UnionDocs Inc.

A program of new Spanish experimental non-fiction at the Millennium Film Workshop, in conjunction with the festival Punto de Vista, selected by Doctruck and Uniondocs, and co-presented with Pragda.  Millenium is located in Manhattan in the East Village at 66 East 4th Street.

The Punto de Vista Documentary Film Festival is an annual festival held in Navarra dedicated to forms of cinema generically grouped under the heading of ‘documentary.’ Programmed by Artistic Director Josetxo Cerdán, films come from around the world, with an emphasis on finding rarities in form and subject. The festival seeks to reward risk-taking and non-narrative approaches, and to uncover glints in Spanish and World Cinema.

PROGRAM:
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AMANAR TAMASHEQ, Directed by Lluis Escartin, 2010, 15mins, DVD
Best Short Film Prize Winner –PDV 2010
In Tuareg with English Subtitles

Lluis Escartín’s AMANAR TAMASHEQ communicates a highly political message by respectful and reflexive means, delivered in an intelligent and poetic combination of sound and image. Escartin lived with Tuareg rebels in the desert of Mali, and turned his camera on them in order to bring back their messages — to the degree that the mistranslations of language and history allow.

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LOS MATERIALES, Directed by Los Hijos, 2009, 67 mins, DVD
Jean Vigo Best Director Prize Winner — PDV 2010
English Subtitles

LOS MATERIALES explores an empty landscape around the reservoir of Riaño, in the province of León, in which the former town and nine other villages lie submerged as a consequence of a flood in 1987. The three members of Los Hijos, a young experimental filmmaking collective from Madrid, spent a year walking the area, and the resulting work is a spare, diffuse document of a village just below the surface of history. Subtitles replace dialogue, leaving the occasional background noise as the sole sound source, and the story reliant on written text.

“LOS MATERIALES defies our expectations on audiovisual language (specially the sound edition and mixing), on certain landscape aesthetic, even on the motivation or the ethic of filmmaking.”
–Blogs and Docs

“Interesting and fearless, lively and stimulating, the film’s purpose is the exploration of Riaño, not only to dismember its dramatic structure but its semantic field…. The recovering of village’s history turns out to be impossible, just suggested, almost abstract, while the movie’s plot drives to metacinematographic issues and ends -in a mysterious, strange and disconcerting turn- becoming a terror history.”
–Cahiers du cinema, España

“Documenting Mythologies” is an investigation of myth in contemporary society created by the 2009-2010 UnionDocs Collaborative. The story follows eleven non-fiction media artists on a trip from Brooklyn, NY through New England to rural Maine, a kind of ritual escape from the city on a holiday weekend. Their simple journey becomes the frame for a series of complex short works in film, video, and radio. Diverse aesthetic approaches to documentary are used to develop the theme, which is inspired in part by the 1957 collection of essays by French author Roland Barthes titled “Mythologies.” For Barthes, myths aren’t only the traditional stories we tell; there are myths everywhere within our everyday lives. They are the meanings that we take for granted, “the falsely obvious,” a confusion of Nature and History, and a site of significant ideological abuse.

Interspersed between gas station stops, bonfires on the beach, and a small town’s blues festival, the group considers multiple myths including: the metaphysical attraction to one of the most popular wedding gifts in America; the growth of ambiguity in the word “Whatever”; the experience of queer interracial desire; a experiment in collaborative filmmaking via a game of broken telephone; the logic that underlies the phrase “New York is the Big Apple”; politicians’ obfuscation of reality in approaching “The Third Rail”; and the drama of online persona, among others.

In Boston on July 11th, as a final stop for this documented group trip, Artists in Context and Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab will present a work-in-progress screening and discussion of “Documenting Mythologies.” Highlights from the project will be shown, including rushes from the New England production, and conversation will be structured on issues of myth, collaboration, and documentary arts practice. All participants in the UnionDocs Collaborative will be present and the event will be recorded and incorporated as a scene in the final project.

