Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then

Sundance Review: Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present

2012-01-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

I really wanted to eat popcorn while watching the Marina Abramovic documentary (Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present) just because it isn't often you are allowed to eat snacks in front of nude performance art and, as someone who has suffered through her fair share of such, I really wanted to revel in the spectacle in the absent way movie food allows! But, then again, people recently did pay thousands of dollars to eat cake in front of nude, Abramovic performers as they rotated about as centerpieces in a (stupidly) controversial fundraising event so maybe one day I will have another chance...? Anyway...this was one of the most well crafted documentaries I have ever seen!

The music, the cinematography, the editing it all knew just when to swell, be picturesque and cut for the maximum effect, emotion and interest- beautiful filmmaking! As for the subject, the film follows the performance artist of the film's title as she prepares for her retrospective at MoMA the centerpiece, a new work titled The Artist Is Present, composed of her sitting in chair, motionless, for the entire duration of the 3month exhibit as audience members took turns sitting across from her gaze. Abramovic's work is an aggressive look at endurance, societal roles, pain, beauty and the intense spaces between people. She views herself as a canvas for others to reflect upon, her performances acting out some base desire on the part of the audience, leading to a critique of the audience and the world that has shaped them.

I have never been a huge fan of the performance art genre (with very few exceptions, namely Chris Burden) and this film did not make me respect the genre any more or less...but, it did humanize the life and work of an aging art star and make this strange, complex artform (that is not the most accessible) into a striking, visually appealing, palatable portrait of an artist that I think everyone in the audience could somewhat relate to. From living in a van with her true love to gallavating in Givenchy, Abramovich consistently lives out the dream of what many people think being an artist means: a lifestyle, work ethic, and soul portrayed in a masterful documentary. (And a special shout out to whoever was responsible for the ever so sly dissing of James Franco in the films editing! A++ And a thumbs down for the inclusion of David Blaine, D-)

Sundance Picture Post 1/26/2012

2012-01-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

Early morning mountains, more movies and more snow....! You know, a typical gorgeous day in Utah! O, I almost forgot, today also included a lovely brunch hosted by my favorite film festival in the world (True/False!!!!) and one of the best online film resources on the web (Indiewire!!!). Again, another gorgeous day in Utah, filled with the brightest & nicest of film world people!

Sundance Review: Big Boys Gone Bananas*

2012-01-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

After hearing a lot of great things from trusted film
friends about Big Boys Gone Bananas* I decided that I should wake up at 7:30am in the chilly air of Park City Utah and hustle to a faraway, remote, synagogue turned movie theater to see this social documentary unfold! And I am pretty glad I did! Filmmaker Fedrik Gertten (who is based in Malmo Sweden, a magical land that we brought our own to film to awhile back!) made a documentary about the use of pesticides by Dole Food Company and the pending lawsuit surrounding the devastation these pesticides caused to the workers in the banana plantations. Days before the films premier it became apparent Dole did not want this film to be seen. By anyone. Ever. This leads Gertten to create another film, Big Boys, a straight up documentary on his struggles as a filmmaker against a corporate giant. We watch Gertten and his colleagues crusade under the pressures of Dole, battle the lawsuits brought against them, thrive in the development of a Swedish community siding with the film's cause, and, most interestingly, witness the increasingly blurry vision of freedom of speech. Needless to say, this film is being screened and hopefully will continue to be screened bringing the issues of both corporate responsibility and the need to fight for documentarian human rights!

Big Boys Gone Bananas* is a case study in how standing up for justice, the freedom of speech and the triumph of truth are not to be taken for granted and should be strived for in whatever way one can, especially in a time when rights and responsibilities are slowly eroding away....also, Organic Fair Trade bananas all the way please! O, and also, the original documentary shunned by Dole can be rented or purchased in the embedded trailer link above, support this filmmaker and his important work!

Sundance Review: New Frontier, Abacus & whiteonwhite

2012-01-26T17:47:00.000-08:00

New Frontier, the sort of artistic/experimental section of the Sundance Film Festival (the section we are a part of out here), hosts various performances and screenings of work apart from the exhibition on view throughout the festival. I was lucky enough to sneak in on the dress rehearsal for one performance and also one screening- one a live experience and one a filmic experience, two very different approaches to a new forefront in expanded cinema.

Ever since Lars Jan became a TED fellow the interest in his latest work has been humming below the surface of most art and film circles I come in contact with. His Abacus project, an outlook on what the future of mankind could look like, was first conceived as a large scale multimedia project up at EMPAC (a place I adore!) where giant screens, live camera feed projection w/steady cam dancers (?), a complex light show, and a live actor orated a monologue on our misconceptions of the world/ how we need to expand our minds to fix looming disaster- think global, act global perhaps? As someone who religiously reads National Geographic I don't really think I learned anything new in this performance and the format of a one man show is something that has never appealed to me as a medium....but that is not to say that an audience of young, forming minds would not benefit from a surfacey crash course in "how to fix the world." Hopefully Abacus will screen in it's much larger scale form again since I think the tiny, intimate setting of the Sundance performance took away from a much needed distance that would allow for contemplation, a better experience of the propaganda/screen/dictator/superstar relationship (which Jan views as an important part of the social commentary of the piece), and more acceptance of the soft futurist tone.

I've raved about whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir before on the blog in it's gallery setting but, seeing the film in a theatrical setting was a completely different experience! Composed of film clips, voice over tracks, and music tracks randomly live edited together by a computer program (the "Serendipity Machine," whose script was made visible on screens to the sides of the theater screen while at Sundance) the film began playing when audiences entered and continued to play after they left. Telling a lose noir story of a man lulled into a life within barren City A and the circumstances surrounding his confines, Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation create a tense landscape of a film genre, exploring the nature of creating cinema, the inherent expectations/behavior of an audience, and moving towards a completely new understanding of what the film & technological mediums can do. In this setting the film puts the audience in a much more active position, trying to piece things together, glancing at the algorithm to see what it is thinking, almost trying to complete a puzzle- the most engaged cinematic audience I have seen in awhile!

I think Abacus and whiteonwhite are both approaching the same problem in today's film going/media ravaged audiences, a response against the passivity of the overstimulated world of virtual/false interaction. These pieces actively engage the viewers: to work with a machine to create a narrative, to dissect knowledge and disseminate in a better way in the name of human existence. Also, both projects are meant for a different setting, whiteonwhite a gallery/museum and Abacus a larger arena like theater but, their inclusion in this large scale film festival, and the high attendance rates of their shows, makes me think that film goers are seeking out a different kind of film going experience and that maybe projects like these won't be the anamolies in the future of the film industry. (photos from a window in downtown Park City)

Sundance Picture Post 1/25/2012

2012-01-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

...yes, so I am a little late on yesterday's posting! I won't lie though, it was due to a few afternoon glasses of sleep inducing wine at a press event where I was lucky enough to chat with the ever so lovely Zellner Brothers (whose new feature Kid Thing I am going to see tomorrow!!!!!), Terence Nance (whose film title, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, I covet), members of The Rufus Corporation team and a few other random film/art darlings! All that then followed by a hottub surrounded by icicle dripping spruce trees...I thought the abundance of hottubs at Sundance was some sort of myth but no, they are everywhere, their steamy, snowy wonder beckoning at every moment!

Sundance Picture Post 1/24/2012

2012-01-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

A pretty slowish day on the Sundance front (only due to extreme exhaustion and other non-Sundance related work to get done!)! We did manage to get out to the UMOCA (an amaaaaazing museum!) opening over in Salt Lake City (pictured as lights below) to see the film fest related art exhibit featuring a lot of expanded pieces from New Frontier, really showcasing some of the hidden gems (middle picture of My Generation by Eva and Franco Mattes on display at UMOCA)! Also, we hit up the local bowling alley where the Shorts Awards Program took place (more to come!) Hope you enjoy your night as much as I have! O no! I have been summoned back to bowling! zzZZZzzzzz

Sundance Review: 5 Broken Cameras (N American Premier)

2012-01-24T13:33:00.000-08:00

When I walked into 5 Broken Cameras I didn't know what to expect. Two co-directors (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi) introduced the film, humbly thanking everyone for being there followed by the programmer who chose the film speaking with a wonder and awe, seemingly moved to tears by what we were about to watch. And now I know why.

A documentary by a Palestinian man whose town is slowly being encroached upon by Israeli barricades and construction follows the life of his youngest son through the lens of his videocamera, a device that provides him protection, distance and becomes the symbol for his freedoms as each one is systematically destroyed by conflict. It is not possible to describe the pain, beauty and utter confusion that this film evokes, seeing first hand this ineffable struggle that the press could never begin to humanize in these terms. By exploring a personal aspect of a political & cultural rift that is so rooted in history it is nearly intangible 5 Broken Cameras becomes a poetic documentary, an archive of a time that is not easily defined by borders, names and facts, images to identify with and stand behind as a citizen of the world.

Footage from 5 Broken Cameras has been broadcast all over foreign press outlets, even (according to the directors in the Q&A) garnering tons of internet buzz for some of the gruesome accounts of Israeli soldier's violence against Palestinians so, why has it taken so long to reach an American audience? Why have we not seen this version of the story before? As the director noted after the film, he was afraid to bring his son to America, fearing our own political leanings could act against him- a truth evident in the fact that this film has taken so long to reach our shores. Apart from being a heart wrenching piece of emotional journalism, 5 Broken Cameras can also be seen as a warning, a warning that civil rights are at war even in our own country and it is everyone's responsibility to save those of others. Please see this film. (pictures of a barren, snowy Utah)

Sundance Panel Discussion: Carr, Dodd, Fithian & Vachon! O my!

