Pulling up to a new town is always a weird thing, trying to find your way and figure out the landscape can be so strange... Like today upon pulling into Duluth it struck me that it is a port town on Lake Superior- my first encounter with a Great Lake besides the ever stretching Erie- and I had no idea!!! The bridges and canals are gorgeous and, apparently, it is so so cold they are even frozen completely over. Brrrrr!
Our show took place at Zinema 2 tonight, a year and a half old movie theater in downtown Duluth that is way more than that. Fresh beers, fancy food, delicious popcorn, indie films all in a cool warm, calm environment with a lush wall mural depicting famous film legends greeting you in the lobby (which you can see part of the reflection in the above photo). Especially awesome was the Drew inspired poster that the theater made for Gravity that was adorning the wall, positioned between two posters for some Oscar nominated films.
You know? The Oscars? That awards show that we competed with for ratings tonight? We did pretty good considering we had no red carpet! Unless you count soundcheck & coffee on a carpet that is red as such...should have worn a gown! A special thanks to Tim and Shana (and Pickle the beautiful Cornish Rex cat) the seeming masterminds behind Zinema for having us and for having us over to their rad house for pizza and record listening after the show! Tomorrow we have a day off which will be spent driving around and trying to locate where we are on a map! Also, SWEATERS! Tomorrow will have lots of sweaters!
I don't know how but, somehow, after the blu-ray disc of Gravity froze twice during our performance at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis Minnesota no one walked out! Then, after we played a few songs, told a few stories (all trying to save time to fix the disc and eventually find the back up...) the crowd still seemed transfixed (even though the film stopped at sort of the most dramatic scene in the whole film)! So transfixed that most of them stayed for an (apology) encore of Hadacol Christmas! I am so proud of us! And the audience! This show was a bonding experience for everyone for sure!
Also, everytime I mentioned we were going to The Walker to art people they would swoon in a weird way I didn't understand. Now I understand! Curated with the best of taste while also creating the canon of contemporary art, The Walker is magnificent! Piece after piece of jaw dropping work, to almost the point of being overwhelmed, left me filled with memories of Oldenburg plush and Sol LeWitt lines! I even saw Derek Jarman'sBlue, a film showing a plain blue screen over the sounds and stories of a dieing man- the single most captivating thing I've seen in experimental film ever- just stunning. The building, the snowy grounds, the swarms of crowds all added up to be a lovely museum going experience... and the gift shop....THE GIFT SHOP !!! Officially swooning! (Please note my reflection in these photos because they were taken indoors looking out thanks to the 1degree temperature! What?!? One Degree?!?!)
It is only fitting that we had a crazy tire blowout the second we were about to pull off the highway into Detroit, the Motor City. Last nights show, featuring a bare band of Brent, John, Drew and me, was way different than any show we have ever done reminding me that Gravity is still an everchanging experience. I think Detroit has been through so much as a place that a film like ours that deals with a lot of harsh truths, harsh truths that the community deals with on a daily basis, made it a somber event for the small crowd that came to MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, pictured above) last night. We got a sense of the overwhelming sadness when we went on a driving tour of the city with artist Gregory Holm whose Ice House project I remember forcing Brent to read about awhile back after seeing the breathtaking images and reading of it's beautiful, timely comment on the state of the economy of housing in America.
We saw abandoned structure after abandoned structure- including a train terminal that rivals Grand Central (pictured), the world's largest (and empty) Masonic Temple and dozens of residential houses just falling into disarray. But, out of all of the rubble a lot of good has been coming to Detroit lately. The vast stretches of empty land have created pioneering urban farming projects thoughout the city, the Heidelburg Project has turned a few blocks of houses into sculptural masterpieces while also making the area safer from exposure alone, artists have been flocking to the region in search of an affordable way of life, viewing the desolate landscape as a blank canvas rather than a blighted wasteland- all of these good things are slowly proving that progressive change can happen in innovative ways to make Detroit a better place to live block by block.
There are a lot of great things happening in this city and I really hope that all of the different communities here can work together to make Detroit the thriving, beautiful place it wants to be. On to Minneapolis for a show at The Walker Art Center on Saturday! Stay safe Detroit!
