Filmmaker Malic Amalya, a Jack Straw Resident Artist, and musician Jac Nelson, of Black Tail Dear, will speak about their collaboration on the film Drifting (16mm / 2010), which was supported by Jack Straw's Artist Support Program. The presentation will include a live performance by Black Tail Dear, accompanying a screening of the 16mm print.

Drifting is both an homage to and a polemic on nostalgia for Americana. Shot on an optical printer, Drifting re-photographs frames from 8mm home movies that would have otherwise been thrown out due to broken sprocket holes, melded frames, light leaks, and jittering frame lines. Black Tail Dear is the solo project of Jac Nelso, a genderqueer musician, writer and scholar who uses melody and dissonance, resonance and silence, a piano and a few tricks to create music that might be like the slow opening of heavy, creaky doors.

Shooting through window frames, reworking found footage, constructing alternative viewing apparatuses, and exposing the properties of his media, Malic Amalya creates passageways in which perceptions shift.

Malic's films have screened across North America, including the TIE Cinema Exposition in Montreal and Milwaukee, the Olympia Film Festival, and the Around the Coyote Gallery in Chicago. Malic holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BA from Hampshire College, and has been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center and Blue Sky Project in Dayton, Ohio.