2012-01-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

After getting an early morning wait list ticket for a film I went to the Filmmaker Lodge on Main street in downtown Park City where, throughout the fest, panels and Q&As are held covering the spectrum of all things filmmaking. I missed the very beginning so I am not sure what the exact topic of conversation was supposed to be but Christine Vachon (indie-film producer extraordinaire), former Senator Christopher Dodd (now head of the MPAA), John Fithian (President CEO lobbyist of the National Association of Theatre Owners) under the mediation of David Carr (NY Times staff writer/star of the doc Page One) took to the stage discussing the state of distribution, SOPA and where the film industry is headed.

There wasn't much real solution discussed but hearing these different views on where indie film sits was truly eye opening. Dodd asserted that $58billion dollars has been lost due to illegal downloads, an audience member acting as a symbol for this drastic shift whose indie film was on the right path to distribution but, after it leaked on the internet, has been excessively downloaded leading to a devastating loss of revenue. In fact, the audience seemed more in tune with the realities of the current film distribution landscape: one man suggesting that we lower the price point of film going (a bloated industry across the board) to begin a new feeling of responsibility to the audience and another audience member spoke of his organization, Arthouse Convergence, who have created a coalition of alternative venues for indie films making programming and filmmaker accessibility better (a thing we here at Nervousfilms have obviously looked toward in our own distribution with Gravity). Christine Vachon, speaking as a producer/fosterer of talent definitely spoke the most clearly on the current issues asserting that "TV is embracing risks" (evident in her recent support of Todd Haynes Mildred Pierce miniseries) and that online production/distribution is a reality that we can use for better content & profit (she is working on a project with Michael Eisner's online production company). David Carr also heartily discussed his own brushes with illegal downloading, fearing that without theaters his job will become obsolete and people will not looks towards reviewers for answers in a more democratic, online sea of self distributed work. Overall, this panel pronounced the disconnect between the artists/filmmakers/creatives and those responsible for displaying/supporting their work, culminating in a really tough question: how do we all remain relevant and fed in the changing landscape of cinema?

All of these topics were especially fitting since I was told to stop taking pictures during the event since I did not have a special purple press pass (which I filled out paperwork for but never received!) yet was surrounded by hi-quality camera phones snapping away to no end! The accessibility of content, of media, of technology is moving at a pace that the film/entertainment industry cannot keep up with, a pace that will eventually lead to a complete overhaul of the system, a change in the way we value creative expression in film...a change that is all to welcome in a theater landscape of predominantly multimillion dollar crap! (Dodd & Vachon pictured at top, Carr at bottom- hastily taken before I was reprimanded!)

Sundance: New Frontier

2012-01-24T10:01:00.000-08:00

I haven't had very much time to write about the New Frontier exhibit out here at Sundance, the exhibit that Brent's piece, To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, (pic above and below) is a part of! With a theme of Future Normal: The integration of humanity and media technology the show is expertly curated by Shari Frilot, a socially conscious curator/programmer at Sundance. Every piece in the show takes the step between technology and cultural progression, bridging the gap between how we can use tech art to make vital statements and make us more aware. When entering the space the first piece you encounter is the 3d bombasity of Marco Brambilla with Evolution (Megaplex). This piece is a scrolling, 3d video loop that tracks the evolution of man through hundreds of Hollywood movie gifs, collaged together into a moving Renaissance painting of epic proportions. His piece is compelling in that the clips are pointing out our own creation of a human history that is completely false, questioning the value of image and word, of entertainment and vulgarity, a kind of fictionalized cultural artifact from a digital world that doesn't speak the truths that we have lived- insane!

Another stand out from the show was Question Bridge: Black Males (pictured below) made by an inspiring collective of artists and thinkers who filmed black American males posing questions followed by answers from their peers. The layout consists of 4 screens, composed portraits of the asker and answerers, as you watch the real concerns of these people emerge: the search for an identity of what it means to be an African American male. It is a platform for change and community that the artists hope can be used for all types of people, providing the support, understanding and relatability that is necessary for progression and contentment- I LOOOOVE this piece! It is currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum too, be sure to check it out there!

Bear 71 is another piece at New Frontier that I am quite fond of! Sponsored by the mythic National Film Board of Canada, the piece follows the life of a tagged bear but, it is not that simple. An interactive graphic map (pic below!) is projected on three screens depicting the movement of the bear, other tagged animals in the bear's vicinity (including a group of followed humans) and the placement of motion activated cameras that film the bear's whereabouts. When a tablet is placed in front of the graphic map you can access the footage taken by the cameras- all this in addition to occasional film sequences of a bear's life and a soft spoken narrative on that life- one of fear, loss, strength, nature and encroaching humanity. This piece is the best environmental awareness tool I have ever, ever witnessed and is a completely new format for the documentary realm! I hope this project, produced by a wonderful collective of people but conceived by artists Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison, reaches a huge audience since I think it is the birth of a new kind of activism in art, a thing there needs to be more of!

Hunger in Los Angeles, by journalist/artist Nonny de la Peña, is a virtual reality world (which I have yet to experience due to people's interest) that tracks real life situations using gaming technology to immerse you in societal problems, to experience the lives of others, a new journalism that can breathtakingly, literally change the game! The remaining pieces in the show include My Generation (videos of children acting out gaming anger screened on a broken computer monitor, watching the intense emotion/rage erupt from virtually nothing), The Cloud of Unknowing (a film hailing from Singapore in which you witness smoke filling the apartments of lives on screen in a tense worry of impending doom as the environment the audience sits in also fills with smoke in an eerie blurring of reality), and Radical Games Against the Tyranny of Entertainment (featuring politically motivated goals that point out major issues in the form of sweetly rendered video games). Overall this show is a strong, oddly cohesive example of where tech art stands in today's world, a world it seeks to change for the better! So satisfying to see art done right!

Sundance Picture Post 1/23/2012

2012-01-24T00:43:00.000-08:00

I don't really understand how the snow moves through these mountains but...I do understand that the entire town is electric with Sundance mania! Today was a busy one for sure! Beginning with an early morning ticket wait list line (where I relinquished my spot to a fellow line waiter only to be the cut off number for the film and not allowed in-crossing fingers ticket karma will abound!), leading to a serious morning panel, moving into tons of celebrity sightings, followed by sooo many friend sightings and then ending with a film, today was one of those days I am thankful for the calm beauty of Park City! This place is so captivating, made even moreso with the buzz of film industry dreams and excited attendees everywhere, keeping me awake through these early mornings and late nights!

Sundance Review: About Face (Premier)

2012-01-24T00:12:00.000-08:00

After waiting in line for a reaaallly long time and coming down to the wire on wait list spots I managed to get a seat at the premier of About Face:Supermodels Then, And Now, a documentary by the photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders about aging beauties in the modern world. This film traces the lives of a group of supermodels (eager to point out that they are not "former" supermodels since they are still the same women they were when they graced the covers of every magazine) as they age beyond a photograph. Seeing these women who I have only known in photographic form speak was nearly disorienting, each one a fully formed human character that their silent images alone could never fully convey.

To highlight a few: Jerry Hall was fantastic ( "I love getting older, it allows me to be more eccentric!"), Isabella Rossellini was as intelligent, glamourous and witty as ever, and Beverly Johnson (the first African American to grace the cover of Vogue) was a non-apologetic powerhouse! Each woman in the film dissected more than reminisced about the culture of modeling they grew up in beginning from their childhood (models are too young!) where they were clothes hangers, sex symbols and ads for a coveted lifestyle to the present day where they are mothers, fashion lovers and business women. The film makes an interesting timeline of the modeling industry (from civil rights to curfews to the feminist revolution to Studio 54 to anti-aging mania) and each woman comes to their own personal understanding of their situation (some mentors to the younger generation of models, some fashion editors, some regretting the drugs, some holding onto their looks through the power of botox and raw food). About Face is a meditation on beauty and life, a must watch for every woman fooled into thinking beauty is only skin deep. (pic below of Q&A with Greenfield-Sanders, China Machado, Beverly Johnson and Carol Alt) Also a special sidenote/shout-out to a good lovely/exuberant/recently made blonde friend of mine, Anna Yanofsky, who did some interning on this film- a round of applause for her fashion archive know-how!

Sundance Picture Post 1/22/2012

2012-01-22T23:55:00.000-08:00

A bright day full of sunlight, snow, traffic and being cattle herded into movie queus! And also of food trucks covered in knitted sweaters dispensing free chili & cookies (!) (pic in middle)! And a q&a with aging supermodels for a fantastic film called About Face (review to come)! O, and a fancy brunch for producers (me? yes! technically I am a producer over in Nervousfilms land, running behind the scenes to get things done in the name of film/art!) complete with champagne and almond french toast and a keynote address from Sarah Green (the producer of the mega-hits Tree of Life and Take Shelter)! Another tiring end to another tiring film festival day!

Sundance Review: Bones Brigade (Premier)

2012-01-22T19:08:00.000-08:00

I remember being a teenager and going to an old abandoned amusement park on the Jersey Shore that kids anxiously/painstakingly/religiously turned into a skatepark, a palpable love, skateboard tricks and hardcore filled the air as I watched in awe- a glimpse into a cultish skateboard existence that seemed like a microcosm of awesome! So, when I sat in a theater packed with rowdy ass skateboarders waving their boards, singing odes to skate teams and offering up some extra red vine licorice they had in their bag I felt the same vibe from that dirty amusement park and I knew there was something deeper (and awesome) going on!

Bones Brigade was a skate team that began in the 80s ushering in a new era, a next wave of the sport, on the heels of the surf/70s style that California made famous. The indirect core of this documentary/autobiographical film was the masterful marketing of skater/manager Stacy Peralta as he went about creating this well known team. Peralta (director of Dogtown & Z Boys & a member of the Z Boys skate group) saw his own skating career coming to an end so he embarked on a new way to make skating a profitable, recognized sport. He expertly compiled a group of rag tag kids, each bringing their own passion and skill, to use his branded skateboards. He created an image, a feel, countless logos, ads, even the earliest of skate films to define the identity of a modern day skater kid and was able to grow that into a lifelong skill for every member- including the visionary Tony Hawk (whose name I still remember being howled by a digital voice on a skateboard videogame growing up! ). But, this wasn't the most interesting part of the story, the most interesting part of the story was the skater kids themselves (and they were kids, all preteens when they began the team).