Akron! Who knew you were so cool? I didn't. But, here we are and apparently you're cool! The Myers School of Art at the University of Akron, which is where we performed an intimate little show of Brent's shorts yesterday, has some real stuff being made- the student gallery alone is acting on a near professional level & the enthusiasm throughout the studios is palpable. It was so awesome we even picked up a few mugs made by the hilarious (and talented) Richie (spelling?), a student who I hope e-mails me so I can direct the internet on where to buy his mugs...seriously, awesome mugs are hard find and these mugs are seriously awesome! Also, a special thanks to Mark Soppeland the artist who brought us out here! He was such a great host and his sculptures are fantastical and crazy and I think I once had a dream about some of those animals he invented...? So great!
Also, I can't seem to shake rural life...the hotel/dorm we are staying in used to be an oatmeal factory! Our hotel room is a circle (here is Drew doing his thing?in his room? Picture by Drew?) and once was called Silo 3 and contain 1.5million bushels of oats. The lobby was fashioned by this insane sculptor who carved giant sun faces out of concrete with huge metal gears protruding out of them in a 70s pre-steampunk fashion. There are also empty train cars in the yard. And a frightening, giant waxen train conductor directing the phantom trains. What? Again, Akron. Super cool!
We made it to Johnstown safe and sound even though the tough winter weather wanted otherwise! Last night we performed at VOMA (Venue Of Merging Arts), an art space housed in a former church (complete with abandoned religious objects which, without the ceremony and lighting, just looked like a bunch of stuff that was in the way) where we were hosted by the collective My Idea of Fun. I love seeing groups of creative people in small towns making a place for everyone to come together, in this case even turning a religious house into a different kind of gathering place with a different type of congregation, one of expression and community instead of the exclusionary way a lot of for profit orgs with steeples tend to sway...
A line up of musicians were on the bill as well featuring a great project called Rubber Necking that played a video of short film clips, images originally compiled as visual postcards by two friends living across the country from one another, while two white clad guitarists played over some pulsating pre-recorded tracks! Too make the experience even better, the dudes from that project, Ian & Jacob, were not only the nicest guys on the planet but their bodies are also home to the best damn tattoos I have ever seen! Apparently, if I ever get a tattoo, I am heading to Pittsburgh to meet this guy (even despite my religious hesitations)!
Our shorts set seemed to go over well and the crowd seemed pretty eager for something new! Being in Johnstown, where the audience was so varied and excited, made me have a feeling that the more accessible things become on the internet the more people are going to crave a live version of the accessible things and also develop a more open mind to a variety of what is out there...who knows, maybe the internet will backfire and start making more and more people crave a human experience rather than a lonely screen...? I truly hope so! Anyway...Akron shorts show is coming up tonight! Hello Akron!
So much snow! And I love it! But, not so much driving in it...hope it doesn't dissuade people from coming to the show tonight!
It did dissuade us from making it all the way to the church we are playing in stopping short after hours of slow, winter travel and strictly following deep ruts made by big rigs...o, that's right, did I mention we are playing in a church?!
Connecticut. I can't spell it. I've tried and tried. Not even close enough for spellcheck to understand. But here we are. Connecticut. And it is beautiful! So beautiful that, in a moment overtaken by the beauty of the ocean, I flung open the car door and all of our tour directions I printed out flew into the winds of the Atlantic! So beautiful that, even after the insane winds blew out the power in the residence we were staying the night in, we managed to make the evening a gorgeous, rustic wonder with fireplace and candlelight! What a great New England time!
We are doing a show here at the Silvermine Guild Arts Center in New Canaan. An artists colony that was founded in the 1920s, Silvermine is located on a pond complete with little waterfall, woodlands, a barn turned into a lovely gallery (partly pictured below but all of the wind made my pics come out blurry!) and every kind of artists facility one could want (bronze foundry, print shop, dark room, sculpting studios, ceramics kiln etc.). It is really quite amazing! Even more amazing is the fact that dozens of art classes are also taught on the premises...classes that, judging by the work displayed throughout the facility, are equally as moving as the space alone! The plan is to come back at some point and build a project in this unique, art forming space!