PRESENTATIONS BY

UnionDocs  Collaborative Program Directors

Christopher Allen
Kara Oehler
Jesse Shapins

2009-2010 UnionDocs Collaborative Participants

Andre Almeida
Tina Antolini
Ben Brown
Rahul Chadha
Hyatt Michaels
Katia Maguire
Will Martin
Jolene Pinder
Joshua Gen Solondz
Shawn Wen
Robbie Wilkins

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PRESENTED WITH

Join us for an evening with two of Mexico’s most talented up-and-coming filmmakers: Eugenio Polgovksy and Pedro González Rubio, as they present their acclaimed debut documentary films. Both Polgovsky and González-Rubio belong to an exciting generation of young directors that are rapidly changing the landscape of local filmmaking in Mexico and are pushing the boundaries of traditional representations. Trópico de Cáncer and Toro Negro are examples of intense and powerful filmmaking that are in tune with the country’s current political and social struggles.

González-Rubio’s latest effort, Alamar, will open theatrically in New York City at Film Forum on July 14th, courtesy of Film Movement.

6pm:

Trópico de Cáncer / Tropic of Cancer by Eugenio Polgovsky (Mexico, 2004, 52 minutes, Minimal dialogue in Spanish with English subtitles)

“An honest depiction of people’s everyday struggle for survival – in the venerable tradition of Buñuel’s Land Without Bread, or Kalatozishvili’s Salt For Svaneti.” -Neil Young, Film Lounge

A poignant and powerful documentary, Trópico de Cáncer is a meticulous account of the perilous conditions of a group of families living in the arid desert of San Luis Potosí in their quest for survival hunting animals to sell them on the highway. Both visually and narrative astonishing, the film is Eugenio Polgovsky’s documentary debut which was screened in numerous film festivals around the world.

Discussion with directors Eugenio Polgovsky, Pedro González-Rubio, and Carlos Gutiérrez following screening.

8pm:

Toro Negro by Pedro González-Rubio and Carlos Armella (Mexico, 2005, 87 minutes, in Spanish with English subtitles)

“Harsh, intense, yet artfully shaped filmmaking that continually takes you one step further than you thought you’d go.” – Stuart Klawans, The Nation

Toro Negro gives deep insight into the life of Fernando Pacheco a.k.a El Suicida (The Suicidal), a young bullfighter who fights not in big arenas but at popular parties of small Mayan communities in the Yucatán Peninsula. Fernando is heart-warming and honest, but also an alcoholic, violent and impulsive. Pedro González-Rubio and Carlos Armella follow, almost from the character’s inside, and sometimes with a disturbing closeness. Toro Negro is a documentary that shows human passions and conflicts with rawness and humor.

Introduction by co-director Pedro González-Rubio.

Eugenio Polgovsky was born in Mexico City in 1977. In 1994 he won the world photography contest “Living together,” organized by UNESCO. He studied directing and cinematography at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematografíca in Mexico City, graduated cum laude. His work as a director comprises short films and documentaries. He has also worked as cinematographer in documentaries and fiction films. Trópico de Cáncer / Tropic of Cancer, his first documentary, won several prizes around the world (Ariel for Best First documentary by the Mexican Academy of Cinematography, Joris Ivens Prize at Cinema du Réel, Best Documentary in Lebanon, Korea, Morelia, FICCO, among others). Trópico de Cáncer also had a special screening at Cannes’ Critic’s Week and was part of Frontier selection at Sundance. In 2004 Polgovsky received Mexico’s National Youth Prize. His new documentary, Los herederos / The Inheritors, produced with support of the Hubert Bals Fund and Visions Sud Est had its world premier at the 65th Venice Film Festival.

Pedro González-Rubio is a Mexican filmmaker born in Brussels. His initiation to visual arts came at the age of 16 while living in New Delhi. He studied media in Mexico before attending the London Film School. He worked as a cinematographer on the film Nacido sin / Born Without (2007) by Eva Norvind. His directorial debut, Toro Negro (2005, co-director), received several awards including the Horizontes Award for Best Latin American film from the San Sebastian Film Festival and the Best Documentary Award at the Morelia Film Festival. Alamar is his feature film debut, which nonetheless remains true to real life. The film has won numerous awards including the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival, The Jury Award for Best Iberoamerican Film at the Miami Film Festival and the Best Film Prize at the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival.

