A Mixtape for Stom

An elegy in fragments, A Mixtape for Stom is a lovingly constructed portrait of the late Japanese experimental filmmaker Stom Sogo, friend, artist, projectionist, and myth. Drawing from a personal archive of footage, interviews, and memory, director Adrian Goycoolea assembles a collage of Sogo's life and work, woven together by a voiceover addressed to the friend he lost but never quite stopped talking to. Sogo's films, often shot on Super 8 and defined by their epileptic rhythms and raw emotional charge, were central to New York's underground film scene in the early 2000s. But behind the flickering brilliance was a troubled life, haunted by trauma, addiction, and depression. With appearances by Jonas Mekas, Ed Halter, Andy Lambert, and others from the Anthology Film Archives orbit, this moving documentary confronts both the radiance and rupture of an artist who burned too brightly. Scored by Stereolab's Joe Watson, A Mixtape for Stom is a generous act of remembrance: a love letter, a cautionary tale, and a testament to an underground legacy still pulsing beneath.