All this without even mentioning the awesome staff running the place, including puppeteer Leslee Asch whose husband briefly mentioned the wonders of making Kermit the frog ride a bike (!!!!!!!) which is such a vivid childhood memory that I actually started to tear up a little just being in their calm and awe inspiring presence! I cannot wait to come back to this idyllic little wonder hidden in the Connecticut woods! (Yes! I spelled it right! I think?). Next up, a little PA down time and then a shorts show in Johnstown on Tuesday!
So Brent has this t-shirt...It is blue and has a giant yellow silk screened face of a mildly goth looking Lou Reed on it and, emblazoned on the back, it says "Rock Animal." He has worn it so many times that if he wears it once more it is going to unravel into threads. So when the lights at The Kitchen after the second Gravity show in New York on Friday came up and we slowly got out of our chairs on stage (trying to figure out where to hide) and the actual Lou Reed slowly approached the stage to tell Brent how beautiful the film he made was it all felt a little surreal...!
Laurie Anderson (who is also a huge inspiration for any music/performance artist and a huge supporter of The Kitchen) and Lou Reed, along with a crowd of supportive friends, artists, dancers, musicians, journalists, teachers, students, strangers (even one stranger who we randomly met at a sandwich shop in Brooklyn after the show who awkwardly sidled up to us in recognition and who was super nice and awesome!!) all came and clapped and created the most perfect beginning to our tour we could have asked for! I cannot believe how great both (sold out!) screenings were and I cannot believe that we've been able to share this experience with so many more wonderful people, including so many of our idols (both on and off stage for that matter)! Next we go north along with the spring and the geese for a Gravity show in the beauty of CT! Huzzah!
Today is the day I try to pack up my foley for the live shows we have starting at the end of this week... and try to plan a route on how to get to them! Luckily we are driving for these shows so my sound effect set up can be expanded and made even more dangerous (now where is my giant sheet of metal? Brent, I am looking at you!) as opposed to the many restrictions that airplane travel brings to my noise making suitcase (in fact, we can't even fly with snow globes for our good friend/Cinemad-man Mike anymore! Sheesh!)! Here are some wintery pics I just took of our desolate PA landscape...all made a little more desolate by the missing film set in the yard...!
Here is Brent's list of upcoming screenings & shows! I'd also like to note that we will ending the tour in Columbia Missouri for the amazingly wonderful True/False Film Festival, a hidden film-focused gem of a town that I really couldn't get enough of this past summer when we drove through!
Also, we will being doing a few shorts shows along the way including a special performance in Johnstown PA (the home of the infamous flood! Eeps!) that will also feature Drew's short films as well- come on out and see the historical water line and some Pennsylvania grown cinema! Woohoo! Now, printing up directions...hmmm....there better be a way to insert hot cocoa stops on these internet map makers!
When there are huge crazy things going on in the news I feel like my little contribution to the internet is not nearly as important as these huge events shaping the world around us. Then, sometimes, I think about Gravity and how it frames questions about our social responsibility and encourages us to build a positive existence even in the face of a lot of destructive ones. And then I think about how art and film really exist for this purpose: to question the normalities around us and make us become better humans. I don't think a lot of art has been doing this lately though so when I saw Chris Dacre's exhibit War Is Fun at the local gallery at Kutztown University I was pretty excited.
Dacre, an artist who has floated around the US and even overseas for a bit when he was a member of the U.S. Airforce, makes vibrant scenes depicting cartoon characters at war. The installation (crappy cell phone pics seen here) includes giant felted & screened wall murals of militaristic bombardment, animal characters flying jets over head & parachuting out of planes, crudely animated shorts of battle, a giant plush cartoon creature at the wheel of a tank, even simpler dark lino (or wood?) cuts of repeated war imagery- all this playing on the idea that war is not just a game, it is a way of life instilled in us at a very early age, a way of life that is just part of growing up and doesn't necessarily have to be. Seeing this playful, interesting take on such giant ideas helped restore my faith in the need for art and reminded me that every kid who sees this exhibit maybe will think twice about re-enlisting, an amazing feat from kick ass work! Hope more artists start making more statements given the current state of things...!