The Bones Brigade were sort of the (marketed?) underdog, clean cut riders who revolutionized the way kids skate, literally defining the terms in the modern skate lexicon. I can't really explain the skater's complicated relationships they have with the thing they love, still as adults moved to tears by their passion- so so moving- you just have to see it! The film as a whole was a normal documentary format whose interesting content was decisively edited from hours and hours of skate footage & interviews yet still managing to include everything; the lives, the stories, the sport, the nuance, and even the historical context (the movement from concrete skate parks, to backyard ramp competitions,to freestyle street skating to today's combination of them all)! It really was an intense sweeping survey of a group of people who love what they do and managed to create that into a way of life, for themselves and others, even in the face of all of life's pressures.

At the end of the film a bunch of original Bones Brigade members, and Stacy Peralta, took to the stage to answer questions. After a brief serenade from a weirdo in the audience, questions rolled in from the skaters I sat amongst. Each question began with a brief history of the inquirer's relationship to skating, an audience created by the subjects of this film all gathered together to celebrate a mutual love! This is what film, and communities in general, can do: bring people together to find & celebrate what they love! And maybe even make a living from it at the same time...nice one Sundance! (top picture of gym turned 500+ seat sold out movie theater and bottom Rodney Mullen, Stacy Peralta and Mike McGill- skaters, lovers, fighters!)

Sundance Review: Violeta Went To Heaven

2012-01-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

A few years ago when perusing this amazing collection of poetry on the web I came across this writer who I fell immediately in love with. His name was Nicanor Parra. In my complete obsession I scoured book stores for translations of his work, I read blurbs and bios about him online. Which then led me to his sister, Violeta. Her archiving & creation of Chilean folk songs, her elaborate artistic tapestries, her complete devotion to a creative life of cultural pride was a story that really resonated with me and her seeming obscurity made me tell everyone I knew about her. Luckily, the first film I was able to see at Sundance was a biopic about this strong willed woman whose tragic life was still one of beauty and wonder.

Violeta Went to Heaven was a strange portrait of a person that weaved stories from her life (plucking berries for survival as a young impoverished girl, her touring in a folk circus, her sudden Paris art career, her many familial losses) over a bed of her intense songs which resulted in the film being a kind of overview of a person, an odd surface that leaves us guessing what was on the inside of this dynamic woman. The sound design in this film was incredible (my foley trained ears ever so quick to recognize the complexity of a soundscape- the gritty harsh paintbrush sound on canvas, the muffled rush of the natural world), the cinematography was absolutely breathtaking (a muted closeness that made the world feel like a room) and the actress in the title role was born to play out this story but for someone who has come to love the quavering, vigorous, passionate voice of Violeta I am not sure if the film did her justice! But maybe that is not completely the films fault since her life passed through the world in such a strange state of public (her life's work) and private (things only hinted at in the dark corners of that life's work) becoming a simultaneously known and unknowable figure while at the same time taking on a symbol of national identity. This loose and poetic film continues Parra's mission of spreading Chilean culture and I hope it is the starting point for audiences to discover not only this powerful person but of the country she so struggled to uphold. (picture of Violeta above, picture of Francisca Gavilan as Violeta below)

Sundance Picture Post 1/21/2012

2012-01-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

I (finally) got to see some films today! YAY!!! (will review them in a separate post soon!) The ordeal of getting tickets and being corralled around in pre-show formations (pic at bottom) is a strange process but I now understand why this fest takes place here: the incredibly nice people that make waiting in line a near welcome addition to the film going process! Snow has been steadily falling all day and my bleary film worn eyes are ready for bed, goodnight from Sundance 2012!

Sundance Picture Post 1/20/2012

2012-01-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

An incredibly busy morning of press previews, smoke machines (part of Ho Tzu Nyen's piece, pictured below at top), Robert Redford giving charming speeches about his organization's mission statement (mostly oriented around the focus of storytelling, how film and art are constantly in flux but supporting an interesting tale is the backbone of important creative expression), and the early morning blare & 3d technology of Marco Brambilla (whose New Frontiers piece is a 3D extravaganza of epic filmic proportions- pic below, more on the piece later!) were all just some of the things that made today a tiring start...zzzzz.....

Sundance Picture Post 1/20/2012

2012-01-20T01:06:00.000-08:00

So...the piece is up and running (pictured in middle!), the snow seems to come and go and come again, and everyone is exhausted! Tomorrow I cross my fingers for waitlisted films (everything is beyond sold out!) and try hard to combat the elevation sickness that is sweeping the mountain ranges...

Sundance Picture Post 1/19/2012

2012-01-20T00:53:00.000-08:00

Turning a near empty warehouse space into a museum worthy exhibition space for New Frontiers at Sundance 2012 required all of this gear, a ton of sleepless people, and some serious insanity!

George Kuchar I Miss You

2012-01-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

I am completely and utterly mad at myself for not going to the George Kuchar show at MoMA PS1 until the last day so I couldn't spread the word in a timely fashion! It is a sadly perfect metaphor for his life though being that this exhibit was an amazing retrospective of his career but celebrating these things after his recent death. More clapping for the living please!!!! (Note: PS1's website wanted to point out that the show was programmed prior to Kuchar's passing...but still, he's been making work for decades! It is a little late!)

Anyway...the show was titled Pagan Rhapsodies and was the single best film centered curation I think I have ever seen! Shooting in all strange forms of home movie cameras with a handmade charm, Kuchar's films are psychotic homages to the absurdity of Hollywood, charming personal documentaries, hilarious sketches of a grotesque society all historically forming the base work for the video art genre. I heard a guy at the show commenting to a woman that "Kuchar was virtually unknown" which is only slightly true, he might be unknown to audiences but every video/film/experimental artist working today is stemming from the legacy he began way back in the 60s with his legendary meta films (like Hold Me While I'm Naked 1966 and I, An Actress 1977) taking the film medium into a reflexive artistic realm . The influence game isn't a particularly fun one but so many artists list Kuchar as a part of their craft and, knowingly or not, you can see traces of his work in so many of today's contemporaries: John Waters, Ryan Trecartin, Mike Kelley, Martha Colburn and on and on.

Large projections of his cloudy, vibrant images were screened on walls with a few homey rows of real movie theater style seating, two other rooms were filled with boxy tv monitors on well sized/scattered wooden tables with headphones and individual seats (which really made the personal matter Kuchar included in his films be an intimate experience and which were also sculpturally appealing in their own presentation), low lit paintings in his wonderfully comic R. Crumb grossness hung unassumingly on the walls and a bright lit room containing black & white comics was also on view- overall making a varied portrait of this oddball Renaissance man. As always, his films fulfill a role in society that is hard to come by and hard to explain. A short called Club Vatican that portrayed the cultish and twisted qualities of organized religion was near a short film called Weather Diaries that followed an Oklahoma twister zone while kids played in a puddle in front a vulnerable trailer park, sailing boats in a river on the stormy plains which was next to another film, A Reason To Live, about an adulterer whose fate is in the clouds as he dreams of a pilot life and he plays out the mother/whore filmic cliches through his relationships. Nature, nurture, myth, film and the warping of societal constraints are the backbone of Kuchar's art but it is his funny and kind side that reflects a tone that never seems to exist in what we like to label "art". In fact, this is the ONLY art show I have ever been to where people genuinely were moved to laugh at the sweetness and care Kuchar took with his films.

Following his death there have been a lot of people working to preserve the life of this amazing man. A man whose character is one that I think is a beautiful rarity in an artistic landscape of hard edges and little heart(s)! George (do you mind if I call you George? I did meet you once? And meeting you still continues to give me so much hope in the rocky creative landscape....sniffle) I can't begin to know how the world will go on being filmed without you behind a camera. (Note: George! I apologize for these photos...I took them on my phone in attempts to obey the no photo rule...!)

Bluebird of Friendliness

2012-01-08T17:10:00.000-08:00

A few days ago a Nervousfilms milestone was reached: I completed my first weld on our own studio welder! And didn't die! I know, I know, I shouldn't be so scared but anything that has instructions that begin with 4 pages of warnings and a few dozen icon pics of fingers being crushed, fingers in a fan, eyes being blinded and (my favorite) a lightning bolt entering through the fingers and coursing through the body is not a thing to be taken lightly! This of course has come about due to To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, Brent's piece that we are getting in order for Sundance which we leave for, on a near cross country road trip, on Sunday! A few minor changes are in need of welds so I am practicing and learning to make this thing ready to go. Flux core welding tips are welcome!!!!

As for the approaching film fest I am thinking about maybe making a few little short-short films about Sundance while out there. We will be in Utah for the whole event (!) since we are transporting the piece and I think I'd like to show a different side of things since the red carpet is by no means the entirety of Sundance! Do shorts sound interesting? Do blog readers want that? (Blog readers! You need to talk more! Please?) Ok, back to improving my weld technique and improving my welding vocabulary...slag- dirty metal stuff sprayed while welding, electrode- thing that produces body zapping lightning bolts...

Made for Walking

2012-01-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

So there's an old shoe factory here! And people are turning it into an arts center! Which is kind of amazing! Especially because there isn't much here! Yay! Walk-In Art Center in Schuylkill Haven, PA is set to be a (can't help it) haven for local artists. The space will soon offer studios for rent, exhibition space, art classes and eventually things such as music studios. The value in arts spaces like this is so important and, after travelling around in an artistic capacity and seeing many similar facilities along the eastcoast, it is really strange to see the different models that exist.

