Leaf Peeper
Director: Vito A. Rowlands
United States, 2025, 3 min
Shooting Format:Super 8
Festival Year:2026
Category:Experimental
Genres:Comedy, Animation, Stop Motion, Experimental
Cast:Hannah Mitchell
Crew:Crew: Cinematography: Vito Rowlands and Thomas Heban. Editing and animation: Vito Rowlands. Music: Jordan Dykstra.
Email:vito@varowlands.com
Synopsis
A frantic frolic in Fall foliage. A stop-motion autumn adventure. A symphony in blaze orange.
About the director
Vito A. Rowlands (né Adriaensens, Antwerp, 1986) is a Belgian filmmaker and scholar. His feature script Elvis, We Like Your Music was a finalist at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival Development Track and his award-winning shorts have played around the world at venues such as the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Vienna Shorts, Aesthetica, the Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Raindance, the Brooklyn Film Festival, HollyShorts, Dresdner Schmalfilmtage, Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Genova, and Nitehawk Shorts.
Vito has taught in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Copenhagen, as well as at Columbia University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Experimental Film and Media at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a 16mm film instructor at Mono No Aware in Brooklyn. He is a co- author of Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema and the author of Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames: The Art of Early European Cinema.
His first feature is the Metamorphoses-inspired 35mm anthology film Ovid, New York. He is currently in pre-production on his second feature: a silent, nineteenth-century set spiritualist thriller.
Filmmaker's note
Autumn adventurers unite! Leaf Peeper takes you on a frantic frolic of Fall foliage until your eyes pop out. Shot on Super 8 in single frames with pixilation, puppet stop motion, frenetic pans, and plenty of plaid, this very short short film packs every second with as many picturesque and picaresque frames as possible, turning leaf peeping into equal parts immersion therapy and extreme sport to capture the sublime bliss of a lovely day out and about.