Added to the TIFF menu only eight years ago, the Wavelengths program of experimental film and video has become one of the fest’s most valuable assets. Narrative-based works may be in decidedly short supply here and movie stars even scarcer, but as Peter Greenaway once put it, “Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the storytellers.” And whether the cinematic object at hand consists of mesmerizingly multi-layered views of Los Angeles (Pat O’Neill’s Horizontal Boundaries, which screens Sept. 6, 9pm) or the flickering faces of rapt and sweaty listeners at a Lightning Bolt concert (Ben Russell’s Black and White Trypps Number Three, which screens Sept. 7), the truth of that adage is repeatedly proven by the works assembled for the six Wavelengths screenings at AGO’s Jackman Hall (317 Dundas W).

Most selections defy easy categorization so perhaps it’s best to classify them according to the speed at which they unfold. For instance, the three films in the opening program on Sept. 5 (6:30pm) move at a ruminative pace. Two are new 16mm silents by Nathaniel Dorsky, the San Francisco–based maker of many transcendental-minded wonders, while the third is the first by Jean-Marie Straub since the death of his long-time partner and fellow formalist Daniele Huillet. The latest landscape-based work by James Benning (RR) is literally one for the trainspotters — Benning’s celebration of all things railroad screens Sept. 7, 6:30pm.

Two leisurely paced but highly memorable tours of physical spaces are highlights of the “Trips” program on Sept. 7, 9:30pm. Olaf Nicolai’s Rodakis explores a 19th-century Greek house whose idiosyncratic design anticipated architecture trends far in the future. Set in a more conventional kind of abode — a modern apartment complex in Malaysia — and entirely shot from a fixed position that allows a huge expanse of the building to be seen at once, Chris Chong Chan Fui’s Block B presents a startling perspective on the hive activity of a group of expat East Indians.

Among the more hectic displays of activity at Wavelengths are two new instalments in an ongoing series by Chicago artist Ben Russell. Besides his hard-rocking encounter with Lightning Bolt’s fans, the Trips program includes Russell’s Trypps #5 (Dubai), a silent vignette of neon-lit razzmatazz. Grouped in the Horizontal Boundaries program alongside the title work by Pat O’Neill are Jim Jennings’ Public Domain, a frantic piece of agit-prop protesting a New York City bylaw prohibiting filming in the streets, and Eriko Sonoda’s Garden/ing, a trompe l’oeil exercise that may qualify as the most cunning six minutes at TIFF ’08.

Lying somewhere in between these two extremes of velocity is a work to be screened during the closing event on Sept. 8 (9pm), which combines Vanessa O’Neill’s double-projection silent Suspension with a live collaboration between Icelandic musician Skuli Sverrisson and New York film artist Jennifer Reeves. While Sverrisson plays, Reeves projects When It Was Blue, a largely abstract and typically gorgeous 65-minute piece in which an assortment of ecologically themed imagery is tweaked, distorted and obscured via optical printing and other hands-on tactics. The ever-fluctuating flow of shapes and colours is plenty captivating even without a soundtrack — like so many of Wavelengths’ offerings, it’s a tonic for weary optic nerves.