At the top of the list of what we have seen is definitely Silver Mine Arts Center in Connecticut where the facilities range from bronze casting to photo development to printing presses. Their gallery space in incredible, there is a huge vaulted performance area (which we performed in! And Ryder Cooley is doing a show in too!), the range of classes is huge, o, and did I mention it sits atop a little lake in a quiet wooded neighborhood? They are even delving into residency territory too allowing for Brent & I to head back at some point to make a project on site for display in the gorgeous old barn museum, I really can't wait! Then there is sort of the opposite of this kind of place...the scrappy excitement of 3rd Ward! 3rd Ward in Brooklyn (and soon in Philadelphia too!) follows a kind of cooperative style with classes being offered from locals (bike repair, upholstery, knitting) and all kind of spaces to work in (photo studios, metal shop, jewelry shop). I haven't been there in ages but the last time I was I saw Lightning Bolt rock the factory space, art cling to the walls, beer (and people) flying about all while firemen nicely and slowly shooed people off of fire escapes. Good times and sustainability for those working in the arts are always available at 3rd Ward, so glad they have grown into a wildly profitable, expanding business!

Also in Brooklyn, and more on the low-key side of things is Gowanus Artists Space (a place we fabricated a bit of the Berkeley sculpturein since they have metal working space close to our master welder friend, in addition to a wood shop, big enough doors toaccommodate our needs and studio spaces that are more private so as to not bother others working), is a great resource of this type as well, the perfectspot for a low-key freelancer! Then there are places like Goggleworks (that has ample studio space for rent, a cafe, a store featuring artist's crafts, large exhibition areas, dance rooms, office space for lots of local nonprofits, equipment of all kinds and even a movie theater showcasing not so Hollywood- Hollywood movies) and ArtsQuest (a former steel foundry turned art space, music venue, state-of-the-art movie house) which are both in Pennsylvania and who are using the abundance of unused real estate out here to the maximum advantage while trying to lure people from all areas with constant events. There is also Space 1026 , more of a collective environment whose motto is "Do it yourself with other people," in Philly. Space 1026 also offers studio space, a lot of silk screening and reallllly well curated shows. Their yearly tradition of making elaborate costumes, choreographed dance routines and general awesomeness for a performance in the New Years Mummers Parade went off amazingly this year! The theme? Mummers in Space: the Phinal Phrontier of course.

I guess what I am getting at here is that art spaces like the one being built nearby our barn can offer so much to a community. I think the trick though is to really listen to what the community needs. New York? SPACE! Philly? A place to be seen/have a supportive network/make things bigger with & for the people. Connecticut? Some higher end offerings for the probably already enriched patrons (did I mention Keith Richards lived nearby Silvermine? O, and Paul Simon?). I do hope that Walk In (bottom pictures) flourishes to become a great place for artists and art lovers in general, keeping in mind what is valuable to making our town stronger. Being so close to NY (a reason I relocated out here for sure!) makes a residency program seem ideal, the access to tools, teachers & people is another thing I find important in the pretty secluded rural life, and bringing patrons into the community to help create a better local economy (the empty storefront to store ratio in the area of Walk In is a little on the sad side) are all goals I hope this place is working towards. Art spaces like these, and like the culture centers I have applauded before, offer glimpses into a utopia, meeting places for people to be creative, think and maybe push things in a more positive direction across the board while also boosting a regions sagging spirits. Good luck to Walk In and special thanks to Michelle for giving us a little after hours tour of the raw space in it's beginnings!

Media Killed the Video Star

2012-01-04T18:30:00.000-08:00

Trying to keep momentum going as we hustle to finish up the first version of our current project over here while also interviewing tons of awe inspiring women for the new 2012 section of the blog! I am absolutely overjoyed with the responses I have been getting about interviewing the fine ladies of the contemporary cultural landscape, maybe even a little saddened that so many people are hungry for this type of thing and and there aren't more resources! Not to say there are no outlets for women in film and art out there though...if anything the widespread accessibility of media and blog life has made women in the arts have even more consistent voice than before! Here is a small list of some resources that I tend towards when trying to find a more female aspect on film things (we will get to the bleak state of art later!), feel free to add resources in the comments!

Camera Obscura
The traditional feminist film theory journal! YAY! Founded in the 70s (partly by a former mentor/professor of mine) this journal started a language to define women's place in, around, and anywhere near a camera. Sometimes dry (bordering on womyn) and always sincere this journal really paved the way for women to see films as a signifier of social norms and to begin voicing an alternative within it's pages. And yes, I did once completely freak out upon finding original issues of this journal under some moldy Hollywood glossies in a used bookstore in Manhattan!

Women and Hollywood
Indiewire's women and film blog is like Variety for women. A great industry resource with a slight indie tinge for all things film/lady related from basic stats to interviews with leading female filmmakers this site is pretty good survey of where women stand in a larger film system.

The Carpetbagger
Not exactly centered around a female agenda but, being primarily run by a woman, it does tend towards a few not so often discussed aspects of the co-ed cinematic playing field.

Jezebel and Feministing
Jezebel, a bit like the gossipy girl you love to hate, and Feministing, a little more on the righteous side of feminism, aren't solely focused on arts & culture but they both tend to expose the underbelly of injustices within these areas and applaud the triumphs on a pretty large scale!

2012: Hey Ladies!

2011-12-29T13:16:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I remember reading Roger Ebert's posting about the future of film. He was terrified that buying the rights to a toy, say, Slinky the Movie, was the way things ~~were heading~~ are: the more tie ins with products, fast food chains and the like the more likely the subject will be shot on film. Then, recently, Meryl Streep said (was led into) the exact same thing in an interview. Streep was pointing out the shift of production companies trying to foster the teenage boy with disposable income into the theater who will leave to buy the related videogame as opposed to ushering into the seats the thinking adult, or even moreso, the thinking female adult. I also remember when the issue of female friendly films coming out of Hollywood caused an ripple of excitement when Kathryn Bigelow won a few Oscars for her direction of The Hurt Locker followed a few years later by a comedy for women, Bridesmaids, which shocked the box office.

Even though I agree with the concerns of Ebert, Streep and am proud of the steps toward film world recognition women are making, I do think there are dozens of filmmakers out there who are making thoughtful films for women, by women and who are thinking far beyond product placement. Not to say that those dispelling the Hollywood system are profiting so much, mostly working outside of it in fact, but I do see hope and heart in a lot of cinema being made.

Because of all of these worries, especially the lack of women in the film world (and in the art world too!), I've decided to start a series on the blog interviewing creative women working in these fields. Whether they are gallery workers, film directors, artists, writers or just plain women who I think are vitally contributing to the cultural landscape I want you to hear from them. I want to share the work of women changing the face of creative norms. And by no means am I trying to ghetto-ize women, secluding us off in our own little room away from the efforts of men, I just want to give a platform/make a resource to a specifically underepresented group of people whom I respect and who deserve more places for their voices to be heard. Ok, that was a little heavy. And I only slightly mean it to be heavy. Moreso, I just want people to see some of the things that I see and recognize that women too can be profitable, ingenious, intellectuals and that our successes shouldn't be seen as anamolies! (Here are some unladylike pictures of me right before I stacked a cord of wood, o, and fittingly, some wood!)

Home for the Holidays

2011-12-28T19:11:00.000-08:00

We've been completely and utterly boring over here this season...! Mostly it is due to trying to finish up animating for the approaching 2012 edition of Sundance but it is also due to having some home time after a year and a half (!) of spreading Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then all over the globe! I'm not one for recaps but at this point Gravity has been across the country, over three oceans, spanned almost every continent and, along with our varying band line ups, we were often lucky enough to go along with it! As Brent says, making a film is a much better way to see the world than joining the army!

Gravity already has a few events scheduled for 2012, including a rare theatrical screening and live band/lecture in Chicago in March and a possible taping of a live performance of the piece in May for a new film series documenting performance art (which could make the film available to own in some form!), but of course we are also looking to the next feature film project that will be taking over our lives in the coming years, a new film titled...drumroll please...: Anatomical Maps With Battle Plans! (Exclamation point mine!). So bring on the new year already and have a safe & happy one! (Pictures of home, for once!)

Happy Hadacol Christmas!

2011-12-25T08:42:00.000-08:00

Pre-Occupied

2011-12-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

The Occupy movement is still going strong! After months of encampments, protests, signs and communal understanding, the activists at Zuccotti Park (and all over the place!) are still sitting in in the name of exposing unhappiness with the financial system. The movement, as amorphous as it is, is slowly taking on an underrepresented group of people's voice and, despite what seems like a lack of media coverage and lack of demands/alternatives, they are still trying to bring to the world's attention that not everyone is content in an oligarchy! Filmmakers have slowly been filtering into the cause too, documenting the culture of the camp outs and voicing opinions in a broadcastable medium.

Martha Colburn has steadily been documenting the happenings on Wall Street (and even abroad) for awhile now. Her frenetic style captured on super 8 film and edited with complimentary music show tiny little fast paced slivers of what is happening out there on the streets. (above, Martha's first Occupy film)

Jem Cohen also took on Wall Street as a subject recently producing moving images in his signature slow, dreamy, unhinged style. His films, like many of his portraits, always seem to capture an essence, a deep emotional contemplation of a space or people, which I think is very important in understanding any subject on the other side of the camera. Jem's Occupy shorts capture a real sense of being there and what that means & stands for, a beautiful impression of change. (one of Jem's installments below)

This recent post by filmmaker Michael Galinsky (who I've met a few times and is always the nicest of fellows!) comments on how the Occupy movement gives voice to a group of marginalized people allowing for his epic film, Battle for Brooklyn (that follows a group of people trying to win the right to keep their homes despite the strong arming of corporate and government forces wanting to build a stadium where their homes once stood), to take on a whole new scope & audience as growing numbers of people voice their discontent. (trailer below)

And then their is the media coming out of the movement itself. As my pal Todd pointed out, the Occupy Livestream is an ongoing broadcast of the campaign and citizen journalism in general is on the rise too! Occupiers everywhere are constantly putting out what they see in digital form, showing the good (interviews with those Occupying) and the bad (police brutality) and taking it to the wide reaching platforms available to them. The more corporate and controlled the media is the more we should call upon ourselves to document the world around us, to become the media. Documentary filmmakers are not an elite class, they are a class that almost anyone can belong to nowadays and an important check and balance on society...so, Occupy, keep on broadcasting loudly and proudly what it is that you believe and never forget to articulate change! And also, how is the government policing internet videos that display the protests? Did you know this is happening? I thought it was a hoax but I myself was met with a "The Government has banned this video" message not too long ago and hoax or not, the fact that it is even a possibility makes me want to Occupy somewhere too! Have a Happy Revolutionary Holiday everyone!