After premiering Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then in Europe we now have opened the floodgates for screenings all over the world! Woohoo! The next European screening is just around the corner at thePunto De Vista International Documentary Film Festival in Pamplona, Spain which takes place February 22nd-27th! Upon trying to understand the festival I came across a section on their website labeled "Jean Vigo" and was pretty confused...Jean Vigo? Wasn't he the French film director who made striking, beautiful, poetic films that paved the way for the French New Wave? L'Atalante? The vivid, gorgeous love story set aboard a ship? Yes! He is! The Punto De Vista Film Festival sees Vigo (born to a Spanish anarchist father apparently) as a perfect example of what the festivals driving force is through his poetic realism, "documented perspective" and visionary filmaking. The ideology of the festival alone is just as beautiful and progressive as the work it showcases, once again making me so proud to be a part of something so culturally moving & forward thinking!
I hope we can make it out to some of the international screenings (especially after the eye opening time we had in our brief Gravity fueled trip to The Netherlands via Belgium and Dublin- photos of our morning, afternoon and night in three countries, in one day, seen here!) but I'm not sure how likely that is given our busy schedule! For now I will try and keep everyone posted on Gravity's whereabouts..including info on our upcoming US live show mini-tour which starts off in New York City on February 17th and ends in one of my favorite film towns- more on that when the awesome, secret, midwest film town announces their official film festival schedule later this week!
The first live performance of Brent Green's I ever saw was at the legendary Chelsea performance artspace The Kitchen (which was followed by about half the band sleeping on my floor in my then apartment in Brooklyn and my neighbors getting a bit angry about the bands late night, post-show adrenaline rush)!
So, it feels like a strange yet welcome return to this place this time bringing Gravity and this time not crying from the audience but crying on stage (I can't help it! I still get choked up!) from behind my foley kit during this amazing thing I am now a part of! Cannot wait! Except for the crying part..I could probably do without that...hope you can make it! Ticket info here!(Beautiful flyer by Drew Henkels!)
Today is the last day of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. What a long, strange trip it has been! When we were at the Svankmajer exhibit the other day we actually got to meet the festivals Artistic Director, Rutger Wolfson. After giving a few words to a small crowd of people he sort of ambled around lowering his seemingly 10ft tall stature to view the collages running around the walls. I forced Brent to say thank you to him for asking our film to be a part of this great festival and, as Brent spoke Rutger said " You're the voice!" (recognizing Brent as the films narrator) and then, upon seeing me, "You're in the film!" recognizing me from Gravity as well! It felt amazing to have the person in charge of the entire festival not only recognize but also praise the film you worked so hard on!
After speaking to Rutger for a bit it was clear that he loves the festival. He urged me to see certain things and talked of the brilliance of so much of the program. I don't think I've ever met someone so down to earth (so down to earth that he could be seen riding his bike around the city from activity to activity) and truely excited about the work they are doing! This is also true for the Texan film programmer Ralph McKay who introduced & managed a Q&A about Gravity and who we hung out with at various times in Rotterdam, a man so excited by film and interested in what he does that I can't imagine him doing anything else. Except maybe dancing...Ralph was loving the dance out there in The Netherlands! I am so glad we got to have this experience and I hope we can come back for another edition of this awesome festival at some point in the future! Goodbye Rotterdam! Goodbye!
This year IFFR seriously tried to meld the film and art worlds (in a program called XL) and the impressive degree to which they succeeded mixed with the fact that Gravity sort of bridges both worlds made me excited to see a film festival with such a multidisplinary take on the medium! The city of Rotterdam became a gallery of film related art in addition to the dozens of films running on a constant rotation of reels- all with the urging of biking along a bike trail to see it all! The art part was such a brilliant idea using various local galleries, shops, museums and culture centers as venues for art related shows while forcing festival go-ers deeper into the community of the city.