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PRESENTED WITH

Join us for a screening of short documentaries by past Reach Film Fellows with a special discussion to follow.

Cinereach’s Reach Film Fellowship is a unique annual granting and mentorship program for emerging filmmakers making socially conscious short films. About to enter it’s fourth year, the program results in the production of meaningful new works by fresh voices in filmmaking. It celebrates the spirit of mentorship and the always-instructive value of the production process. Two documentaries produced by Fellowship alum have been licensed for Broadcast by P.O.V. on PBS. The program is currently seeking applicants for it’s 2011 Fellowship.

Bye A short film by Anthony Morrison (RFF ‘10), recipient of the Reach Out Award for excellence in artful, vital storytelling

Jayden, a two year old just diagnosed with autism, goes through his first months of school in the Bronx.

Love Lockdown A short film by Nadia Hallgren (RFF ‘10) produced by Jamie-James Medina

A young mother from the Bronx waits to learn the verdict of her incarcerated boyfriend’s case, while she keeps his spirits high via late-night shout-outs on a popular NYC radio show.

So the Wind Won’t Blow it all Away A short film by Annie Waldman (RFF ‘08)

A moving portrait of teenagers displaced by Hurricane Katrina who are grappling with a new concept of home.

The discussion will touch on the making of the films, an inside look at the fellowship, and insight into how short documentaries are licensed for broadcast. Cinereach will also answer questions about it’s funding priorities and programs.

Cinereach Staff:

Reva Goldberg is Communications & Fellowships Manager at Cinereach, a NYC not-for-profit film foundation and production company that champions vital stories, artfully told. She has an extensive background in film and TV production and audience building. Before joining Cinereach, she was a producer at Pureland Pictures where she produced the documentary All of Us, which aired on Showtime. Goldberg also co-produced Pureland’s Toe to Toe, a narrative feature that premiered at Sundance ‘09. In 2004, Goldberg was Associate Producer of an Emmy-nominated History Channel documentary on the 9/11 Commission (produced by CBS). She has worked with TLC, UPN, Discovery, The Travel Channel, Washington Square Films/Arts, Cronkite Productions and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Goldberg is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.

P.O.V. Staff:

During the day, Yance Ford works as Series Producer of POV, PBS’ icon series of independent documentary films. She is responsible for coordinating all aspects POV’s annual call for entries and oversees POV’s annual programming advisory board. As a core member of the POV programming team, Yance screens all films submitted to POV and has input on the final schedule. Yance frequently represents American Documentary| POV at conferences, festivals and markets procuring work from filmmakers both nationally and internationally. Privately, Yance is a Programming Consultant and Pre Screener for film festivals around the country. She has served on juries at Full Frame, Silverdocs and ITVS, appeared on panels at Sunny Side of the Doc and DocuClub and serves on the IFP Advisory Committee. A graduate of Hamilton College and the production workshop at Third World Newsreel, Yance is a former Production Stage Manager for the Girls Choir of Harlem and has worked as a Production Manager on numerous productions for the Discovery Health and History channels and on several independent films. A trained visual artist and sculptural metalworker, she is in production on her first documentary film.

Reach Film Fellows 2010:

Anthony Hayden Morrison is the product of two clinical psychologists. Raised in North Carolina, he attended NYU in undergraduate film. In 2006 he co-directed Body Soldiers, a documentary about the role of protest music in fighting HIV in post-apartheid South Africa, winner of a production grant from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Most recently, he worked as a researcher for This Is Not A Robbery, for Andrew Lauren Productions, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008. Morrison recently completed a short documentary, Bye, while participating in Cinereach’s Reach Film Fellowship program. His film received the Reach Out 2010 Award for excellence in artful, vital storytelling and a broadcast premiere for the film will be announced soon.

Nadia Hallgren is a director and cinematographer from the Bronx, NY. Her camera credits include the Academy Award nominated and 2008 Sundance Grand Jury prize winner Trouble the Water and projects for directors Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. She has traveled over five continents making films and working with prominent figures such as Dan Rather, Desmond Tutu, Britney Spears and Cameron Diaz. Her first short film, Sanza Hanza, screened last year at Slamdance and SilverDocs. She recently directed a second documentary short, Love Lockdown, while participating in Cinereach’s Reach Film Fellowship program.