Strange Victory, Strange Defeat

2011-12-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

Plays turned into movies always make me skeptical. From Rope (man, they even made that one in 3d at some point to try to spice it up!) to Wait Until Dark to the many mutations of Shakespeare that have come across the screen, these pieces were originally meant to be staged. On an actual theater stage. (Duh.) Which makes one roomed dramas seem like a strange choice for a medium that can pretend to take you anywhere! Then there's the matter of the acting...asides, monologues and all of the overwrought language of the stage is weird, needing to reach the back row of a present audience with a certain language and live emotion is not the same as the distanced, lulled, film going audience, willing, ready & able to dream. So, when a dialogue heavy theater production is altered for a screen it takes a lot for me accept it but with a cast of Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Cristoph Waltz under the direction of Roman Polanski I thought maybe moving from stage to screen could be possible! And it only kind of was...

Carnage, based on the play by Yasmina Reza, opens with a fight between two children. The opening is a beautiful tableau from a distance with timpani pounding & orchestral swell, suggesting a near tragic Greek ballet, an artfully displayed deterioration of human action. The rest of the film shows the deterioration of the parents as they reconcile the actions of their children in a stuffy New York apartment. Drinks, endlessly ringing phones, cobbler, banter, insults and judgments are batted around as societal expectations slowly weather in a short amount of time. The film is a nice allegory of course yet there wasn't a ton of tension or nuance that I've come to expect from Polanski but that the rest of the audience seemed ok without. The audience was wildly pleased with even the tiniest bit of the dismissal of social conventions- maybe they really needed to see the simple removal of heels to feel a release for themselves? A release that they feel comfortable reveling in in the darkness of a movie theater? (Just take of your heels high strung New Yorkers! Nothing bad will happen! Pics of NY seen here!) But, to the films defense, I guess maybe I prefer the extreme versions of these ideas (like Micheal Haneke's bloodthirsty Funny Games)...so maybe this just wasn't for me?

Carnage was an ok film (and I bet a great play!) but when a film hinges on the fact, as Waltz's character says, "Everybody has to save themselves somehow," I kind of don't buy it. What kind of world would we live in if only reactions existed (sideways glance at the films director)? The film closes with a similar scene to the beginning, the children choosing friendship over a big stick and another character living a life of freedom...so, I guess being free and without the pressure of social norms and cultural judgements, without expectation(s) is the answer to a happy world? If it was only that simple (another sideways glance at director)...

Tis The Season

2011-12-17T18:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't really done the gift giving thing during the holiday season in awhile but I do try to give what I can to charities and organizations that I believe in or that I think are doing something worthwhile! As someone who lives and works in the arts I tend to send some of my (small) donations to orgs whose creative pursuits are above & beyond and to places who are supporting the basic needs of survival/preservation around the globe, both feeding humanity in very different ways! Here are some suggestions on where you can spend some love this holiday season!

The Cinefamily
Starting today, and on into tomorrow, The Cinefamily, a California movie house of awesomeness, is having a 24hr telethon! In the traditional style of bow ties, orversized mics and questionable humor, this org is live streaming the event and selling tickets to those lucky enough to be out in L.A.! Cinefamily programs lost film gems, progressive film events (like hosting Gravity way back when!) and has an overall cinephile summer camp feel that just makes me happy (The Last Unicorn Sleepover party anyone?). Head over to their site to make a donation and to watch as eyes get redder from lack of sleep and glazed from the projection glow into the wee hours of the telethon (Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields sings lullabies at 3am & an Elliott Gould Q&A caps it all off tomorrow!)

Triple Canopy
This online culture magazine is as forward thinking as they come. Each issue is full of new platform art projects, well researched essays (ranging from the trafficking of human hair to the legacy of Mark Rothko) and a general desire to want something more/intellectual out of the new class of culture makers. They have even partnered with the cinematic org Light Industry and the teaching center The Public School to open a utopia for ideas in Brooklyn, expanding into a physical hub of progressive thought! Triple Canopy is trying to move from being a free resource to a donation based one, urging people to value creative ideas as they should, so support them during this transition and beyond!

Heifer International
I remember seeing the Heifer catalogs strewn throughout my house as a kid, urging me to buy a goat. Or a cow. Or a flock of geese. But they weren't for me of course, they were for those in need all over the globe! Heifer seeks to foster agricultural development in countries that need it, giving communities the tools to form a sustainable way of life. There isn't much else to say other than: buy some kids some chickens! Do it!

Your Local Food Bank
Even if you don't see it, and maybe you do, chances are there are people in your own community who are in need. The American economy has been so ravaged lately that the numbers of those without has steadily risen over the last few years. Our local food bank has a great program where children are given a bookbag of food to take home with them, assuring that they will remain healthy and in school regardless of whatever economic turmoil is going on at home. Find your local food bank! See what you can do!

SPCA
Everytime I see a dog shaped piggy bank at any store I throw whatever change I have from my wallet into it! Civilized man has created pets so it is collectively our fault if one is abandoned, abused, or just plain lost! I try to support my rural SPCA (which takes on horses and other farm animals that can no longer be taken care of as well as acting as a no-kill home for dogs & cats) in whatever little way I can and when you encounter that animal shaped piggy bank you should feed him some coins too! (Pics from last winter when we found a petting zoo hidden behind a truck stop. And yes, I did put a quarter into a machine to give them some feed!)

Of course there are tons of other organizations worthy of your attention and support so...give a Merry Christmas to someone else this year! Ho ho! And, if you are feeling particularly generous, I do accept any and all edible presents....! Stay well & warm folks!

Jersey Devil, Was a Rebel

2011-12-15T08:38:00.000-08:00

Growing up in New Jersey, with close proximity to New York, gave me a really good look into independent film early on. But, I now realize, New Jersey actually did the same! I also grew up in close proximity to Red Bank, the hometown of independent film pioneer Kevin Smith. As a young kid I remember picking up the book Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes at a local thrift shop, learning what the word dyke meant, and then thumbing through the history of 80s/90s independent cinema, understanding that a film can be made for little money and that making something different can bring you an audience all in the context of the ins and outs of film production/distribution (little did I know!)! The book even had conversations with Kevin Smith about his introduction to filmmaking and how he came to become a superhero in the indie scene.

I remember me & my friends as teenagers with fresh licenses making our first car pilgrimage to the actual convenience store Kevin Smith filmed the movie Clerks in, maxing out his credit cards to realize his dialogue heavy, character driven portrait of New Jersey dirtbags. I went to Red Bank a lot, breezed through Smith's comic book store often, and even stopped on the sidewalk early on a sunny day as a film PA kept me from accidentally walking into a shot of Ben Affleck bro-ing down with another actor on a stoop as he discussed what he was going to do about falling in love with a lesbian in the modern love story Chasing Amy. These Kevin Smith experiences really left a mark on me, physically seeing someone give all they have to make something creative that they believed in was everlasting. I sometimes wonder if I would have been so willing to drastically enter the film barn world of Brent Green if I hadn't seen first hand at a very young age that there are many, many ways to exist and thrive through filmmaking and just as many ways to make a film.

All of this came up yesterday because I watched Kevin Smith's latest, and he says penultimate, film Red State. I am often internet soapboxing over here saying that I want a little more from my films and art, that I expect a social message or at least some kind of interesting worldview and this film, even with it's high powered guns, blood and horror tendencies, really did have an unexpected agenda at it's core. Focusing on the fictional story of a fanatical religious cult, Red State depicts a showdown between different versions of authority and the nuance in each. Smith who relies on near monologue writing in all of his films used this technique to advance his social message this time around, capping the film off with John Goodman (who plays a government employee sent to a religious compound after news of gunfire) rather simply explaining his reasoning for his actions throughout the film and in turn what Smith wanted to say with it: people do strange things (like go to war) for what they want or believe to be right, but it is no ones place to judge, harm and take away human rights in any belief system.

Kevin Smith, even in his laziest of filmmaking moments, consistently has tried to deal with progressive issues in some way. Even if it is in a straight up Hollywood love story focused on the topic of gender or the fantasy in faith (Dogma) or, like in his latest film, religious zealotry (pics of strange American church findings during our travels seen here!) and political atrocity, Smith pushed these ideas into a mainstream world. Beginning with barely budgeted ideas and grooming them into bigger budgets with bigger audiences, Smith has made a mark on a widespread group of people, showing on film ways of life he thinks are worth noting. Not to say there is progression in every second of a Kevin Smith film (three boobed psychic in Mallrats I am looking at you...) but like Jane Austen with bathroom humor, he has been able to capture a voice of what it means to be a person now, of the odd, marginalized stereotypes you don't always see a movie about; the New Jerseyian going to the mall, an American terrified of those wanting to take away basic civil rights, of those reading a comic book to escape. So thanks Kevin Smith! Thanks for being an awesome dude making these movies, even if it is just showing a New Jersey kid that comic books exist or changing one person's view of an "outsider" or teaching somebody that indie movies can be a way of life, I am pretty glad you made movies...why stop now? Next up: how Bruce Springsteen changed my life (just kidding, just kidding! Poor New Jersey!)

