2025
15 minutes / black and white/ stereo / original format: 4k and found footage
What was the significance of that “birthday party,” that photo, that tête-à-tête in the hostel bathroom? Two Americans reflect on their time spent behind the Iron Curtain in 80s East Germany in this story of access and curiosity, surveillance and control.
2025
10 min/ color/ stereo/ original format: found footage
Surveillance, stay-at-home-moms, and a mysterious flood converge in this speculative documentary on gender dynamics, parenting, judgment, and control.
SCREENINGS:
The Unreliable Narrator, Deluge Contemporary, Canada, 2025
ABOUT THE PROGRAM:
“These artists extend a literary device far beyond its use in narrative cinema to explore the motives of documentary, personal essay and experimental film. Employing self-shot, archival, appropriated and AI-manipulated footage to deconstruct and reassemble received ideals of storytelling, they question the very concepts of historical truth, narrative intent and the evidentiary nature of the photographic medium.”
2024
65 minutes /black and white and color/ original format: 16 mm shot by Hiram Percy Maxim between 1924-36
A father created the first automatic machine gun, abandoning his family forever to chase glory. His son invented the gun silencer, shot reams of 16 mm footage, and wanted to change his name.
SCREENINGS:
Atlanta Film Festival 2025
New Orleans Film Festival 2024
“It's a fascinating story of legacy and inheritance, as well as the history of guns and cinema itself. “
PRESS:
https://news.gsu.edu/alum-caroline-rumley-eponymous-new-orleans-film-festival/
from the Swampflix podcast
“This is like an experimental film that actually makes use of visual language in addition to, being a documentary of, like, historical past. It's really spooky and really upsetting and, yeah, I thought it was great / probably the most interesting looking movie I saw at the festival / I was really impressed with this movie as a visual piece, which is not always the case when it comes to documentaries.”
2024
10 min / color and black and white/ stereo / original format: 2k and found footage
Old photos live in a box, each with a good tale attached. But the memories that surface are another story. And these have to go.
SCREENINGS:
Antimatter Media Art 2024, Canada
2023
4 min / tinted black and white / stereo / original format: 16 mm archival footage
As Covid dims and the war in Ukraine does not, there remains just one absolute.
SCREENINGS:
West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, 2025
Rare Effect Digital Art Festival, Lisbon, 2024
Festival Fotogenia, Mexico, 2024
REELpoetry, Houston, 2024 - Winner Best Film Thematic Category
Vastlab Experimental, Chicago , 2024
Screener Short Films, London, 2023
Still Voices Film Festival, Ireland, 2023
Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin, 2023
“A meditation on loneliness and society…about time loops and transience, even that of crises – and the explosion of new ones.”
2021
3 min/ tinted b&w/ stereo/ original format: 16mm
It’s not what happened first. It’s what happened next.
SCREENINGS
The 2024 Film and Video Poetry Symposium, LA
JAFEST 2024, Portugal and Lithuania
Living with Buildings 2024, Coventry
Short Circuit Films 2023, Brighton
AntiMatter Media Art 2022, Canada
Midwest Video Poetry Fest 2022, Madison
International Video Poetry Festival 2022, Athens, Greece
Ernte Sehen Film Festival 2022, Austria
Athens International Film and Video Festival 2022, Ohio
REELpoetry, Houston, 2022
Vastlab Experimental, LA, 2021
Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin 2021
Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition, Cork 2021
2020
3 min / color / stereo / original format: archival footage
When it is, and is not, safe to be in your own backyard.
SCREENINGS
Living with Buildings, Coventry UK, 2022
World Poetry Slam Championship 2022, Brussels
The Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend Poetry Film Competition, Ireland, 2022
7° Festival internacional Signos da Noite, Lisbon, 2021
Archiba Urban Film Festival, Buenos Aires, Quito, and Hamburg, 2021
Athens International Video Poetry Festival 2021, Greece
Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film 2020, Ireland
REElpoetry/Houston TX 2020 - Best Film Audience Award
Twenty Times was a runaway audience favorite. A very pointed and powerful film, its impact compounded by the contrast between by the darkly insistent sound track, the sweet gentle voice that speaks the poem and the murky, ambiguous but threatening film imagery. -REELpoetry
Runner-up in the Atticus Review 2019 Videopoem Contest.
Notes from Marc Neys, Contest Judge:
“Twenty Times” is a powerful political and poetic video. The use of ‘lo-fi’ imagery adds to the suspense and darkness of the video. The contrast with the every day life described in the poem sets the perfect base for the message.
2020
15 min / tinted black and white / stereo / original format: HD and archival footage
How much of who you are is where you come from? An American woman and her daughter interrogate their Southern roots.
SCREENINGS
The 2024 Film and Video Poetry Symposium, LA
Still Voices Film Festival 2022, Ireland
Sydney Film Festival 2022, Australia
West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, 2022 - Best Documentary
Short Circuit Films, Brighton 2022
Screener Short Films, London 2022
Thomas Edison Film Festival 2022 - Director’s Choice Award
IDFA 2021
“The art of film prides itself in its comprehensive power of hijacking all other arts into its language. In this Pathway, films rely profoundly on words. The experience of watching the film becomes, in part, a literary experience too.”
AntiMatter Media Art 2021
Athens International Film + Video Festival 2021
Carrboro Film Festival 2021
Oxford Film Festival 2021
“This year’s selection of documentary shorts combine themes of family and self expression told through beautifully imagined visual storytelling. Each one a snippet of personal history that brings focus to the present in order to imagine a future shared by all…”
-Donna Kosloskie, Director of Programming
The New Orleans Film Festival 2020
“Our programming team celebrates work that, in its form and construction, offers a rebuke to conventional means of filmmaking and forges new storytelling pathways,” said New Orleans Film Society’s Artistic Director Clint Bowie. “Through this year’s lineup, we invite audiences to engage with work that addresses the social and political inequities of our collective past and present.”
-Clint Bowie, Artistic Director
PRESS
-Docs in Orbit IDFA watch list
-Director talk from Antimatter here
-Dixie in “Doomed to Remember” from talkingshorts.com
-Francesco Cazzin and Francesca Rusalen write about Dixiehere
2018
12min / tinted b&w / stereo / original format: HD and digitized super 8
Four friends. Many Bands. Expectations. Addiction. Loss.
SCREENINGS
Screener Short Films, London, 2021
Wales International Doc Festival, 2021
Atlanta DocuFest 2020 - best experimental short
Docu Film León 2020
Denver Film Festival 2019
41 N Film Festival 2019
Film Fest Zell am See 2019
Victory International Film Festival 2019
Still Voices Short Film Festival 2019
Flatpack Film Festival 2019
West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival 2019 - best documentary
Athens International Film + Video Festival 2019
Tofino Film Festival 2019
Sundance Film Festival 2019
Blue Danube Film Festival 2018 - Vienna and Budapest
Anti-Matter[Media Art] Film Festival 2018
Haverhill Film Festival 2018
2018
6 min / color / stereo / original format: HD
A woman is stopped by police, arrested, and taken to jail for turning left - on the eve of Trump’s visit to town.
SCREENINGS
Video Art Miden, Seli National Ski Resort, Greece 2022
Video Art Projects, Thessaloniki 2022
Little Islands Festival, Greece 2021
Alphabet Art Center, Manifestations, 2021
Vastlab Experimental Festival, LA 2020
Ernte Sehen Short Film Festival, Austria 2020
Twixtlab, Take One: Corona Flowers: 2020
Video Art Miden, Greece 2020
Llawn Festival, Wales 2019
Channels Festival-International Biennial of Video Art 2019, Melbourne, and traveling to Brisbane
International Motion Festival Cyprus 2019
Hazel Eye Film Festival 2019
Newlyn International Short Film Festival 2019, England
International Short Film Festival Beveren 2018, Belgium
Linz International Short Film Festival 2018, Austria
Docufest Atlanta 2018
Still Voices Short Film Festival 2018, Ireland
Georgia State University Student Film Festival 2018 - best documentary
West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival 2018
“Thank you again for your submission. I think that Right Turn - with its mixing of documentary, memory, fiction, and symbolism - got a lot of people thinking!”
-Gerald Habarth, West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival
2018
3 min / color / stereo / original format: HD
An impression of Nelms Creekmur, an Atlanta-based modern-day blacksmith and wordsmith, and of the creative process itself.
Find him here: https://www.nelmscreekmurforge.com
SCREENINGS
Millennium Film Workshop, Crafts on Film, Brooklyn, 2025
The Word: National Centre for the Written Word, UK, 2020
Versopolis, Festival of Hope, Slovenia (online) 2020
Versi di Luce Festival Italy 2019
Atticus Review January 2019
Atticus Review Poetry Film Competition - Third Prize
Indie Cork Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition 2018
Atlanta Film Festival 2018
Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, July 2018
Poetry + Video, Touring program:
At the Fringe Festival, Sweden 2020
The Garden Gallery, Australia, 2019
The Wrong: Digital Arts & Culture Biennale, Spain/global, 2019
Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Poetry Festival, Cork, 2019
Kino Klub Split, Croatia, 2019
Semiosphera, Italy, 2019
Athens International Video Poetry Festival, 2019
2017
2 min / tinted black and white / stereo / original format: archival footage
After the chaos of the Nazi march in Charlottesville, one key voice is hapless.
SCREENINGS
Millennium Film Workshop, Brooklyn 2025
REELpoetry 2023 in “Saving the World One Poem at a Time”
Festival Fotogenia, Mexico 2021
Poetic City Poetry Festival, Canberra, Australia 2021
Experimental Response Cinema OVER & OUT, Austin 2020
Art Visuals and Poetry Film Festival 2019, Vienna
Big Poetry Weekend 2019, Swindon, UK - shortlisted with 11 other films
“Shoes Without Feet by Caroline Rumley.” Moving Poems, Dave Bonta, 2 Feb. 2019
Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2018, Germany
Indie Cork Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition 2017, Ireland
Filmpoem Festival 2017, England
PRESS
FILM AB!: A Personal Report on the Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2018 by Stevie Ronnie in movingpoems.com, October 21, 2018
Hope, B. et al., (2018). Performances. Body, Space & Technology. 17(1), pp.131–152.
Included in this body of work: 2018 Houston Center for Photography Fellowship Honorable Mention Award Winner which is included in Charlotte Cotton’s Best of 2017 list, British Journal of Photography
Created in response to this photo, which eventually won a Pulitzer: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/ryan-kelly-daily-progress