Reach Film Fellow 2008:

A New York-based filmmaker, Annie P. Waldman graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Film & Television. Waldman worked under several documentary filmmakers in the New York area before becoming a Cinereach Reach Film Fellow and directing and producing a short documentary, So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away. The film focused on homeless high school students growing up on their own in New Orleans. Celebrated as possessing a “lyrical, expressive mise-en-scene” by NY Magazine, the piece has been showcased at numerous festivals, including Sundance and CMJ. A screening of the film was also held at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and in September, it had its national broadcast premiere on PBS’s P.O.V. documentary series. She is currently in production on her first documentary feature, Phantom Cowboys(with support from a Cinereach grant), a portrait of three industry towns in America on the brink of decline. She is also a recent recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Israel.

Reach Film Fellowship Mentor 2010 (mentor to Anthony Morrison):

Mad Hot Ballroom, Marilyn Agrelo’s directorial debut was the surprise hit of summer 2005. It enjoyed a theatrical run of over 24 weeks and is among the top 10 highest grossing documentary films of all time. Marilyn’s narrative feature film debut, An Invisible Sign, based on the highly acclaimed novel and starring Jessica Alba, is currently in post-production. Born in Cuba, Marilyn came to the US with her parents and three siblings at the age of 3. She is currently at work on a personal documentary entitled Us and Them, inspired by her family life. It is being filmed in both the US and Cuba. Marilyn has worked in film for over 15 years and has directed commercials, dramatic shorts, and interactive museum installations.

Please join us as a group of diverse panelists discuss how and why they use oral history in their fields, including human rights, public health, radio, and more. We know that oral history is a rich source of “future history,” but how is oral history transformative in the present moment, for interviewer, interviewee, and audience?

Collectively, the panel will cover some of oral history’s therapeutic, historical, social, and political applications.

Stacy Parker Aab has worked on The Katrina Experience since August of 2005, when she began taking oral histories from evacuees who stayed at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX. As of March 2008, she has interviewed over 125 survivors and those who came to their need, traveling through Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and points north to do so. In addition to her work on The Katrina Experience, she served as primary contributor and project coordinator to Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath.(McSweeney’s). Stacy is the author of a memoir about what it was like to be young and female working in the White House, entitled Government Girl (Ecco/HarperCollins). She also writes political and social commentary for The Huffington Post. She lives in New York City.

Michael Garofalo joined StoryCorps in early 2004, shortly after the project launched. He has recorded hundreds of interviews across the country in StoryCorps’ recording booths as well as in the field. As a member of the Peabody Award (2006) winning production team, Michael has had a hand in creating nearly all of the project’s content — from producing StoryCorps’ weekly national broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition and hosting the podcast, to contributing to the first StoryCorps book, to co-producing an series of animated shorts to premiere on PBS’ POV in summer 2010. Michael also makes music using radios—among other things—as a member of the electro-acoustic trio Latitude/Longitude. He is a Transmission Artist with the nonprofit arts organization free103point9.

Rachael Weiss is project head of the Newtown Creek Community Health and Harms Narrative Project (CHHNP), which aims to interview residents in communities surrounding the Newtown Creek (i.e., Greenpoint, East Williamsburg and Maspeth) about environmental burdens in their neighborhood and associated health problems. The interviews will be thematically analyzed and disseminated in a comprehensive report with additional historical, environmental, and health data from various secondary sources. In addition, audio clips and transcripts will be available to the public on an environmental justice/community mapping Web site HabitatMap. Ultimately, the goal of the CHHNP is to add a personal face to the environmental burdens of those living near the Newtown Creek, which can hopefully assist in community empowerment and advocacy. Rachael is a graduate student in the CUNY Doctor of Public Health Program at the Graduate Center.

