Home When You Return, dir. Carl Elsaesser, USA 2021, 30 min.
Book tickets
Organised as part of its year round programme, Open City Documentary Festival presents a partial retrospective of films by American experimental filmmaker Carl Elsaesser, that move between melodrama and residues, as evidence of cinema’s capacity to mourn, desire and care. Followed by an in-person Q&A with the filmmaker.
Programme
Itinerary of Surfaces, USA 2020, 8 min.
“A quarantined love letter of domestic imagination. A year of rain and other fluids. Contentment is a difficult emotion. 26 Main St. Bucksport, ME.” – Carl Elsaesser
A gauzy, glowy play of corporeal associations shot at home, seeping through songs by Bjork and images of the moon from the 1998 Merlin television series.
Home When You Return, USA 2021, 30 min.
“Linda Williams defines melodramas as one of three “body genres,” alongside horror and pornography, because it involuntarily moves audiences physically, in this case to tears. There is a temporality to this genre — of yearning for what might have been but never was; of lovers who attempt to reconcile but who miss their chance by minutes, moments; of characters cloaking themselves in melancholy when confronted with an unattainable future and an irrecoverable past.
Elsaesser’s film embraces such temporal friction by bringing the past to bear on the present. Throughout its 30-minute runtime, Home juxtaposes three women’s lives: Mary Patricia Wuest (Elsaesser’s deceased grandmother); filmmaker Joan Thurber; and Carrie, the protagonist of Thurber’s low-budget melodrama A Change of Scene (1957), played by Thurber herself. Home intersperses footage and sound from Thurber’s A Change of Scene with scenes of Wuest’s now unoccupied house. The camera lingers in Wuest’s living rooms or bedrooms, while audio from A Change of Scene chronicles breakups, domestic quarrels, and reconciliations. And Elsaesser does not just juxtapose these three women but also visually links them through a recurrent blur or smudge across their faces and names.” – Hannah Bonner, LA Review of Books
How to Run a Trotline, USA 2024, 18 min.
"At once a reticent elegy to and a shy repudiation of fathers and homes, both original and adopted." – Carl Elsaesser
Programme
Itinerary of Surfaces, USA 2020, 8 min.
“A quarantined love letter of domestic imagination. A year of rain and other fluids. Contentment is a difficult emotion. 26 Main St. Bucksport, ME.” – Carl Elsaesser
A gauzy, glowy play of corporeal associations shot at home, seeping through songs by Bjork and images of the moon from the 1998 Merlin television series.
Home When You Return, USA 2021, 30 min.
“Linda Williams defines melodramas as one of three “body genres,” alongside horror and pornography, because it involuntarily moves audiences physically, in this case to tears. There is a temporality to this genre — of yearning for what might have been but never was; of lovers who attempt to reconcile but who miss their chance by minutes, moments; of characters cloaking themselves in melancholy when confronted with an unattainable future and an irrecoverable past.
Elsaesser’s film embraces such temporal friction by bringing the past to bear on the present. Throughout its 30-minute runtime, Home juxtaposes three women’s lives: Mary Patricia Wuest (Elsaesser’s deceased grandmother); filmmaker Joan Thurber; and Carrie, the protagonist of Thurber’s low-budget melodrama A Change of Scene (1957), played by Thurber herself. Home intersperses footage and sound from Thurber’s A Change of Scene with scenes of Wuest’s now unoccupied house. The camera lingers in Wuest’s living rooms or bedrooms, while audio from A Change of Scene chronicles breakups, domestic quarrels, and reconciliations. And Elsaesser does not just juxtapose these three women but also visually links them through a recurrent blur or smudge across their faces and names.” – Hannah Bonner, LA Review of Books
How to Run a Trotline, USA 2024, 18 min.
"At once a reticent elegy to and a shy repudiation of fathers and homes, both original and adopted." – Carl Elsaesser
Carl Elsaesser (b. 1988, USA) lives and works between Midcoast Maine and Brooklyn, NY. Carl Elsaesser is an experimental filmmaker whose work blends genres and materials to critically investigate the overarching presence of history without losing sight of individual experiences of human connection. He is interested in framing a film practice through ritualistic and slow processes-thinking with a project as something akin to skin or clothing, worn throughout his day as he teaches class, walks through the city or countryside late at night, or calls a friend across the world.
His films have screened widely at festivals and institutions including the Berlinale, New York Film Festival, Cinema du Réel, European Media Art Festival, the National Gallery of Art, and the Criterion Channel. He has been honored with grants and residencies including a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Minnesota State Arts Board grant, a MacDowell Fellowship, and residencies at the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Hewnoaks, and Squeaky Wheel Media Center. His work has been featured in publications such as LA Review of Books, Millennium Film Journal, and FilmExplorer.
His films have screened widely at festivals and institutions including the Berlinale, New York Film Festival, Cinema du Réel, European Media Art Festival, the National Gallery of Art, and the Criterion Channel. He has been honored with grants and residencies including a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Minnesota State Arts Board grant, a MacDowell Fellowship, and residencies at the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Hewnoaks, and Squeaky Wheel Media Center. His work has been featured in publications such as LA Review of Books, Millennium Film Journal, and FilmExplorer.
Book tickets
06:00 pm
Sat, 17 Jan 2026
Cinema 1
Ticket information
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Access information
Cinema 1
- Both our Cinemas have step free access from The Mall and are accessible by ramp
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- All seats are hard back, have a crushed velvet feel and they do not recline
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- Arm rest either side of the seat dimensions: L 27 x W 7 x H 20
for the following requirements:
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All films are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with a 10 min. curated selection of trailers.
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no. 236848.