We saw an exhibition of Quay Brothers drawings and the commercial they did for a perfume in the basement of a clothing boutique. We saw a kaliedascopic nature video by American artist Leslie Thornton at the Natural History Museum (pictures below). We even saw an ode to the now lost Kodachrome at the Kunsthal art museum where an artist spliced together reels of dozens of 8 year olds that he filmed across the Netherlands to keep intact the feel of the family film stock for another generation, the exhibit even offered the chance for people to bring in their kodachrome stock to be transferred (pictured) onto DVD so as to preserve the images forever.
There were so many more exhibits that we just didn't have the time for (especially sad I missed the Rodarte sketches of the costumes for Black Swan!) but what I was able to see was incredible! The whole idea of making citywide, aleternative venues and the amount of local volunteers who genuinely love working for the festival made it feel like the entire city was a part of the festivities which I think really made the whole experience of the Rotterdam Film Festival as wonderful as it was!
A lot of our friends didn't go to Rotterdam this year as they usually do, which wasn't sad for us at all because we were forced to make a relative acquaintance into a friend. Simon Lee, who I talked about earlier on the blog and who stayed near us down by the docks (pictures of area seen here) while at the fest, was in Rotterdam screening his shortWhere Is the Black Beast? as part of a program called Signals: Regained. The program featured a group of four highly experimental shorts which Brent & I were fully prepared not to like...having jet lag and watching experimental short films late into the night sounded like a form of French torture but, to our surprise, we ended up loving almost the entire set! Simon and his musical partner for this piece, Algis Kizys, crafted a kinetic collage of black & white found images set to an engrossing score as people recited lines from the Ted Hughes collection of poems called Crow: From The Life and Songs of the Crow, poems that I need to read before really analyzing the film and which I can't seem to find online... It was very moving and captured the glimpses of a life in a simple yet inquisitive way as the words about a crows gruff and independent life were buoyed by these moments of the lives of others. Wonderful!
Other shorts in the program included a newer one, Night Mayor, by Guy Maddin about a man creating sound and images from the charged particles of aurora borealis, Another Occupation by Ken Jacobs dealt with the nature of military existence (a piece that sparked a raging film nerd debate about how it was produced to the point someone offered to call Jacobs himself and get the inside scoop, conclusion: it appears he used a stroboscope- WOAH! I never heard of that! It is insane! I'd also never heard of Ken Jacobs and now I am kind of obsessed with seeing more of his "paracinema.") and a piece called Finding the Telepathic Cinema of Manchuria by David Blair (who we also hung out with for a bit and whose piece I am still trying to wrap my brain around- it might be about the confusion of history through media resources and the spirituality of watching film? or a meditation on the way we impart our stories to one another? not too sure...). Either way I was unprepared to have a new love affair with late-night experimental cinema...despite the fact I always imagined Gravity as a perfect midnight movie! Teehee!
After seeing a bunch of films at the 2011 Rotterdam Film Festival I noticed a kind of pattern starting to emerge...most of the films I saw seemed to have this lost quality about them, almost as if each character was a stationary road movie- sitting and waiting for events to happen upon them and taking slight, mundane measures to control their own fate. I think I found this theme especially interesting because I feel as though Gravity sort of fits in with it but, the way our story is told and the attempts at taking ones own future into their own hands was much, much more pronounced and active than the passivity present in the dreamy counterparts that dotted the film program.
Finisterrae (which I just read won a festival award), a Spanish movie that follows two white sheeted ghosts around as they move into their next life, was breathtaking in image. Each shot was a lush, near still picture of contemplation often with natural elements that I have no idea how the director was able to capture (owls regarding ghosts inches away, reindeer trudging through snow). The action was comprised mostly of odd, slightly funny scenes where the ghosts wandered into a situation and navigated where they ended up as best they could but, in the end turning into something else beyond their own decision making process.
