scandals\, international political incidents\, and a seemingly endless variety of political protests (against the Iraq War\, against China’s occupation of Tibet\, against the government’s ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarves). The personalized commentary running throughout The Case of the Grinning Cat offers the simultaneously learned and witty reflections of the filmmaker\, now in his early eighties\, on both the contemporary and historical implications of these varied events and personalities. \nThe mysterious grinning yellow cats soon begin to appear amidst the banners and signs in some of the political demonstrations. Eventually\, the creator of the grinning cats is revealed to be an art collective known as Mr. Cat\, whose members are shown painting a massive representation of their mascot on the plaza before the Pompidou Center. The filmmaker’s own famous cat caricature soon allies with Mr. Cat\, as Marker speculates on the political possibilities of such a feline association. \nChris Marker concludes The Case of the Grinning Cat with thoughts on the vital importance of such expressions of imagination in our public lives\, echoing the May ’68 slogan that “”La poésie est dans la rue”” (“”Poetry is in the street””). Description and film courtesy of Icarus Films. \nBiographies of the artists\nSerge Avédikian was a student at the Conservatory of Dramatic Art of Meudon\, then worked with the students of the Paris Conservatoire and acted in numerous plays from the classical and modern repertoire. In 1976\, he created a theater company and directed several plays. In 1982\, he began directing documentary films\, while continuing his work as an actor in cinema and theater. In 1988\, he founded his own production company and directed personal films. At the same time\, he continued his career as an actor in theater\, film and television. Since 2000\, he has devoted more time to acting in theater and film and continues to direct films with other producers. \nBorn Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve on July 29\, 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine\, France\, Chris Marker was a cinematic essayist and audio-visual poet. After the Second World War\, Marker began as a writer\, publishing his first book in 1949. In the 1950s he turned to documentary filmmaking. Among his classic works from this period are Letter from Siberia\, Cuba Si!\, Le Joli Mai\, and La Jetée. In the ’60s and ’70s he was actively involved with SLON\, a filmmaking collective dedicated to activist production. Marker reemerged to make films under his own name again in 1977 with Le Fond de l’air est rouge (English title: A Grin Without A Cat). Creatively reworking his life as if editing one of his own films\, Marker made films on other filmmakers during the ’80s and ’90s\, including the renowned One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich. He also explored video and computer-generated imagery with a continued emphasis on the intersection between personal and political themes in films such as The Case of the Grinning Cat\, which was released in English in 2006. A pioneer auteur filmmaker and an original voice in world cinema for over 50 years\, Marker passed away on his birthday\, July 29\, 2012. He is widely accepted to be one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in modern cinema history. (Biography via Icarus Films) \nWiame Haddad works within an extended temporal framework. She develops her practice through series\, each emerging from deeply researched investigations\, both theoretical and formal. The images she produces are rare and deliberately sparse — a remarkable approach within contemporary photographic and cinematic practices often driven by constant flux and overproduction. Born in 1987 in Lille\, Wiame Haddad graduated from the ESAD of Valenciennes and from La Cambre National School of Visual Arts in Brussels. She develops visual projects that engage with the tensions of the body as a political signifier. This research is coupled with an attraction toward what remains unseen. The artist focuses on bodies and events forgotten by History\, particularly on the representation of collective memory and its omissions. Her work is also rooted in an anti-colonial approach\, questioning and deconstructing representations inherited from imperial history. Through the invention of forms\, the recreation of images\, and the construction of new visual archives\, she seeks to sketch out alternative narratives capable of displacing and rewriting dominant versions of colonial history. She lives and works in Paris. Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions\, notably at the Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles\, the CRAC Occitanie\, Villa Empain – Fondation Boghossian\, and the MACAAL\, among others. She has also participated in various film festivals including Cinéma du Réel — where she received a Special Jury Mention — Toronto International Film Festival\, Open City Documentary Festival\, and Tout Court – Nuove Voci della Cineteca di Bologna. \nFeatured image: Still from Chris Marker\, The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004) URL:https://squeaky.org/event/chris-markers-the-case-of-the-grinning-cat/ LOCATION:Squeaky Wheel\, 2495 Main Street\, Suite 310\, Buffalo\, NY\, 14214\, United States CATEGORIES:Hybrid,Screenings ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://squeaky.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Case-of-the-grinning-cat.jpeg GEO:42.8906261;-78.8721258 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Squeaky Wheel 2495 Main Street Suite 310 Buffalo NY 14214 United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=2495 Main Street\, Suite 310:geo:-78.8721258,42.8906261 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR