Dreaming Ecosystems

World premiere

A collaborative botanicollage film poem by participants in the festival workshop, Dreaming Ecosystems, led by poet Mita Mahato and filmmaker Caryn Cline.

Samar Abdulhassan, Allison Avery, victoria blumenfeld, Argot Chen, Caryn Cline, Prince Jones, Madison Kearschner, Alexa Luborsky, Mita Mahato, Vitoria Ramos, Rana San, Paul Siple, Brianna Torres, Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, United States, 2026, English

About the Artists

Mita Mahato is a comix artist and poet who assembles her panels and pages with cut and collaged papers. Her work joins fragments of used and discarded materials—old newspapers, obsolete maps, junk mail, packaging scraps—in poetic experiments that dramatize entangled processes of death and renewal, specifically within the context of ecosystemic survival against capitalism. Her most recent book Arctic Play is published by The 3rd Thing, and her poetry comix have appeared in places including PRISM, Ecotone, Iterant, Shenandoah, Coast/NoCoast, ANMLY, and Drunken Boat, as well as in the collection In Between, published by Pleiades and listed in The Best American Comics of 2019.

Filmmaker Caryn Cline has been producing “botanicollage” films for 20 years. She has taught workshops in this handmade film technique all over the country, including in New York City, Albuquerque, Seattle, Los Angeles, and at the San Francisco Exploratorium. The botanicollage technique is akin to the strategies made famous by Stan Brakhage and his films Mothlight and Garden of Earthly Delights. Her botanicollage and other experimental films have screened at venues all over the world, including Jilhava, the Venice Biennale, Strangloscope, Mental Filmness, Brazier’s, Moviate, Cosmic Rays, ANALOGICA, LA International Children’s Film Festival, Antimatter, Istanbul International Film Festival, Ozark Shorts, and many more.