In collaboration with Downtown Durham, Inc and Unexposed Media, check out these five festive experimental short films to be projected outside at 212 W Main Street as part of Third Friday Durham.

It's Snow, Gayle Thomas, 1974, 5 mins

A mesmerizing color cut-out animation captures the ethereal beauty and fragile geometry of snowflakes.

Merry Christmas, Jerome Hill, 1969, 3 mins

An experimental take on the nativity story, where Mary and Joseph are turned away from the iconic Algonquin Hotel in NYC. This short overlays expressionistic painting techniques onto documentary footage of holiday season NYC in the late 60s.

Christmas Cracker, Norman McLaren, Gerald Potterton, Grant Munro and Jeff Hale, 1963, 9 mins

An Academy Award-nominated animation anthology explores the holidays with three distinct segments, using a kaleidoscope of animation styles. 

Happy End, Peter Tscherkassky, 1996, 12 mins

This film uses found footage to move backward in time, collapsing fifteen years of Christmases into a melancholy and sometimes comical cinematic stream of memory.

Lights, Marie Menken, 1966, 6 mins

An immersive visual poem dedicated to the glow of the city at Christmas. Filmed over three years in the dead of night, the filmmaker kept her camera under her coat to prevent it from freezing.