BothJulien (a documentary about a late teen/early twenties boy in rural France) and Bad Posture (set in the American southwest and featuring another lost male soul) had protagonists completely at a loss as to what to do with their lives. I don't think I've ever seen a movie made quite like Julien, a documentary with part storyteller narrator, long dance filled sequences of movement, low quality digital video used in an experimental way (slight jumpy pulses of autofocus and trippy trails of fast movement) all followed around this young boy as he tried to figure out where he was headed with his life- school? medieval knighthood role playing? late night Michael Jackson-esque choreographing with friends? A beautiful film that I think really captured the nomadic interior of a young man as the world happens around him. Bad Posture also followed a young man around as he tried to move through the tangled web of coincidence, mildly controlling bits of his life here and there through party flyers, tagging and a smoking habit. This film too featured a long dance sequence, a near religious graffiti sequence set to a holy hymn sounding moment of peace, and some great editing on the part of the director.
I saw a few other films too and, after reading a lot of descriptions of the program, it sems fate vs. man was a big theme this year, I think a lot of these films coming out of the post-recession climate really feel the need to deal with this idea. Suffering through the economic downturn maybe made a lot of filmakers, especially indie/low budget filmakers, feel as though there are forces far beyond their own personal control at work which has led to a lot of movies dealing with the same. The thing that bothers me though is that film is not real life, even documentaries are controlled by the director behind them. I don't really understand why filmakers wouldn't take the fact that they do have complete control over this one thing, this one thing that can create an alternate reality and shape the fate of people, and create films and characters that are more active than blindly lost. We may not have complete control over our lives but, why limit our art to that? Art lets us move beyond and question the lives we are (possibly) being forced to live- indie film needs to get out of its recession ladened funk and make the statements & revolutions they are capable of making! Not to say the films I saw were bad by any means but I think I am ready for something a bit louder and passionate! So, how much does dynamite cost...? And actor insurance....? Hmmm....
"The modern age doesn’t care about dreams, because there’s no money in them."
When I was a a kid I remember watching late night tv and seeing a program of shorts on a science fiction station. They were always interesting but this one, where a man oddly moves around a room and sits across from another man, follows a series of instructions and a meal is produced from his silent dining companion and who, after eating, becomes the meal for the next hungry customer really seemed to stick with me. But it wasn't just the content that made this film unforgettable, what made this short film stick with me for my entire life was the fact that it was shot in stop motion using humans, my first glance at pixelation.
Little did I know that years later I would help make Gravity, an entire feature where I was a human, animated puppet. That short that lodged in my young brain was made by none other than the brilliant Jan Svankmajer . His gross, dark humor and intensely unique (and skilled) animating seriously paved the way for animation to be seen as a serious artform. And, last night, we met the legendary Jan Svankmajer in the meaty flesh!
His most recent feature, Surviving Life, which I finally got to see last night as well, is made of an insane mix of live action footage and (mainly) animated cut outs, a hybrid that Svankmajer jokingly explains at the beginning of the film as evolving from lack of funding "We saved on catering since photos don't eat." The cut outs are made from vivid photographs of the actors placed in front of stale, sterile black & white photographed backgrounds. As someone who has been through the process of an animated feature, the thing I was most impressed with was Svankmajer's editing in this film. He was able to move fluidly through real time footage to these photographic, jointed puppets to his signature close ups of actions and fragmented body parts (usually mouths) in such a completely seamless way that I was floored! Brent always says that he filmed Gravity completely in stop motion in order for your eye to adjust to the strangeness of it, so that you wouldn't think "O, it is animated now, something weird is going to happen" but Svankmajer, being the old master that he is, was able to make the transition almost un-noticebly allowing for scenes to move form reality into a dreamlike state of giant hands applauding out of windows and portraits of Freud & Jung duking it out in a psychoanaylsts office wall.
We met Svankmajer at an art opening here in Rotterdam at the Czech Culture Center for an exhibition composed of collages based on his film, further proving how he has paved the way for our way of life! He doesn't speak English so a translator awkwardly introduced us to him. At first he seemed like he wanted to hide but, when I told the translator what film we had made, she quickly forced him to pay attention- another testament to the amazing reception Gravity has been receiving over here in Europe! I think this was an amazing experience for Brent, I really can't explain how incredible meeting the creator of this thing we do was, to meet the person who has really made it possible for animation to be the life (and livelihood) of not only us but also of so many of our friends! Thank you Mr. Svankmajer! (wipes tear from face, smiles) Thank You!
