Optical Noise is incredibly excited to present this early retrospective of the movies (not films) of Chicago-based filmmaker Alex Phillips.

Originally from St. Louis, Alex moved to Chicago to attend school to be a playwright and somewhere along the way got sidetracked and accidentally became the city’s premiere psychoscuzz sleazemonger of cinema. Watching his movies transports you into a world beyond taboos and transgression where anything goes. This is the lush, color saturated, sleazy underbelly of America. The overturned rock of our contemporary society. A land of the truly free.

At a time when filmmaking and image making has become primarily digital and increasingly post-human via AI, his career has taken an almost de-evolutionary trajectory, becoming increasingly tactile with practical effects and filming on 16mm celluloid. Phillips reminds us that true art is made by humans, humans who are fleshy, gooey, disgusting pieces of walking electrified meat that touch and fuck and leak and leave stains. Whether its people looking for a quick fix of oblivion by eating worms or finding transcendence through orgasms, his is a world where the body and the tangible still reign supreme.

With two features, a handful of short films in the can, and another feature currently in the works via Vinegar Syndrome, now is the perfect time to overindulge and OD on the subversively tender and outrageously absurd world of Alex Phillips.

Beyond just being able to show his movies, we’re even more excited to have Alex in attendance for a Q&A in between the two programs.

Optical Noise wants to personally thank Alex for helping make this program happen and for giving us access to his rarely, if ever, theatrically screened short films.