Television has long been a familiar presence in our homes, a flickering light in the corner of the room, a portal into stories, worlds, and voices not our own. Many times, we fall asleep while watching, waking up to white static. In these films collected as ‘After the White Static (Shorts Program 7), the TV screen becomes something else entirely. It mutates into a gateway, a mirror, a haunting, a threat. The works prompt us how easily that square of moving images can shift from comfort to intrusion.
 

The screen flickers differently in ‘The Hum’, the film that headlines this program as it makes its World Premiere in Bakunawa Fest. Here an old tape found in a mother’s house pushes Noémie to question her own beginnings. The television, once a keeper of memories, becomes a vessel for hidden truths that may be impossible to bear. One’s quiet home and its folks are threatened here when no neighbor can see. The video becomes both a medium to record and a vessel from which outside forces try to invade a family’s quiet.
 

In ‘Killergotchi’, a toy with a glowing screen promises nurturing and play, but soon everything collapses into nightmare. The familiar is turned inside out, showing how dependency on a device can be unwise. ‘Munieka TV’ imagines a world where aliens conquer not only human bodies but human culture itself, installing a grotesque television show as both spectacle and weapon. Broadcast becomes domination, and the very act of watching is revealed as surrender.
 

‘Imago’ (also in Fantastic Competition Shorts) folds childhood storytelling into nightmare, its images spilling through the screen as though fear itself can find its way into each of the character’s rooms and take hold.
 

Finally, ‘TV Man’ (one of the only two in ‘Be Kind Rewind’ section) delivers absurd comedy from static itself. Marco’s ordinary evening is broken when a figure crawls out from his television, demanding his attention, his loyalty, perhaps even more. Shot on S-VHS in raw, zero-budget inventiveness, the film is both an artifact of a bygone video culture and a sly reminder that once the television comes alive, there is no easy way to shut it off.
 

Taken together, these films summon TV as an object that is never inactive. Whether as gateway, weapon, memory-keeper, or trickster, the screen insists on shaping those who watch. ‘After the White Static’ asks us to look again at that glow in the corner, and to make us realize what it has been feeding us all along.