Agnes Umunna (Straight From the Heart, Liberia) is a Journalist, Radio Producer/Presenter and Community Activist. She helps to record stories from survivors of the war in Liberia and see how best we can talk about the trauma they have gone through during the 14 years of war. As Executive Director and founder of Straight from the Heart Project, she used the project to engage victims, witnesses and perpetrators of the Liberian conflicts, and established it as a Non-Governmental and Not-For-Profit Media network that engages in nationwide advocacy program on radio, for War Victims to voluntarily give accounts of their participation in the Liberian conflict.

Suzanne Snider is a frequent contributor to The Believer and several literary journals. She has contributed podcasts to The Guardian and co-curates the weekly nonfiction series, TRUE STORY. At the New School and NYU, she teaches nonfiction writing, documentary experiments, oral history, and song hunting courses. This year, she received a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute to initiate an oral history project on presses founded and run by women between 1960 and 1985, and is currently completing a book about two rival communes on adjacent land.

Following the theme of Brian Doyle’s artwork – phenomena and ephemera found in the collision between the natural and cultural – “Glassing the Landscape” highlights the quasi-fictionalized documentary. These films uncover realities just beneath the surface of recognition. Doyle offers us a look through his telescope, a squinting perspective on the modern landscape that allows us to observe our environment’s latent realities. Doyle will present “Launch”, which imagines NASA’s space center in a future where nature has begun to reclaim the complex. Works by Jem Cohen, Bill Brown, Semiconductor and other artists further the theme of quiet vision and lurking power.

“When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could see. The segments of road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of standing smoke. He lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land.”

* from Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” where a man with his boy, two of the last people alive on earth, “glasses” the landscape looking for signs of life.

Launch by Brian Doyle (USA, 2007, 24 minutes, color, super 8 transferred to video)

This film imagines a deserted, storm-ravaged Kennedy Space Center. With wildlife encroaching, radio transmissions track a massive hurricane and direct any remaining people to escape. Finally, a rocket (in fact the space shuttle Discovery, in the first liftoff since the Columbia disaster) launches through the eye of the storm.

A number of contemporary issues inform “Launch”: the many recent large-scale natural disasters that have shaken the world; the ever-increasing human impact and manipulation of the weather; and our varied ambitions for space and conquest. The film imagines the day when humankind must face the overwhelming force of nature and attempt to escape it. It is a meditation on the end of an era and the beginning of a drastically different and unpredictable future.

Science’s 10 most Beautiful Experiments :#2 Galileo by Jeanne Liotta (USA, 2006, 2 min., color, dv)

One of the first experimentalists was Galileo, who supposedly dropped a feather and a hammer simultaneously from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in order to demonstrate that the two would hit the ground at the same time. Approx. 400 years later that trick still works.

(courtesy: NASA 1971)

Little Flags by Jem Cohen (USA, 2000, 6 minutes, black-and-white)

A “victory” parade for the 1991 Gulf War filmed in the area of lower Manhattan near the World Trade Towers known as the Canyon of Heroes. Cohen shelved the footage until 2000 when the film was completed. The events of Sept. 11, 2001 recast the film as a mirror facing past and future. Everyone loves a parade, except for the dead.

City Beat by Skip Blumberg (USA, 1980, 7:10 minutes, color)

In this early 3-channel art video that was recently restored, the repetition of urban action becomes a symphony of rhythms, leading to cacophony and back. Conceived and collaboratively produced by Skip Blumberg with 12 local video artists and producers at Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis. Originally a 3-TV-monitor installation in the Crystal Court at the IDS Center – a skyscraper featured in the video (Minneapolis), Institute of North America (Barcelona, Spain), Contemporary Art Museum (Chicago, and Museum of Modern Art (NYC).

Below Sea Level (single channel) by Pawel Wojtasik (USA, 2009, 5 min. 45 sec., color, HD)

The work is an evocation of the spirit of the city of New Orleans and its surrounding wetlands. It attempts to speak in images and sound about the continuing plight of the place, of the human and ecological crisis occurring there. The film is not specifically about Hurricane Katrina—rather it contemplates an acute sense of impermanence inherent in the New Orleans location. The film emphasizes water as the lifeblood of the city.

