The Finger Mullet Film Festival (FMFF) was founded by Flagler College Kenan Distinguished Professor of Art, Patrick Moser, in collaboration with CEAM Director, Julie Dickover, and artist, musician, and former Flagler adjunct professor Kevin Mahoney. Dedicated to nurturing an experimental art and film culture in St Augustine, FMFF provides an outlet for the best national and international short films, alongside a burgeoning local and regional culture from young artists, film makers, creators and storytellers. The festival aims to discover, cultivate, and screen new or local narratives in order to generate critical discussion, and empower collaboration within the public, intertwining the importance of art and recognition of its vital place in our community.
The 2026 iteration brings together film and video shorts featuring regional, national, and international artists and filmmakers. A vital aspect of our festival is a pop-up exhibition of artwork from the after-school program led by Moser
at The PLAYERS Championship Boys & Girls Club. Sponsored by Flagler College, Moser says: “The Kenan endowment has been transformational for me as an artist, teacher, and citizen. I invest the funds in my collaborative work with the Boys and Girls Club of Northeast Florida by providing the kids with material and directional support to grow as young artists. I believe it is crucial for young people to have access and the freedom to explore in a supportive, creative space. I am thankful the Kenan Professorship has empowered me to do this work over the last five years.”
We would like to give a special thank you to Vivian Shugats, our long-time gallery assistant who graduates in May 2026 with a major in Philosophy and Religion, and minors in Art History and Film Studies. Vivian has been a tireless supporter of FMFF and for the last two years has spent hours watching all the videos submitted for the open calls to help us narrow down the selection. Thanks, Vivian, for all your hard workwe will miss you!!!
The PLAYERS
Championship Boys and Girls Club with Patrick Moser, Closet Monster Part II St. Augustine, FL | 2025 | 5:40 min
Ben, “Mini and the Waterslide” and “Sewing” Bodhi, “Pumpkin” Brer, “Wipeout”
Carson, “Duckraina,” “Collage,” and “That was Frank”
Charlie, “I’m Out” Clementine, “The Nut Stuck on the Tree”
June, “The Butterfly Hunt,” “Inch” and “The Jetpack” Margaux + Elizabeth, “Can I Play?”
Luna, “Ball” and “Land and Sea”
Oliver, “Sparring"
Orion + Birch, “Basketball Bounce”
Penny, “Space Dance Party Part I”
Phineas, “Claymation”
Rumi, “Fish World”
Stella + Simone, “Weather” Zoey, “Video Game” Everyone, “SHHH” Make Space Stop Motion
Camp, St. Augustine, FL, USA | 2023 – 2026 | Various
STUDENT BLOCK
The Animation Incubator, The River
Romania | 2023 | 4:04 min
Project FRAME from CINANIMA, New Friends, New Solutions
Espinho, Portugal | 2025 | 2:55 min
Tonka Krnić, Mia Jureković, Duje Mandić, Vito Mačak, Jakov Klarić, Elena Gobac, Juraj Škovrlj, Eva Boras, Dora Klarić, Luka Ćirić, Bruna Benčić, & Niko Karaula / FKVK Zaprešić Small Coins and Music
Zaprešić, Croatia | 2026 | 2:56 min
Jakov Bosnić, Luka Ćirić, Fran Rivić, Karlo Vrdoljak, Tin Narančić & Vid Car / FKVK Zaprešić, Clean Sea One Way or Another
Zaprešić, Croatia | 2025 | 1:55 min
Libby Allen, River Sounds San Marcos, TX, USA | 2025 | 1:30 min
Aiden Balog, Final Sleep
St. Augustine, FL, USA | 2025
Julieta Ramos Correa, Escape
St. Augustine, FL, USA | 2026 | 2:38 min
Jasper Delaney, Home Office
London, England | 2026 | 2:02 min
Paulo Fajardo, The Wandering Balloon Pamphilhosa, Portugal | 2025 | 1 min
Tabitha Hanely St. Augustine, FL, USA | 2025
Merrick Hendrix, Roll Up St. Augustine, FL, USA | 2025
Adam Jaber, Sketchbook
Tel Aviv, Israel | 2025 | 3:11 min
Emily Sutter, Playback Pembroke Pines, FL, USA | 2025 | 1 min
Mohammad Yaghoubi, Crumpled Tehran, Iran | 2025 | 2:34 min
Jannet Z, Unlocked Beijing, China | 2026 | 3 min
ARTIST BLOCK
Samuel Aye-Gboyin, Visa St. Augustine, FL, USA | 2026 | 3 min
VISA is an experimental film about what it feels like for international students to be stuck and unable to move forward. At night, cars wait at a railroad crossing while a long train passes, standing in for lives paused by OPT changes, visa limits, and unclear promises about opportunity. Over the scene, an audio clip found on the internet tells the story of an international student who applies for a job advertised for someone in his exact situation, only to be told the role is “only for domestic and local applicants.” The film connects that moment of rejection to the feeling of being forced to wait, even when the road is right in front of you.