How To Make an Art

2011-12-11T13:20:00.001-08:00

So I saw some art this weekend....a show or two in Chelsea and then a show at the Kutztown University art gallery, two very, very different settings! I don't know how familiar people are with the Chelsea art gallery scene but exhibition spaces of all sizes are tucked into buildings (brownstones next to car garages, skyscrapers hacked into white walled spaces, converted industrial buildings etc.) offering up art for sale to collectors, museums and institutions looking to acquire a piece of the cultural landscape. It is a weird place in that it is a place putting a price on creativity but also in that it is putting a value on what ideas (or lack of ideas) are important in our society. Chelsea is also one of the few places artists can make a living. All of these reasons make seeing art there precarious: you get to see a combination of the birth of new ideas, and valued old ideas, but the commodity aspect of it looms in a weird way sometimes overshadowing message and meaning in favor of a party or spectacle in order to draw in attention, attention that is a necesary evil for a lot of artists survival. The few supposed ideas I saw in Chelsea this time around were not very good so I won't get into them...but I will say that ideas need to be valued a little more in this place, especially when considering the price, the cultural legacy and the potential movements that places like Chelsea can potentially be the nexus of.

The Marlin and Regina Miller Gallery of Kutztown University (in the hometown of the legendary graffiti artist Keith Haring) , just up the road in our Pennsylvania area, was offering up a show that was almost the opposite of the Chelsea scene. The senior student December show was up so, instead of seeing art up for sale, we saw art by people who are paying to make work in an academic setting. This show cobbled together class projects, individual pieces and a range of skill making it an odd thing to see... I wish I could talk to each student to understand what lies beyond graduation, what they want out of these things they are making, what ideas they want to offer, uphold and explore in society as an extension of art history/history, or if a lot of them are just crossing their fingers to get a nice graphic design internship somewhere...? I am sure people are asking young artists these types of things and, after seeing what is going on in Chelsea, I hope they are really considering their answers!

While at Kutztown I saw these great bulky, wooden, box-like canvases, with stark white, black and pink paintings of cartoonish, banal scenes like defrosting meat and a boring bathroom. The color was applied thickly making you feel the chalky-ness of the bathroom tile on your skin and an etched out ricketyness of the lines & grain in the wood created an uneasy edge, both elements making for a cold textured field of eerie modern life. I thought they were a great mix of folk art, sculpture, a kind of graphic novel/design aesthetic and I hope the artist, Darren Beck (work pictured here), gets to bigger and better ideas with his already interesting style! I also hope that those being funneled from art school into the gallery world, those paying to be creative and in turn being paid to be creative, are really looking at why they are creating stuff and at the messages they want to send as American artists, if artists are inserting truth into their work than maybe the galleries can too!

Is this Normal for a Horse?

2011-12-09T14:28:00.001-08:00

Today we were taking bets on whether this horse was dead or not. I won, with not dead. Thank goodness! A dead horse is no way to be a horse...

Anyway, still animating...hoping to get out of the house some in the coming days! Here is a picture of Brent's piece on display at the Pulse Art Fair in Miami Beach taken by our good pal Richard Herskowitz as his wife Jill, a wonderful curator who screened Gravity out in Eugene Oregon a little while ago, peered into the layered animation we have been working so hard on! Another picture of the piece can be found over here (towards the bottom of the page) at Art Fag City, undeniably the best written site about the art world landscape out there! So proud it was mentioned! Now, back to more animating for the premier of the final piece for New Frontiers at Sundance 2012! Can't wait!

You Can Never Quarantine the Past

2011-12-06T08:46:00.001-08:00

Apparently my hammer is a "Professional" one, at least a sticker on the side of it says so...so that would make me a professional hammer user then, right? I discovered this a few days ago when, with hammer in hand, Brent & I set out to ravage a few local fire eaten houses to take away any scrap trims and mouldings laying about but every house we were counting on had been razed! So sad! But, this experience led me on a wild goose chase in search of old pieces of wood, mostly needed to frame out a series of paintings Brent has been working on for a long while in between animating and touring and all of that other stuff we do!

A friend sent me to ebay-the-great which then sent me to Scranton Pennsylvania which then led me to York, PA the home of an amazing salvage yard called Refindings. Not only is this place a giant depot filled to the brim with old doors and windows and bathtubs and antiques of all kinds (ranging from unopened Thanksgiving decorations from the 70s [a 3d crepe paper turkey! Yes please!] to lamps to telegraph pieces) it is all used or discarded materials making it an environmental haven!

I always feel weird helping to produce art, making another thing in a world of things, but when pieces of the new things are repurposing pieces of old I definitely feel a little better about it for sure! Here are a few pictures of my new favorite place...and a special thanks to Lou, the magnificent man who led us through a maze of wooden pieces pointing out the hidden & spectacular along the way (including an enourmous, probably 15ft tall?, intact balcony ornately framed out in a greening metal with elaborate stained glass dragons embedded in the interior wooden frame! Incredible!)!

Share Your Thoughts on Public Sculpture

2011-12-05T13:08:00.001-08:00

So I went to college awhile ago. I don't really know what I did there? I know there was lots of reading, a lot of film screenings (1. Go to the first day of as many film classes as possible. 2. Get the syllabus for the class. 3. Compile schedule of all free class screenings for the whole semester. 4. Enjoy!) and pages and pages of writing, all creating a section of my brain that I rarely access nowadays...I mean, when was the last time I needed to know what Deleuze thought about anything? For me though the one thing I did take away from the whole experience was the exposure to entirely new ideas.

I took tons of classes out of my comfort zone (art, science, gender studies) all things that crossed eachother and laid bare connections I would never have seen. One area I grew intensely fond of was that of theater, the precursor to the movie world I already had grown to know and love! I especially favored the Epic Theater of Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright who paved the way for a politically motivated stage and created his own artistic language in the process. So, when I saw Brent Green's short films for the first time my post-college Brechtian-brain started firing in all directions: the meta-ness, the exposing of the hand, the fictionalizing of history, the political tension, even the title cards! I saw constant parallels between Brent's work and that of Brecht! So many parallels that, years later, I decided to write about it over here at One + One Filmmakers Journal, a budding politically leaning film publication based in Britain! (The rest of the new One +One issue is pretty stellar, including pieces on GeorgeKuchar, Kubrick and the nature of animals on film! Absolutely awesome!)

As I get further away from college I value the academic less and less, thinking that talking in circles in a made up language of theory that only a few can speak is just plain nonsense, but I realize that it is the discussion, the thinking, the hope, that these kinds of writings bring that can inspire change which should be the reason for creating anything at all. But then again, academic essays like mine, the renegade platform Brent has created for himself and the long standing legacy of Brecht can reach the same end too. Using whatever means we have we should all motivate eachother for the better and open oureyes to the world around us regardless of what road we take to get there.

Happy Makes Me a Modern Girl

2011-11-30T16:03:00.001-08:00

I did take an animating break! And I went to the movies! And I saw the newest Lars von Trier film Melancholia! Melancholia maybe shouldn't have an exclamation point after it though it being an ancient humor associated with depressionand also the name of the planet (hiding behind the sun?) that couldpotentially destroy all life on earth that is discovered in this film.I went into this film knowing very little about it, other than about von Trier's gross display of enfant terrible-ism (I've never, ever used that phrase but it seems like it was coined with von Trier in mind!) at Cannes (where Kirsten Dunst also won something for her lackluster performance in this film) so I had no expectations at all.

The opening of Melancholiais one of the most beautiful cinematic displays I have ever seen. I amnot sure how it was shot (I think it was one of those hi-def digitalcameras that shoots a bazillion frames per second which was then sloweddown to an almost imperceptible movement, maybe even tracked or shot instereoscope somehow? making the shots have this bizarre movement anddepth even in their stillness...it could also just be a lot ofcomputers! who knows!) but images of a looming, oozing destructionslowly flicker out setting you up for the rest of the film which isbroken into two sections about a few intense days between the lives oftwo sisters, Justine (Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg- who is incredible in this movie!).

Each sister represents a different way of life: one isstruggling with a deep depression, tending to favor a more immediateside of things (peeing on a golf course in the middle of her wedding,changing the images of modern art books on the walls for pictures offolk art and primitive cave drawings), living in a fog of unrealsadness while the other sister maintains a life full of manufacturedfrivolities, her days consumed by making things "nice" (taking an extramoment to pick out a chocolate to adorn a pillow, planning a highlyscheduled wedding no one really wants), actively destracting herselffrom any sort of reality.

Asan audience we watch the latters life unravel because of the impendingdoom brought on by the approaching rogue planet and the former easilyaccept her potentially ill fated future. I don't know what von Trierwanted to say with this film. I kept feeling like there was somethingon the tip of the films tongue, wanting to issue forth some nihilisticmanifesto or a compassionate hug- but it never quite got there? Maybe he wanted to show us that whether we have everything or feellike we have nothing we all meet the same end and that the trueconnections between people- the love, the compassion, the caring (notjust in the form of presents or things)- is what matters? In the endthe film left me sort of idolizing the primitive, wanting to makescientific instruments out of sticks like a little boy in the filmdoes, but I can't help but feel unease that this feeling was brought onby one of the most highly contrived, distracting, unreal things we havecreated as a cultured society- a film. But possibly, that is what vonTrier wanted to say, and is constantly saying: it is feelings (eventhose towards the film or the film's director) that make us human andthese feelings are something so foreign to the natural world that lifewithin these feelings can never be real but our actions (even in theform of filmmaking and most definitely in terms of survival) can keepus going until nature takes over and we are actually gone. (Photos ofthe PA sky)

A Frame by Frame Winter

2011-11-29T14:54:00.001-08:00

I do so apologize for the lack of posting! Animating is a very time consuming process! And we are fully in the midst of it right now! The 10 minute long animation we are pushing to finish for Sundance (yes, I know it is at the end of January but... the laborious joys of animating!) is also part of a piece that is on display down at the Miami art fair madness this week. A 2 minute preview excerpt from the hand drawn and paper cut out film in sculptural form, To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, is being shown on a smaller scale at the Pulse Art Fair! Complete with polarized hacked LCD screens, a welded metal frame and a beautiful old phonograph horn- making the preview version amazing in it's own right!

