The Program emerged two years ago as part of the Video Association of Dallas. It offered a way of extracting (and highlighting) independent video artworks from the festival’s more conventional  documentaries, narratives and so on. For its first outing, the Program ran videos in an exhibition at the Conduit Gallery. But this summer, the Second Program includes an installation, curated by Charles Dee Mitchell at the Conduit, plus screenings at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Angelika Film Center.

The standouts among the Program’s offerings this time are three truly remarkable, full-length videos: Eve Sussman’s The Rape of the Sabine Women — and the  two we talk about with Mitchell — Johan Grimonprez’ Double Take and Brent Green’s Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, both of which are haunting, eerie yet also whimsical immersions into different kinds of illusions, cinematic, televisual and theatrical.