VISA speaks to the frustration, fatigue, conditional belonging, quiet resilience and exhaustion shared by many who are always asked to prove they deserve to move forward.
Samuel Aye-Gboyin is an interdisciplinary artist working across photography, video, animation, installation, and design. He is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, and earned his MFA in Art and Technology from the University of Florida. Originally from Ghana, his work draws from his experience as an immigrant to explore migration, identity, and the systems that shape everyday life.
Lilli Carré, Evacuations Los Angeles, CA, USA | 2025 | 7:06 min
Painted formless figures haunt recent photos of emptied-out public spaces. As cel-animated smear frames, they perform various repetitive acts in these settings, with movements expressing a helpless, frantic
energy felt in our current moment. Earth and organs are emptied; situations are fled. The figures become displaced from their locations, as their environments dissolve, and their printed record evaporates.
Lilli Carré is an interdisciplinary artist from Los Angeles, working primarily in experimental animation, print, and sculpture. Her work has been included in festivals, graphic novels, and gallery spaces internationally, and she is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Film-Video. She cocurates the annual Eyeworks screening series founded in 2010 and currently teaches in the Experimental Animation program at CalArts.
Allison Janae Hamilton, Celestine (Florida Storm) New York, NY, USA | 2025 | 10:42 min
Celestine (Florida Storm) is a trancelike experimental film that captures a starry night sky over rural North Florida. A recording of “Florida Storm,” a 1928 hymn written by Judge Jackson in response to the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 — a text that has informed Allison Janae Hamilton’s work for years — plays on a loop underneath various celestial scenes made from timelapse astrophotography. The film hearkens to the history of North Florida’s turpentine industry — a brutal system of labor where workers began the workday before sunrise and toiled until well after sunset — and contemplates how their only moments of rest or leisure must have taken place under the cover of this starry expanse.
Allison Janae Hamilton is an artist and filmmaker whose films and immersive installations have been presented at major museums and film festivals, including
the BlackStar Film Festival, and her film Wacissa was recently acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Hamilton was accepted into the Sundance Institute's Feature Film Program Development Track for her screenplay, Floridaland, as part of the 2026 Sundance Screenwriters Intensive Fellowship. Hamilton is the winner of the VIA Art Fund Production Grant supporting her narrative short, Venus of Ossabaw, currently on view at the Telfair Museums through June 21, 2026. She has exhibited widely throughout the U.S. and abroad, including at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), MASS MoCA, Storm King Art Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and Fundación Botín. She holds a PhD in American Studies from New York University and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University.
Brielle Jenkins, Femlord’s Biggest Hits New York, NY, USA | 2026 | 2:48 min
Femlord is strange, sincere, and a little silly. Working in an absurdist and experimental style, Femlord performs with an awkward intimacy of a cable access host who genuinely wants you to be okay. The video draws on surreal humor, mystical infomercial energy, and loose improvisational warmth. The nonsensical is often where the truth lives. Femlord hopes to spread a little positivity, make people laugh, and encourage them to keep going.
Brielle Jenkins aka Femlord is a New York-based video artist and performer working at the intersection of absurdist humor, experimental performance, and online media. Femlord believes that
laughter and stillness can coexist, and that the internet is a totally valid place to spread some love. She received her undergraduate degree in fine art from Flagler College in 2013.
John C. Kelley, A Family That Steals Dogs Knoxville, TN, USA | 2021 | 7:30 min
In the disorienting wake of loss, an artist begins to question his identity. Strange experiences – windows that open themselves, phantom dogs on the highway, and all of the brief dog-lives that chaptered an upbringing in rural Arkansas – frame this exploration of grief, mental illness, and family connection.
John C Kelley’s animated short films GUSTER, A Family that Steals Dogs, and Slower Animals have earned acclaim internationally, having received best animation nominations (Raindance, UK), awards for best sound design (Ottawa International Animation Fest, CAN), best animation and overall excellence in filmmaking (Toronto Arthouse, Animattikon Project, Florida Animation Festival). He is the recipient of three Vimeo Staff Picks, A Filmmaker’s Recognition Award from ASIFA-South, and an Inaugural Vimeo Short Film Grant in 2025 for his film The Ineffable Hum. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee.
Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, What’s Left Berlin, Germany | 2025 | 20:08 min
Lefty the Salesman is a character on Sesame Street who made his debut in 1970. He is a shady-looking salesman in a trench coat who speaks in a whispery voice and oftentimes tries to sell Ernie objects related to language. The name "Lefty” taps into the ancient stigma that something is wrong with left-handed people (sinister = Latin for “left”) and further cements the
idea that a name can inherently signify something wrong or abnormal. Lefty the Salesman always acts in a clandestine manner, as if he was selling something illegal. The letters and syllables he hawks are the building blocks of language. They represent a possibility to build language and to shape reality.
Kim and Mader recreate the set of “Lefty the Salesman” in What’s Left. They apply the following rules: no signing, use body language – borderline sign-language and gesturing – and facial expressions. These rules relate to situations that seem dangerous or require secretive behavior and are based on Dr. Benjamin J. Bahan’s “Gestural Communication” from Gallaudet’s Gesture Literacy Knowledge Studio: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=h3r-fYddyqQ What's Left further relates to the historical connection of languages becoming illegal and having to exist underground.
Special Cameo: Linda Bove was a regular character named Linda the Librarian on Sesame Street for 32 years and she has previously contributed to TheFamilyVocab, a sign language Instagram account run by Kim and her friend Christopher Tester. Bove brought ASL to millions of homes worldwide, and Kim grew up seeing a Deaf person signing on nationwide (if not worldwide) television, instantly normalizing ASL. For What's Left, Linda signs an introduction to each chapter of the video.
Since 2013, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader have collaborated on a shared practice addressing the complexities of communication in a variety of formats. Their solo exhibitions include, Wellcome Collection, London; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen; and Kunstraum, Munich. Selected group
exhibitions include, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo; Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Nuit Blanche, Toronto; and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein.
Christine Sun Kim was born in Orange County, USA, in 1980 and lives in Berlin. She uses the medium of sound in performance and drawing to investigate her relationship with spoken languages and the aural environment.
Thomas Mader was born in the South of Germany in 1984 and lives in Berlin. He is a research-based artist who works with themes related to national identity, storytelling, and communication.
Liz Rodda, Hot Spell Austin, TX, USA | 2026 | 1:39 min
Hot Spell was created in the West Texas desert, and it reflects perceptual instability shaped by heat, reflection, and prolonged sun exposure.
Liz Rodda works across different media, and through shifting structures, her practice examines how meaning is generated, destabilized, and continually remade. The artist has presented solo exhibitions at Dimensions Variable (Miami), the CrispEllert Art Museum (Florida), David Shelton Gallery (Houston), and Ditch Projects (Oregon) among other venues. Her videos have screened internationally at Anthology Film Archives (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (Florida), and the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (Colombia). Rodda is a Professor in the School of Art & Design at Texas State University, where she founded and leads the Expanded Media area, focused on timebased practices. She also co-programs Experimental Response Cinema, an Austinbased film and video series.
MUSIC/VIDEO PERFORMANCE
Barron Sherer + David Brieske (Miami, FL, USA), Sketch No. 3, Fire Station No. 9
“Sketch No. 3” is artist Barron Sherer’s free-form documentation of predemolition site conditions at the historic Kendall Jackson Hospital (circa 1935) Annex. Sherer enlisted other local artists and drew on the actualities and formal, elegiac beauty of the location. Meditations and performances in Experimental Film, Field Recording, and Musique Concrète poetically explore these elements. Artist crew for all iterations includes Barron Sherer, Anna Gorazcko, Francis Dunbar, Mariana Mendoza, Archival Feedback (Emile Milgrim and Thom Wheeler Castillo), and David Brieske.
This film was created using “Phytography,” an alternative photographic process by Karel Doing. It uses plant-based materials to create images and is associated with sustainable art. “Sketch No. 3” is a 35mm motion picture-based video. It features direct impressions of plants on light-sensitive black-and-white negative film, producing images. The motion picture came to fruition with support from the Moving Image Alliance and fiscal sponsorship by MiamiDade County Art in Public Places, further connecting the film to the broader artistic community.
David Brieske (Chicago, 1970) has been creating music and sound work since 2005 under the name Fsik Huvnx. His pieces often include field recordings gathered on his travels, which he considers integral to the music-making process and a huge inspiration. He has performed at many venues and events throughout Miami and collaborated with many local artists and musicians.
