The Student Experimental Film Festival presented its 15th-annual festival this past Saturday in the Fine Arts building. SEFF is curated by students in the course “Curating Film and Video,” which allows students to take the semester to organize and run the annual festival.

The films feature a range of unconventional methods including the exploration of nonlinear narratives, the incorporation of various mediums and the use of visually abstract images. This year’s theme, “Inner Workings,” dealt with love, loss and hope as audiences gathered to immerse themselves in the multilayered art form of experimental film.

According to Sydney Lee, a festival’s outreach team member and a senior majoring in English, the team’s film selection process included dividing the film submissions among the class, with each group responsible for selecting the films best suited for the themes of the festival’s various programs. The programs for this year’s festival are titled — “Veins of Affinity,” “Hollow Silhouettes” and “Entwined Hands.”

Audience members took their seats as a short speech about the beginning program, “Veins of Affinity” was given. The program highlighted nostalgia for community and family, as filmmakers guide the audience through their related experiences and stories.

While “I see flowers,” created by Minyu Chen, and “If it’s meant to be,” by Aileen O’Leary, clung to the more traditional conventions of storytelling in film. “How do I find you” and “Between the Sky and the Earth,” used a voiceover to ground viewers in a montage of related clips.

In fact, “Entre o Céu e a Terra,” or “Between the Sky and the Earth,” created by Bruna Braga, 24, of Brooklyn, was a conversational film unraveling the profound relationship between Braga and her mother, all the while intertwining the sea as symbolism of their tumultuous nature.

Beginning with a monologue from the daughter’s perspective, the film displayed black-and-white clips off the coast of São Paulo — which intensified Braga’s emotionally charged reflection as the waves viciously crashed against the shore. Partly through the film, an aged voice — presumably representing Braga’s mother — took the stage and detailed an account of her daughter’s act of rebellion. Reflective of Braga’s heritage, the narrators spoke in Portuguese while including English subtitles for an English-speaking audience.

“For me, this project was about understanding what happened between my mother and me, and transforming my thoughts into another format gave me clarity,” Braga wrote in an email. “Almost like an organization of something that happened in the past and that now got fogged in the mind. And like all processes of remembering, I began with a flood of confessions, things I wanted to say or be heard, and gradually — and for me always surprisingly — patterns and connections emerged. Then, the only thing you are left with is to think, dream, and breathe the project.”

On the other hand, “I see flowers,” discussed community and the role of isolation that Chinese COVID-19 restrictions had on young children. At the center is Mei Mei, a young girl who falls into an ethereal world of creatures and vast greenery alongside her friend Tao Tao. Over the course of the film, she loses Tao Tao in the dreamlike world and, eventually, must be taken back to the real world. “I see flowers” concludes after Mei Mei is transported back into her home as she gazes outside, resting her head between the protective bars of her bedroom window.

Following themes of the bittersweetness of nostalgia, program two, “Hollow Silhouettes,” focuses on the display of melancholia and disconnect as filmmakers grapple with themes of loss and isolation.

Diving straight into the difficult themes of the program, “Para Paty,” created by Germán López Tirado, is an experimental documentary that beautifully blended footage, recordings and pictures of a mother who passed at a young age while exploring the liminality of the past and present. Comparatively, “Vita Posthumous,” created by Liam Marvin, was an animation that followed a distressed creature’s journey through the underworld as he comes to terms with the hardships he faced in his life and his recent death — offering a regretful perspective on the career field of manual labor.

While many of the films were contemplative and distressing, “Kid Nature,” created by James Moutsos, emerged as a colorful and comedic take on the power of friendship. The stop-motion film seemed like a cross between “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and “Adventure Time,” as a lonesome and frustrated young boy escapes the cruelty of middle school bullies only to make a bubbly and encouraging friend along the way. The use of bright, flashing colors and humorous dialogue had the audience chuckling, as the chemistry and dynamic of the two central characters developed throughout the film.

“I hope that audiences learn and realize that there is an indefinite amount of ways that one can be creative,” Lee wrote. “The film festival has been programmed with the overall message encouraging others to reach out in times of loss and isolation. If this film festival can encourage one person to reach out to their loved ones during tough times then I’ll have accomplished what I wanted.”

After a quick intermission, during which SEFF provided audience members with sushi, sandwiches, coffee and more, the final program commenced.

“Entwined Hands” reminded the audience to reconnect with their communities and loved ones, even through the grief and isolation reflected in “Hollow Silhouettes.”

“I’m not a coward but I’m not particularly brave,” created by Scott Harris, a senior double-majoring in cinema and history, featured fuzzy clips of Downtown Binghamton as text throughout the film displayed cryptic thoughts.

Although the film was shot digitally, Harris explained, it intentionally had the feel of analog film as he wanted it to resemble the 16mm film he had been working with at the time. “I’m not a coward but I’m not particularly brave” sprung from a digital journal that Harris kept while taking the course “Personal Cinema,” alongside a list of quotes from songs, movies and novels that resonated with him at the time of his three-month filming process.

“All I intend to do with most of my work is [elicit] some sort of emotional response,” Harris wrote in an email. “This film in particular communicates through interpretations of quotes, so I feel like parts of my film can largely be up for interpretation. What someone takes away from it is all up to how they read it, and that’s entirely fine with me but as long as the viewer at least walks away from it with a feeling of ‘I don’t know what he [was] trying to say, but it made me feel something,’ then I’m happy with it.”

The final and perhaps, particularly uplifting film to be presented at the festival was, “Elevator Music,” created by Amani Jamal. The nine-minute film was a series of clips taken in a SUNY Purchase elevator as individuals interact with the film crew. Audience members giggled at the comedic reactions from the subjects as they were directly confronted with the awkward nature of elevator interactions.

The festival concluded with a Q&A panel including a number of the filmmakers, followed by the distribution of several awards.

“Preparing for this festival has been a lot of challenging work, considering that none of us have ever run a film festival like this before,” Lee wrote. “But it’s been a very fun collaborative event that goes towards encouraging emerging student filmmakers, it makes it easier working on this when we all share the goal of wanting those students to shine. I’ve put a lot of work into the event that I know will bring a lot of love to others.”