Gevorg Galstian (b. 1993, Novorossiysk, Russia) is a director and curator. He studied architecture in Moscow and later received a Master’s degree from the Paris School of Architecture. Transitioning to filmmaking, he graduated from the directing workshop at the St. Petersburg School of New Cinema and from the editing department at FAMU in Prague.

His films focus on experimental methods exploring different forms of perception through patterns, abstract imagery, flicker techniques, as well as sound vibrations and drone. He teaches film editing and conducts open workshops on working with film using editing tables for students. Since 2024, he has been active as a curator in the field of experimental cinema. In 2026, he founded the St. Petersburg International Experimental Film Festival (SPIEXFF).

Matthew Pagoaga
Jon White
Peter Coates
Autumn Teague

2025
Matthew Pagoaga
13 min
United States
English

This program is dedicated to the phenomenon of flicker — one of the most radical techniques of experimental cinema, which changes conventional ways of perceiving image and sound, transforming them into a liminal cinematic experience. The historical starting point here, of course, was Tony Conrad’s structural film The Flicker (1966), which opened up a new field of possibilities for the authors of experimental cinema, who subsequently used this technique with varying degrees of intensity.

However, it was important for me to intentionally expand the notion of flicker itself and to trace how this principle manifests across a variety of examples: in the pulsation of sound, ultra-rapid editing, phase repetition, color mixing, the duplication of text, and the layering of abstract imagery.

All of this makes it possible to address the potential fragmentation of film — its capacity to break apart into discrete impulses, ruptures, and intervals. Yet it is precisely through the rhythm and tension of these ruptures that filmmakers reassemble their works, transforming fragmentation into a unified sensory experience.

World premiere