Mimesis

Mimesis Documentary Festival and Seidel City partner for two events:

STAY OF REMOVAL

Expanded Documentary Arts Exhibition
and 

HOW TO MAKE SKY AND EARTH: An Unconventional Study of Stop-Motion Animation

Masterclass with Mimesis Artist-in-Focus Dana Kavelina

Thursday August 13th, 2026, 7-10 PM Seidel City and Mimesis Documentary Festival present Stay of Removal, a night of documentary installations and live performance. 

Stay of Removal unfolds as a geography of displacement. In this context, geography is understood not just as territory or location, but as phenomena produced through processes of extraction and circulation. Bodies move through environments while environments move through bodies.

7-8:30 PM Exhibition on view

The Mine Drawings (2020) by Dana Kavelina, Mimesis 2026 Artist-in-Focus

Holding Rivers, Becoming Mountains (2025, TH, LA, CN, CH, 23’) by Solveig Qu Suess
Moving between institutional spaces, historical archives, and lived encounters along the Mekong river in northern Thailand and Laos, this 2-channel documentary reflects on the politics of energy transition and the layered histories of mapping that continue to reshape the river's course.

Stomach, Thighs, and Ass (2026, CA/FR, 6’) by Matthew Lancit
A multi-channel video diary comprising 2 years of the artist's daily insulin measurements and injections. These intimate moments in the public eye capture both the exhaustion of living with chronic illness and the quiet stillness that can accompany it. 

Telescope TV (2026, US, 7’) by Cal Young
This playful experiment in formalist reflexivity explores how places and technologies become containers for memory and emotional states. Created in-camera (whatever that means...) 

RAPTURE I - VISIT and RAPTURE II - PORTAL (2025, FR/DE, 18’ & 19’) by Alisa Berger
A diptych featuring a single channel video and companion VR-installation that revolves around the Ukrainian Vogue dancer Marko, his abandoned and inaccessible apartment in the region of Donbas and his confrontation with his war-town home in the digital realm.

Goodbye, Crescent Moon (2025, CN/US, 18’)  by Xiaolu Wang
An outsider from the future gets hold of a lost archive, sending us on a journey following associative clues in the movement of infinite yearnings.

All My Time Is Lying on the Factory Floor (GB, 43’) by Mars da Silva Saude

An illustrated lecture about neuroqueer time, at the intersection of anti-work politics and disability justice in the Anthropocene. Attempts at reaching a state of utopic repose meet beatniks, 16mm film, slackers, Portuguese anthropologists, queer time, autistic perception, long exposure photography, anarcho-punk karaoke, and live drone tones along the way.

Note: exhibition (without live performances) will also be open Saturday, Aug 15, 9 AM-12 PM. 

ABOUT MIMESIS

Now in its 7th year, Mimesis Documentary Festival is an artist-focused, community oriented celebration of documentary media. We are committed to providing a platform for artists focusing on personal, underrepresented, and culturally specific subjects that offer the most profound experiences of art made from life.

These programs are presented in partnership with Create Boulder and Visit Boulder, and with major support from Stuart Conway and Jenny Bramhall.

How to Make Sky and Earth: An Unconventional Study of Stop-Motion Animation

Masterclass with Artist-in-Focus Dana Kavelina

Saturday, August 15, 10-11:30 AM Mimesis 2026 Artist-in-Focus Dana Kavelina presents a masterclass exploring her animation practice. Kavelina will ruminate on how time appears through ruptures and stoppages in stop-motion animation, and how characters can escape their fates in the spaces between seconds. She will invite participants behind the scenes to see how miniature worlds create refuge in times of displacement and war, and how to learn from the labor of nature as it echoes through toxic materials.

Dana Kavelina (b. 1995 in Melitopol, Ukraine) works with animation, video, installation, painting and graphic design. Her work often addresses military violence and war regarding the position of a victim as a political subject—as well as the distance between historical and individual trauma, memory and misrepresentation. Her 2020 film Letter to a Turtledove was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art in New York and featured in the exhibition Signals: How Video Transformed the World. Her works were featured in the Kyiv Perennial in Vienna, 60th Venice Biennale, and MHKA Antwerp. She is the Main Prize winner of the 7th edition of the PinchukArtCentre Prize and was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize 2024.