Buffalo Common by Bill Brown (USA, 2001, 23 minutes, black and white)

Bill Brown’s personal, observant film, “Buffalo Common” is witty and filled with philosophical statements. Traveling to North Dakota researching the psyches of the townsfolk who lived among armed missile silos for thirty-five years. In ‘99 half of them were decommissioned. The colorful black and white cinematography is excellent and Bill’s stream of consciousness narration is thoughtful and provoking. Something different and definitely worth a look.

Heliocentricby Semiconductor (a collaboration of Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt), Sound by Semiconductor and BJ Nilsen (UK, 2010, 15 minutes, HD)

Heliocentric uses time-lapse photography and astronomical tracking to plot the sun’s trajectory across a series of landscapes. The entire environment feels to pan past the camera whilst the sun stays in the centre of each frame, enabling us to gauge the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun. As the Suns light becomes disrupted by passing weather conditions and the environment through which we encounter it, it audibly plays them as if it were a stylus.

Atomic Park by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (France, 2004, 8 minutes, black and white and color, 35mm)

Courtesy Camera Lucida

The White Sands desert is located near the Trinity Site. It was here, in July 1945, that the very first atomic bomb was tested. The voice of Marilyn Monroe, in John Huston’s film “The Misfits”, can be heard in the distance. Arthur Miller wrote the script.

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Brian Doyle’s videos, installations and photos question the notion of the common experience. His award winning artwork has been shown around the world on television (PBS, ARTE, TVE), in film festivals (Slamdance, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Tribeca Film Festival), and in museums (Henry Art Gallery, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Australian Center for the Moving Image). Doyle’s videos can be found in the video file of Pierogi 2000 in Brooklyn, NY and are distributed by Annexia in Toulouse, France and Vtape in Toronto, Canada. He graduated with a BFA from Florida State University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Sculpture Department. He lives and works in Beacon, NY.

Brian Doyle is a 2009 Artists’ Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). This presentation is co-sponsored by Artists and Audiences Exchange, a public program of NYFA.

Skip Blumberg is an Emmy Award-winning producer and influential figure in the evolution of the independent video documentary. From his seminal guerrilla television work of the late 1970s and early explorations of the graphics of video (JGLNG, 1976) to his recent documentaries about world culture (Weekend in Moscow, 2002 and Return to Tibet, 2003) and performance videos (ConCreep, 2000), he brings a distinctive, personal approach to the documentary form that, in his words, “warms up the cool medium of television.” His work has has shown in settings, such as PBS, National Geographic TV, Showtime, Bravo, the Learning Channel as well as the Museum of Modern Art, Pompidou Center (Paris), and Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY). He was appointed Special Assistant Professor at Hofstra University’s School of Communications in 2008. Blumberg curated two of Doyle’s works “Current” and “The Light” in “US Express”, a history of single channel video art spanning from the early 70’s to present day that toured worldwide through the U.S. Department of State, 2005-2008.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.
While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch (Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a  heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha (USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds (USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown
(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.
Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson
(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala
(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman
(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:
Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.
Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.
Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?
Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004.  Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

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(USA, 2009, 95 minutes, color, DVD)

Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. This unique documentary examines the creative spirit that drives these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schizophrenic culture and piece them back together. What you end up with is a caricature of the black and bloated heart that pulses greed through the US economy. The artists push further into the pulp to grab the attention of passersby, plastering art that’s both vulgar and intensely visceral onto the gnarled surfaces of the urban landscape. The film gives us intimate look at some of the giants of this modern subculture. Outside of their own circle, they’re virtually unknown. But within their ranks they make up an army of bareknuckle brawlers, publicly arguing the aesthetic merits of octopus imagery and hairy 70s porn stars. They’ve created their own visual language for describing the spotty underbelly of western civilization and they’re not shy about throwing it in the face of polite society. Along the way, they manage to create posters that are strikingly obscene, unflinchingly blasphemous and often quite beautiful. Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture.