After some time adjustments I finally got to enjoy the festival for the spectacle that it is! First, I spent some time in the festival center (pictured) using the internet and drinking some thick coffee, which was followed by a late afternoon meal of stinky cheese & ham, which led to a magnificent experimental film & music experience which ended in drinking fresh Belgium beers and late night kebobs! Ok, now I get it, IFFR is a sort of film industry party...fun but still work driven, and I am not complaining one bit!
The experimental film performance I was lucky enough to take in featured none other than the legendary Lee Ranaldo and his partner Leah Singer . Leah's films were projected simultaneously on 3 screens while Lee "played" a guitar doing everything from scraping it on the ground to swinging it around an amplifier for circular feedback (you can see a tiny silhouette of the hanging guitar in the collage of images from the show below) to bowing the hanging guitar in midair all while two gong players lurked on the periphery atop risers, banging along to the controlled mayhem issuing from below. Leah's films at first glance seemed simple but then veered into a poetic territory of failed fecundity and lost landscapes & cityscapes as they looped images such as ants building homes in cracked pavement and uninhabited, broken storefronts lost in the shuffle of identity. Of course Lee (!!!from Sonic Youth !!!) is a master of sound treating the guitar not as the object that creates noise but the noise itself as an object, molding it into whatever he can like a true artist does with any medium- incredible! The films too were crafted in an interesting way allowing for subtle effects (backwards loops, sped up sequences, etc.), using these effects as a medium to manipulate the images and film experience.
If anything, my first trip to Europe so far has really pushed my understanding of what can and cannot be used as conduits of creativity- between Renaldo with his sounds and Bik Van Der Pol with their ideas, my brain wants to think of mediums acting far beyond the normal paint, scissors and glue! Now, I better see a film or two to learn what people are currently doing with the (obvious) medium of film...!
Everytime I told someone I was going to the Rotterdam International Film Festival they immediately said "It's the best one!" Which, I think might be true...?! The programming has everything from alternative mainstream films (127 hours, Black Swan, Blue Valentine) to first time filmakers (Bad Posture, New Jerusalem) who have never been shown in front of an audience to a vigorous program of artistic shorts (Time and Again). It is also the first time I've been to this kind of thing where it seems the festival was specifically designed for the city (or maybe the other way around?), mainly due to the immaculate venues and sea of resources.
Today marks the first day I think I might actually get to see a film that is not our own! Yay! I can't wait! Has anyone seen anything I must see? Or something I won't be able to see in the American woods? Which I guess means most anything? Please, please send suggestions!
After two sold out screenings and a well attended industry/press screening Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then had its last showing at the Rotterdam International Film Festival yesterday. In an Imax. It was so funny to see our backyard film on a gigantic screen to the point that, even after we stood in front of the 400 hundred seats and giant glowing IMAX sign pointing into the theater we were told to go to, it still seemed like a scheduling mistake!
As for the audience, numerous people have seemed touched and moved by the film reaching out to discuss the depths of the story at an angle unlike any American audience has. But I think this inquisitive nature is inherent in a lot of European thought/art, evident in a lot of others work here as well, especially in the work of a Rotterdam based artistic duo we were able to sneak into the industry/press screening of Gravity and that we were told we must meet while here.
Bik Van Der Pol (Liesbeth Bike & Joss Van deer Pol) make some of the single most intelligent, well constructed projects on earth! From what I can tell they have somehow managed to take the intellectualization of contemporary art and turn it into a medium all its own- constructing balanced habitats, referencing texts, researching the depths of museum archives- all reaching the end goal of constructive, inquisitive thought while making a visually stunning index of these thoughts. It takes an amazing mind (or in this case two!) to realize these ideas and to actually use ideas as an artistic medium for exploration and progressive cultural foot-printing. So glad we got to share our film with them! And so glad they are bringing their inspiring work to the US in the next few months!
Now that our screenings are over (and my jet lag has subsided) I am prepared to watch other movies and walk slowly around the city...maybe after a nap? zzzZZZzzzz
