Still from Meet the Eye, 2009. Courtesy of Aїda Ruilova and Salon 94, New York.

Aїda Ruilova is no stranger to the voyeuristic, often macabre storytelling devices made famous by experimental film icons Sergei Eisenstein and Maya Deren. Influenced equally by structural cinema of the 1960s and vampire movies of the 1970s, the New York-based filmmaker-artist appears at home working with contrasting styles. Ruilova’s short films employ a series of B-movie horror tactics, avant-garde editing, and abstract montages of gesture and sound. The repetitive use of fragmented dialogue (“Which one is me?”) and symbolic imagery (peepholes and basements) add complicated layers of self-awareness to people caught in nightmarish situations. Despite the filmmaker’s mysterious characters and affinity for disorientation, the work is not without pathos. Viewers find themselves slyly twisted into the role of witness and accomplice, furthering the eerie spectrum of the camera’s gaze. Meet the Eye is Ruilova’s latest work, created as part of the Hammer Museum’s Artist Residency Program and appropriately shot in Los Angeles with two of the city’s cult figures. Artist Raymond Pettibon and fringe-actress Karen Black play a couple trapped in a hotel room. The film treads a thin line between mental confusion and sheer illusion. Pettibon monotones the same lines over and over, Black anguishes theatrically about the room, attempting to recall a fatal memory just beyond her grasp.