If you aren't familiar with the art fair scene in Miami (which I covered a bit before when we were lucky enough to show the Gravity preview down there a few years back at Basel proper) let's just say it is like a big indulgent party with lots of art all set on the beautiful beaches of Florida! My highlights there included walking next to real live gators in the Everglades, having a giant iguana narrowly miss me as it fell from a tree, seeing an amazing array of art (ranging from the most contemporary to the downright historical) and getting to see insanely good music as my feet sank into sand & pink coral! But...there was also that guy in the large red Italian sportscar with a 2inch gold cross (!!!) hanging from his ear as he cut us off to get into the sprawling golf course that seems to occupy much of the city...? It is a weird microcosm for sure! Hope the crowds down there get to see the beginnings of the piece we've been animating like crazy! Booth E-200 at Pulse! Woohoo!

There are other things going on over here in Pennsylvania too: Gravity has been nominated for "Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design and Animation" over at the Cinema Eye Honors awards event (along with A TON of other AMAZING films- what a line up in all categories!), it is deer hunting season (and TERRIFYING sounds of large ammunition begin at 4am and just seem to keep going! I loved that the deer started migrating back onto our land but...) and I just found out that there is an independent movie theater about an hour away from our barn over in Harrisburg PA!! If I can ever get away from this animating I am so going to go there! O animating! (rubs weary eyes, hands, neck...) Here are a few pictures of our current winter of lightbox, cutting board, frame by frame days! Just realized my camera is shooting in a 16:9 aspect ratio! Also due to animating! It is taking over EVERYTHING! Ok now, back to it...! Stay well & warm folks!

Culture Vulture

2011-11-23T21:18:00.001-08:00

When I was reading up on the Anilogue Film Fest that Gravity is currently a part of I did a doubletake when I saw a familiar logo come up, flashing on the side of the screen. The logo was for none other than the Goethe Institute, the New York branch of this organization probably being one of my first real encounters with cultures other than my own! In college a friend of mine was studying German and he would tell us of the wonders of this place, a sharp building nestled in between skyscrapers in midtown Manhattan, so we all decided to go and see what it was all about. And what wasn't it about?! I saw so many films (one of my first big screen Herzog experiences was there! another an animation composed of thousands of picture postcards rapidly in succession like a dizzying flipbook of places!), experimental art (a music piece composed of turning on and off flourescent lightbulbs, the buzz and hum creating a weird atmosphere of sounds and lights!) and even my first brush of installation art/intense modern design (a recessed kind of fabricated hole that people were urged to lounge on and converse!). The events held there, free or nearly free, helped me see a variety of things that I had no idea existed. At some point after this experience I started paying a little more attention to other International Cultural Institutes hidden throughout New York too. Which led me to my first Maysles encounter!

A film screening with an introduction and Q&A by Albert Maysles was being promoted at the French Insitute: Alliance Francaise years ago so I decided to go! But it wasn't a Maysles film they were showing, instead it was one of Maysles favorite films Pour La Suite Du Monde. Every frame of this film has stayed with me since it was first reflected onto my eyes that very day! Pour La Suite Du Monde is a (highly led) documentary that tracks a Canadian Islands reclamation of a tradition of Beluga Whale hunting. It is hard to describe both the beauty and the people captured in this film as they follow their ancestral footsteps in the snow- you just have to watch it, which you can above!!!!! (Thank you National Film Board of Canada!)!!! After the screening of the film Maysles took the stage where, in his trademark Eastcoast drawl, he talked of his love of documentary film, the social responsibility of documentarians (outraged that young filmmakers weren't entrenched in the political atrocities and wars that were springing up everywhere in the then recent post 9/11 landscape), and, in keeping with the film he had just screened, about how documentary films can do, say and encapsulate any message for the betterment of mankind! Another indelible film moment for sure!

Now that I think of it, even when we were in the Netherlands the Czech Culture Center hosted an art exhibit of Jan Svankmajer! Where Brent met the legendary stop motion, grandfather of pixelation! (street that the Czech Culture Institute is on in The Netherlands pictured here!) I guess what I am getting at is....cultural institutes are pretty much the best! I'm not too familiar with the landscape of them but if you live in a major city you should see what they have to offer! Also, does anyone know if the U.S. has these centers abroad? Given our current reputation I hope we have something worthwhile to offer/show of our culture out there...

Budapest!

2011-11-23T18:55:00.001-08:00

Gravity is screening at the 2011 Anilogue International Animation Festival starting today in Budapest Hungary! Upon writing that sentence I realized I know absolutely nothing about Budapest...let's see, internet, what can you tell me...hmmm...Oh my goodness it is an incredibly beautiful city! It looks like a breath taking combination of Slavic and European (and vaguely Middle Eastern?) architecture! With spas! And the Danube! And a rich history beginning with Celts, Romans and a barage of conflicts that have lead to the rebuilding of this place making it the strong, gorgeous nation that it is today! The best resource (in English) I could find about Hungarian culture was this one! It seems to cover everything from the current complicated & historical outrage about Gypsies to the adorable Cog Wheel train that has climbed the nearby mountains since 1874!

The festival seems very fitting to this region too, animation has a tradition that runs deep here, a tradition that is definitley moving forward and beyond as evident in this fests programming. I somehow have gotten sucked into the festival website where film after film description sends me on a wild digital journey into a completely different animated vision- WONDERFUL! Posted here are a few trailers from short pieces and some entire shorts that are screening at Anilogue, each reminding me that animating is such a totally immersive, self expressive artform- every single piece of an animation is a controlled act forming it's own creative world all stemming from the mind of one single person! A tiny moving microcosm of a single, giant idea! AMAZING!

Ok, I should stop praising Budapest and the festival and these superb animatiors now...but they make it so easy with all of their awesomeness, no? Have a great time at Anilogue everyone who is lucky enough to be there and please, I beg you, drink whatever this official festival drink of bitter honey beer is for me (drools all over keyboard...)! O, and check out this interview in TimeOut Budapest that Brent gave, conducted by the lovely Kreet! (Hey Kreet! Are you reading this? Hope so! Hope everything is going well over there at your beautiful festival!)

For the Love of Film

2011-11-20T08:43:00.001-08:00

Film. I don't think Brent's ever shot on film? A lot of our friends are film purists though, recently mourning the loss of kodachrome and the decreasing film developing locations all over the globe, so when I read this article about an artist who was so outraged by the lack of film developing studios she published a letter in a major British paper I definitely knew where she was coming from. The artist Tacita Dean loves film. Based in Berlin but British born, Dean shoots lush depictions of people and places usually focused on the complexities of time. I actually saw one of her pieces, called Stillness, awhile back at The Walker when we performed a show there. It was unassumingly incredible! Multiple nearly invisible screens hung throughout a low lit room, projectors loudly clanking and beaming from all sides, film spinning forever on large mechanical loopers, and images of the aging dancer Merce Cunningham seated nearly still in different ways quietly reaching the silent white scrims. It was so simple yet so moving, the film projecting process exposed while still maintaining the intimate, slow, hushed, personal experience of film watching- a weird voyeurism through such an overbearing artificial process! Time moving fast and slow at once! Everything suspended in the air! I Loved it!

Now, Dean has taken over the cavernous walls of the Turbine Hall (pictured below empty/possibly filled with a sound piece? also pictured, some bridge near there?) at the Tate Modern. Her piece here involves giant, looped projections of images she made using old, mostly in camera or hand made special effect techniques like color tinting and image bubbles! She wanted the sprocket holes to be exposed too, further showing the medium, so she had someone make a masking device (which was created with 3D digital printing technology!) that mimicked the holes that were then fastened onto the cameras her & her team used to shoot tons of footage that would later be spliced into the giant films filling the giant hall. I understand her passionate love of film, her love of a medium that has so much beauty in it to begin with, the history, the feeling, the timing but I am not too sure if I agree with her inability to move away from film...

All artists should be able to express an idea or emotion through any medium really. Part of being allowed to be an artist is to have something to say, something to speak out for or against, and use whatever you have to do so. Film is an important substance but those using it should either take up the means of production themselves if it is that important to them or find another way to express their message...but, maybe that is the problem that a lot of art has nowadays- the message is only the medium? Anyway, I wish i could see Dean's piece out in London especially since the other work I have seen of hers is not done justice in still photographs and I guess that is her point in the end: film is an action, a process, a living world unto itself that we should create not destroy like all of the other worlds we let slowly fade away and make further digitally distanced. Film for thought? (That's right: ends on pun.)

Yes Alternative!

2011-11-19T19:42:00.001-08:00

When I mentioned that Gravity was screening at the 18th edition of the Barcelona Independent Film Festival L'Alternativa I forgot to mention the film was in competition! And it just won! Best Fiction Feature Film! There is always a weird disbelief that people all over the world not only want to watch the film we've made in our backyard but that people believe in it enough to applaud in this kind of way is nearly unbelievable- incredible! Still in shock!

Especially since we were up against some stunning films: Grimunho has such a vivid trailer (I covet the image of the woman by the waterside embracing the colored lights reflecting and bouncing in a twinkling world!) that deals with a mix of reality and fiction in a tender way pushing the boundaries of genre through the true lives of the older women it follows, Han Jia seems to be described as a humanist film quietly expounding on the malaise of China through a poetic portrait of the people whose lives are inherently effected by the politicized state, Las Marimbas del Infierno looks like it is downright spectacular- struggling marimba player meets struggling metal head/doctor who combine their forces for good, how could this not be wonderful?, Mercado de Futuros explores money and memory through visions of the present physical financial landscape, there isn't enough information on El Premio on the web but the trailer is exquisite and (if what I could find is correct) it is a politically inspired story of a child's clandestine life during wartime and, lastly, La Vida Util is a glowing black & white film about a man whose film entrenched life might be forced to change- a seemingly perfect mirror of the reality of all film artists and the world in general! Now who doesn't want to watch all of these films?

