Commodity Trading: Dies Irae

media release: Mills Folly Microcinema presents Commodity Trading: Dies Irae by Chicago-based filmmaker M. Woods on Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 7:00 p.m. Admission $5.00, free for ALL members. A $1 fee will be added for single admission credit card charges, but no fee for multiple admissions ($10 or more). Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

M. Woods’ Commodity Trading: Dies Irae is a surrealist nightmare wrapped in a documentary chronicling the void in time between 2015 and 2020. The movie weaves a narrative through a labyrinthine hyperreality, using 16mm film, mixed media digital experimentation, and archival footage to depict Los Ángeles as a hallucinatory zone of pure nothingness.

Note from M Woods: This is my most personal work—a mix of documentary, conspiracy theory, nightmare, memoir, essay, and experimental assemblage. Produced in collaboration with Light Cone, Commodity Trading: Dies Irae is so named because it reflects upon the trade of humans as commodities, creating a malignant nothingness in the act of negation/conflating the trade value of humanity with that of a musket, a firearm, a barrel of rum, etc. Global Capital and the resultant colonial nations of Neo-liberal constitutions are founded upon deeply infected hypocritical grounds. Zones of hallucinatory extremes. Conspiratorial by nature; failing brutalism in banal wall paper is the exoskeleton. Actual nothingness is born between frames in a cinematic string. This movie reflects upon the loss of my family, the loss of any hope for a brighter future, and the insidious nature of the infamous and popular void; that interstitial rupture is a deep sadness. Thank you. M

M. Woods (born 1988, NYC) is a Latino media terrorist working in avant-garde strategies often using immersive time-spectacle and constructed trances. His films have screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Montreal Underground Film Festival, The Flaherty NYC, Videoex Film Festival, Echo Park Film Center, Artist Television Access, and many other festivals and venues around the world. His selected works are distributed by Collectif Jeune Cinema, Lightcone, The Filmmaker’s Coop, and the Oberhausen International Film Festival. He is the co-founder (with Xiaoer Liu and Gisella Guzman) of Agitate (a.k.a. Agitate: 21C), an organic local and online-based international avant-garde. Agitate is all inclusive and has multiple manifestos, all open-source, all open to those willing to commit to the avant-garde which is decidedly against the institutional white-patriarchal chains of power in all facets of society, including the art world. For more information about M. Woods consult his website, thedigitalsickness.com.

ABOUT MILLS FOLLY MICROCINEMA

Mills Folly Microcinema showcases nationally recognized experimental film and video art from the festival and microcinema circuit. We network with regional filmmakers and organizations to bring filmmakers and guest programmers to Madison for screenings. And we incubate local experimental filmmaking by providing screen time at Project Projection events.