“Raw — an outlaw movie about outlaw artists.”- Peter Rainer, NPR

“A captivating artifact of an era.”  -The Village Voice

“The Citizen Kane of underground rock poster art documentaries” -LA Weekly

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Eileen Yaghoobian is an Iranian-born Canadian filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian has spent the past four years shooting her first, full-length documentary film Died Young, Stayed Pretty, a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. Yaghoobian’s formal training in filmmaking, 3D animation, theatre, and photography provided a foundation for her diverse career as a director, production designer, and set decorator for numerous independent productions in Canada and the United States. Yaghoobian’s short films and videos have screened at national and international festivals as well as art exhibitions. Her still photography can be found in the permanent collections at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; and Art Bank: Canada Council for the Arts, Ottawa. She recently directed Tennesse Williams’ play The Night of the Iguana in Boston. Yaghoobian has just completed the prestigious Lincoln Center Director’s Lab 2008 and is in the midst of developing a feature narrative for her next feature film.

Robert Newman is a consultant for print and online publications. He has been the design director of Vibe, Details, Fortune, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, New York, The Village Voice, and Guitar World. He was the editor of the Seattle music magazine, The Rocket from 1982-86. Check out selection of his band posters here.

Joe Newton: Both artist and art director Joe has worked both sides of the table. As an art director he has assigned hundreds of illustrations for Rolling Stone and Seattle’s The Stranger. As an illustrator his work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, Vibe and Nickelodeon magazine, and for clients like Sony Music and Publicis. His illustrations have been honored by American Illustration, Communications Arts, and Print magazine. His design work for The Stranger has been recognized by the Society of Publication Designers, and the Society of Illustrators awarded him for his art direction of a piece by Nathan Fox.

Kayrock: click here for website

In recognition of Coney Island’s newest amusement park opening Memorial Weekend, we’re hosting a benefit preview screening of JL Aronson’s upcoming documentary, Last Summer at Coney Island. We will screen a 93 minute fine cut version of the documentary.  The film will be going to festivals soon but needs to raise money first to pay for all the archival imagery and music licensing.  Last Summer is a thorough rendering of Coney Island’s roller coaster relationship with redevelopment, focusing on the last few years as the City, a private developer and the public all wrestled over the future of this legendary amusement destination. This is an important film about an important place and what better weekend to support it?

RSVP to info@creativearson.com to confirm your seat.

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Can’t make it to the screening but still want to support this monumental project? Check out the Kickstarter page.

JL Aronson is the founder of Creative Arson, a Brooklyn-based documentary production company. His films include “Punk Rock/ Heavy Metal Karaoke,” “Up on the Roof,” and “Danielson: a Family Movie,” for which he won numerous film festival awards. JL first got involved in Coney Island professionally almost ten years ago while working for the Siren Music Festival and subsequently directed a TV commercial for Astroland Amusement Park. He enjoys funnel cakes, long walks on the beach and hopes that, if nothing else, the revamped Coney Island will offer soy hot dogs alongside the classic fare.

We are welcoming back, JL Aronson whose documentary highlights Williamsburg pigeon coops, Up On the Roof, and screened with us last year.

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Blood Into Wine by Ryan Page and Christopher Pomerenke (USA, 2010, 100 minutes, color, DVD)

Maynard James Keenan, internationally known as the front man for Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, is one of music’s most mysterious figures.  A multi-million selling artist, little is known about the reclusive rock star who often dresses in costume and rarely gives interviews.  In the mid-1990’s, on a whim, Keenan left Los Angeles and moved to an Arizona ghost town (population 300).  A wine enthusiast, he began to envision a world class wine region on the Verde Valley’s craggy slopes and with wine mentor Eric Glomski (former David Bruce winemaker and current owner of the award-winning Page Springs Cellars), Keenan began the long road to bringing credibility and notoriety to Caduceus and Arizona Stronghold Vineyards amidst wine industry prejudice and the harsh Arizona terrain. Blood Into Wine takes viewers into the struggles and triumphs with a unique blend of comedy and master storytelling.

“The frisson between his [Keenan] well-crafted personal mystique and the way the film presents him as a dedicated new winemaker learning his craft is intriguing.” – Los Angeles Times

“…a rock ‘n roll version of Sideways.” – FilmCritic.com

CITY WINERY will also host Blood Into Wine Screenings on May 27 & May 28.

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