The Phalanx
2025, 13.5 minutes, 16mm>digital
Letters from the Ceresco community trace the fragility of harmony, the dream of life in association, the frictions that give way to fracture. Members of the phalanx drift apart, lingering in private corners, suspended in speculative time.
Filmed on the former site of Ceresco, a 19th-century agrarian commune in Ripon, Wisconsin, this film revisits the utopian aspirations of a community striving to live 'in association,' guided by principles of harmony and shared ownership. Weaving together archival materials, literary adaptation, and a collaborative performance, the film lingers in the echoes of a brief, failed experiment in collective living. Against this historical backdrop, it contemplates the quiet lines of fracture that mark community and a lingering melancholy for spaces once brimming with possibility.
Link: https://vimeo.com/1032470996
Password: ceresco
Lost Ideals: The Phalanx – by David Finklestein
Screenings:
Peripheries @ De Kas, curated by Rouf Moussa, Gent, Belgium – October 2025
Buffalo International Film Festival, Buffalo, NY – October 2025
Tacoma Film Festival, Tacoma, WA — October 2025
Cámara Lúcida International Film Festival, Cuenca, Ecuador – September 2025
Elevation Film Festival, Cornwall, UK – September 2025
Defy Film Festival, Nashville, TN – August 2025
Diffusion 2025, re:assemblage collective, Toronto, Canada – August 2025
Mimesis Documentary Film Festival, Boulder, CO – August, 2025
Visible Evidence XXXI: Community, Philadelphia, PA – August 2025
Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, Winnipeg, Canada – June 2025
VIDEOEX Experimental Film & Video Festival, Zürich, Switzerland – May 2025
Moviate Underground Film Festival, Harrisburg, PA – May 2025
Milwaukee Film Festival, Milwaukee, WI – May 2025
Iowa City Documentary Film Festival, Iowa City, Iowa – April 2025
European Media Arts Festival, Osnabrück, Germany – April 2025
Film Screening w/ Abraham Ravett & Josh Weissbach, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA – April 2025
First Look 2025, Museum of the Moving Image, New York, NY – March 2025 (world premiere)
