Currents
Currents Program 4: The Real World
Calum Walter, Martine Syms, Jesse McLean, Jiaqi Yu
This program includes the world premiere of Calum Walter’s Certainties, Martine Syms’s RW-LO, Jesse McLean’s Placeholder, and Jiaqi Yu’s Moon Palace.
- Runtime
- 69 min
- Country
- China/
U.S. - Language
- English,
Chinese - Year
- 2026
- More information
- Official film page
Screenings
Certainties
Calum Walter, 2026, U.S., 15m
World Premiere
Certainties
As California’s wildfires rage and extreme weather drives bears and other animals into the filmmaker’s yard to scavenge, everyday life becomes a series of unnerving omens. In Certainties, snippets of video-diary and home security camera footage from the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains are collaged to reveal an ominous domesticity, with a fruit tree in the yard but nature out of joint.
RW-LO
Martine Syms, 2026, U.S., 23m
North American Premiere
RW-LO. © Martine Syms. Courtesy of the artist and The Vega Foundation and Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Martine Syms blends recreations with home movies from the life of Brent David Freaney, a lifelong pop girlie who was once, as vintage camcorder footage reveals, a Deep South teenager obsessed with outspoken The Real World: New Orleans castmate Melissa Howard. RW-LO is a nostalgic—and surprising—inquiry into what happens when people start being celebrities, and they stop being real.
Placeholder
Jesse McLean, 2026, U.S., 12m
New York Premiere
Placeholder. Photo by Jesse McLean.
At once wry, dreamy, and plaintive, Placeholder follows a woman adrift in the wake of a divorce, navigating isolation while fantasizing about a Swedish movie star. Wandering between a half-empty home and the barren spaces of Antarctica glimpsed in Frank Hurley’s photographs of the ill-fated 1914 Endurance expedition, Jesse McLean’s protagonist follows a path of mourning and reflection in which reality is just beyond her grasp.
Moon Palace / 月宫
Jiaqi Yu, 2026, China/U.S., 19m
Chinese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Moon Palace
Jiaqi Yu collages a tattered scrapbook from glitchy home videos and family photos, layered atop each other with superimpositions and further distorted with in-camera effects, as if worried over for years. The moon, cycling through phases of presence and absence, but constant in its distance, becomes a potent object of longing.
Certainties
Calum Walter, 2026, U.S., 15m
World Premiere
Certainties
As California’s wildfires rage and extreme weather drives bears and other animals into the filmmaker’s yard to scavenge, everyday life becomes a series of unnerving omens. In Certainties, snippets of video-diary and home security camera footage from the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains are collaged to reveal an ominous domesticity, with a fruit tree in the yard but nature out of joint.
RW-LO
Martine Syms, 2026, U.S., 23m
North American Premiere
RW-LO. © Martine Syms. Courtesy of the artist and The Vega Foundation and Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Martine Syms blends recreations with home movies from the life of Brent David Freaney, a lifelong pop girlie who was once, as vintage camcorder footage reveals, a Deep South teenager obsessed with outspoken The Real World: New Orleans castmate Melissa Howard. RW-LO is a nostalgic—and surprising—inquiry into what happens when people start being celebrities, and they stop being real.
Placeholder
Jesse McLean, 2026, U.S., 12m
New York Premiere
Placeholder. Photo by Jesse McLean.
At once wry, dreamy, and plaintive, Placeholder follows a woman adrift in the wake of a divorce, navigating isolation while fantasizing about a Swedish movie star. Wandering between a half-empty home and the barren spaces of Antarctica glimpsed in Frank Hurley’s photographs of the ill-fated 1914 Endurance expedition, Jesse McLean’s protagonist follows a path of mourning and reflection in which reality is just beyond her grasp.
Moon Palace / 月宫
Jiaqi Yu, 2026, China/U.S., 19m
Chinese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Moon Palace
Jiaqi Yu collages a tattered scrapbook from glitchy home videos and family photos, layered atop each other with superimpositions and further distorted with in-camera effects, as if worried over for years. The moon, cycling through phases of presence and absence, but constant in its distance, becomes a potent object of longing.