Barron Sherer (Rock Hill, SC, 1967) is a time-based media artist with expertise in moving image archiving. He focuses on transforming and reusing archived films and videos across cinematic, para-cinematic, and gallery installation settings. This work examines contemporary and historical realities, as well as the image-based representations that engage with them. In 2020, he founded a studio project that received a significant investment from the Knight Foundation through a Knight Arts Challenge award and received an Oolite Arts Ellies Creators Award for a large-scale moving image installation. He was a 2023 Knight Foundation Art + Tech Expansion Fund recipient. Currently, Barron is a 2025 Project Artist in Residence at Deering Estate. Recent work has been exhibited widely, including at the Frost Museum of Art, Perez Art Museum Miami, Dimensions Variable, Emerson Dorsch
Miami, and Red Bridge Studios, as well as at Walls Gallery in Miami, Queensland, Gold Coast. Barron’s film work is in the Centre Pompidou Film Collection, Canyon Cinema Foundation, and private collections.
Starter Castles is Mike Taylor, a Florida based artist whose work incorporates drawing, painting, printmaking, and music. Born in Tampa, he received his BFA from the University of Florida. He has been an artist in residence at Yaddo and a finalist for the 2020 Creative Capital artist grant. His work is represented in many private and institutional collections, including The Getty Foundation, Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art, Harvard University’s Art Museum, and The Library of Congress.
Whitney Hubbs has a BFA from the California College of the Arts and an MFA from UCLA. Through imagemaking, Whitney projects her own interior, psychological landscapes onto her costumed body with a humor that is at once slapstick and macabre. Acting out humiliation and abjection, the work slyly performs both a confession and a critique. She has
exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the California Museum of Photography. She is the Associate Director of Light Work in Syracuse, NY, and also serves as faculty for the Image Text MFA program at Cornell University and as a part time instructor at Syracuse University. Whitney is represented by M+B Gallery in Los Angeles and Situations Gallery in NYC.
Franz Prichard is associate professor of Japanese Studies at Florida State University. His interdisciplinary research and teaching explore the literature, environmental thought, and visual media of contemporary Japan. He is the author of, Residual Futures: The Urban Ecologies of Literary and Visual Media of 1960s and 1970s Japan (Columbia University Press, 2019) His current research develops transcultural and ecocritical approaches to the study of contemporary Japanese literature, photography, and other visual media.
Osamu Kanemura (b.1964) is a photographer who lives and works in Tokyo. Since 1992 he has been photographing the city-scapes in black and white, with more than twenty
solo exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, and other cities including the “New Photography 12” (1996, MoMA, NY), “Absolute Landscape” (1997, Yokohama Museum of Art), Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles (2004), and the Venice Architecture Biennale (2006), and “DECODE / Events & Materials, The Work of Art in the Age of Post-Industrial Society” (2019, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama). His 2002 photobook, "Spider's Strategy" is widely known as his major publication. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, as well as in other public and private collections. He received the New Photographer Prize from the Photographic Society of Japan, the 13th Higashikawa International Photo Festival in 1997, and the Ken Domon Prize in 2000.
Hiroko Komatsu is a photographer born in Kanagawa, and based in Tokyo. Komatsu’s awardwinning large-scale gallery installations and hand-made photobooks explore the vital materiality of photographic images in the context of the increasing dematerialization of images. She received the 43rd Ihei Kimura Award for her installation in 2018. Her works have been featured in many exhibitions, including the “DECODE / Events & Materials,
The Work of Art in the Age of Post-Industrial Society” (2019, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama), “Sincerity Department Loyal Division” (2021, dieFirma, NY), the 2021 “Komatsu Hiroko: Creative Destruction” (2021, Davis Museum, Wellesley College, MA), and the 2022 'Komatsu Hiroko: Second Decade” (2022, Joseloff Gallery, Hartford Art School, CT). Her work is in the public collections of MAST (Bologna, Italy), Tate Modern (London, UK), the Kawasaki City Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the New York Public Library.
Hedy Starratt + Kane Pour (Gainesville, FL, USA)
Hedy Starratt is a mixed media video artist whose work exists at the intersection of the tactile and the digital. Drawing from both analog and electronic techniques, she transforms everyday objects into richly textural visual elements, layering them with prerecorded video and digital manipulation to produce projections that are at once playful, vibrant, and serene
Kane Pour is a musician, producer, and DJ from Gainesville, FL. He uses improvisational and looping methods to synthesize his own crude version of New Age electronic music, with humor and softness front and center.