Thank you L'Alternativa for programming some of the most progressive, personal, artistic stories out there in this huge cinematic world! I have no idea how you were able to pick a winner...! Here are a few pictures of (!!!Film Festival Award Winner!!!) Gravity in it's earliest stages of becoming a movie in our very own Pennsylvanian backyard!

California Dreaming On Such a Winter's Day

2011-11-17T17:06:00.001-08:00

California is a magical land. It's not just the wonderful people and near commune like mind set. Or the absolutely amazing landscape. Or the thriving and sparking film industry. Or the brisk, clean ocean. It is a culmination of a lot of things. A lot of things that, as I make the journey West each time, always comes down to a feeling of some sort of American pioneer-ism, following in the footsteps of others dreams (of gold, land, sea, stardom, freedom, all kinds of things). I love it. So much possibility and so much beauty. So, when Brent & I headed out to Monterey on Monday all of these things came rushing at me at once in this awesome wave that continued for the whole, inspiring trip (even after the airplane's best efforts to ruin it with one of the worst movies ever made)!

Brent & I headed out to the California State University at Monterey Bay to present some of Brent's short films and host a screening of Gravity for the students and local community. The location of this campus is kind of insane, nestled on the edges of agriculture, beach$ide development$ and an extreme miltary presence, CSUMB draws in all kinds of students for all kinds of reasons. I gushed about the school's TAT (Teledramatic Arts and Technology) program earlier but, after seeing it in all of it's glory in person, I am going to again! Especially since, aside from specializing in all things film, the program really does a ton of incedible outreach.

The first screening/talk Brent did was mostly to a group of students from a local alternative/at-risk (which is a distinction I hate making, these kids are strong and beyond!) high school that are all involved in a teen filmmaking program sponsored by TAT that urges them to tell their stories through creative not destructive means. The students were all seriously awesome and, after the screening, when I heard a tough little girl in her snappy Latina accent say, "They are always trying to recruit us for the military, we should shoot movies not guns, man," It was like a crazy scene from some bad 80s movie that, like those 80s movies, made me tear up a bit! The idea that a few kids were able to see a new kind of future from some cartoons Brent made in our little room in Pennsylvania and a group of dedicated teachers urging them that they can be more couldn't be any more fulfilling! (Tears up a little bit.)

Apart from the social work TAT does the program also acts as a regular film school too with such highlights as holding fests at the end of the year schowcasing graduating student's work, broadcasting a tv & radio station on campus running student made work, making equipment readily available and offering up great facilities (green screens! a black box theater! editing rooms! oh my!). All this plus the fact that they cover your standard Hollywood fare in addition to things like Gravity & Travis Wilkerson- amazing! A college department with heart and creativity providing experiences above & beyond most film schools? Hell yes! I hope this program keeps on thriving like it should and more and more people start to recognize this place as a destination for studying film! Also: did I mention the school's mascot is an Otter since wild sea otters live nearby in the Bay? O yes. There were otters. Adorable, nimble, teddy bears of the sea! Go Monterey Bay!

Wild and Crazy Nature

2011-11-10T09:12:00.001-08:00

Recently, in an effort to try to be a little more involved in the tight knit local community, I've joined a few Schuylkill (skook-kill) County internet groups. So far it hasn't yielded much...the occasional sad yet true headline ("Divers sent in to rescue flood victims. 3 wanted to be rescued. 2 did not."), bittersweet classifieds ("Looking for home: fatally ill dog abandoned at local cemetary.") and a constant barrage of car show events is pretty much all they have had to offer. So, when I saw the words "film" & "festival" come up on the local calendar of events I was a little too excited!

The Wild & Scenic Film Festival is an organization based in California that cultivates films about the environment, nature and geographical issues with a socially moving conscience. A feature film about a man's journey to the ends of the earth to a short claymation piece with polar bears in melting igloos wondering if your furnace is too hot (brought to you by Creature Comforts!!! YAY! ), are good examples of the range of films screened, each piece focusing on the importance of nature and ecology. The fest features a traveling component too where different organizations can sponsor a screening in their own town. The nearby Schuylkill Headwaters group, mostly dedicated to preserving our anthracite region's waterways and helping to solve water problems surrounding abandoned mining operations, sponsored a short film screening of the Wild & Scenic kind in the very nearby city of Pottsville in the quaint little Majestic Theater (a place usually reserved for Raymond the Amish Comic! Not kidding!).

The sweet, chilly brick theater had a small crowd and tons of other things to offer besides the tiny heroic films (my favorites of which being delicious beer, the freshest of cupcakes and a giant map pointing out all of the local farmer stands/markets)! The series of films screened were quietly touching, making environmental standpoints but not in terms that are too dramatic, sensational or overreaching, a great feel given the fact that audiences and issues can vary so so much from place to place. The opening short, Witness, was really, really great exploring the relationship between nature photography and conservation efforts. It told a stunning tale of how simple images can create National Parks, spur governments into action and drastically change our relationship with nature. It had some magnificent pictures in it too and, as artists, it really spoke to me about the morality of images and the duty of people creating them.

There was also a film about plastic bags that began small but ballooned into a larger statement about our social responsibility to nature, nicely leading along with jokes and vintage dawn-of-the-disposable-60s film clips, that I think will really impact the way a lot of people think about that disposable cup they are drinking from (it also told me about the Cradle to Cradle movement led by a German chemist who is trying to get people and industry to rethink their ideas of product life: cradle to cradle not cradle to grave. This massive problem so poignantly and simply stated! Amazing!). I truely wish more people had been at this event, it is so rare that people in our area try to do something progressive and it is kind of a bummer that there were only a handful of attendees...but, I am personally grateful to everyone who put this on giving me some faith in my community members and finding a few people out here who appreciate their wild and scenic landscape just as much as I do! Now, back to admiring the deer out the kitchen window! O, and animating....still animating...

Filming vs. Farming

2011-11-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

Every so often I forget that we made an entire feature film in our backyard (and that we constantly are making tiny little films all over the place out in our corner of no mans land) and then someone will send along photos of being here and it will suddenly (re)occur to me how strange and wonderful our barn film life is!

Here are a few recently unearthed photos sent along by our friends Drew & Martha that are pretty accurate descriptions of a normal day of work out here on the farm....! Which is way better than actual farm work... I think? All of this animating is a bit tedious? And Gravity did involve a lot of heavy lifting....? hmmmm....farming vs. filming? The debate continues!

Submarines, Surfing, Sharks etc.

2011-11-09T13:52:00.000-08:00

In other news...Brent & I are heading to Monterey California next week to present a screening of Gravity and talk to the students & community members at the California State University at Monterey Bay! The TAT (Teledramatic Arts & Technology) program at CSUMB is a perfect mix of filmmaking, producing, media history and all things tele- a pretty unique area of study that seems to be a little underserved by a lot of places. The program, with the lovely filmmaker (and awe-inspiring mom/artist/artist nurturer) Enid Baxter-Blader as a main attraction, had Brent out there before when we were traveling through the Westcoast moving around giant giant chunks of art and it was an incredible, beautiful place filled with incredible, beautiful people (both inside & out- I really do love surfers!)! Apart from incredible, beautiful sunsets (pictured) Monterey is also home to The Monterey Bay Film Society (an org in it's infancy but seemingly headed for greatness and I am not just saying that since they are partly sponsoring our journey out there!), the Steinbeck Wax Museum (a terrifying, terrifying place!) and (O no!) sharks! Stay safe surfers, stay safe beautiful, beautiful surfers..!

O, and in more news... Gravity is screening at the 18th Barcelona Independent Film Festival 2011, L'Alternativa in Spain in the next few days! Out of all of the stuff I have read about this fest the thing I like the most is the Hall Screen. It seems to be a strangely curated ongoing screening area that features shorts put together by programmers, other fests and even a series of open call submissions where people can bring their own shorts to the fest for everyone to see! All of the stills from the Hall Screen section seem interesting, intrigueing and gorgeous in their own way! So, Spain, go see Gravity! And other amazing looking films! And tell us all you know of Monturial! We love Monturial!

Cels

2011-11-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

I know you're all sick of hearing this but....WE'RE ANIMATING! Which is why I've been a little light on the posting over here lately...even though the premier of the new piece isn't until the end of January the amount of troubleshooting for each scene is astounding.

In a moment of triumph we put a few finished images into the sculpture last week only to learn that the see through screens can cause certain colors to clash leading to a negative reaction, literally, all of the the black lines turn white and the white lines black! This adds another layer of complexity to an already layers deep process! So, without further ado, back to animating....!!!!

Why Are There So Many Hummingbirds?

2011-11-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Werner Herzog? It was a free screening of Grizzly Man at the Natural History Museum in New York. I read about it at the last minute and, with no time to spare, I dashed off by myself in search of the haunting voice I had come to worship. A line formed around the corner outside of the museum and into the space, winding around the Native American wing, passing through looming totem poles, wax figures eagerly rowing nowhere in a stationary canoe and huge, shadow casting bears flanking passage ways all ending at an enormous IMAX theater. The film, as everyone should know, was a breathtaking vision of a man in pursuit of something greater than himself, a curiosity, love and desire that eventually led to his death. After the lights came back on the stage was set for a Q&A where (and I am not making this up!) Herzog, a preeminent bear researcher (donned in a genuine eye patch that he got in as the result of a real life bear fight!!!!!!) and an aspiring actress (whose closest brush with acting also involved an eye patch, as part of her waitressing costume at a pirate themed restaurant where she worked alongside the films protagonist) were seated in front of heavy velvet curtains, gently lit up on display in the massive theater like the little dioramas scattered throughout the museum. Herzog answered questions with such poignancy, caring and humor adding to the whole dream of the event (when a hippie audience member asked if Timothy Tredwell, the ill fated self proclaimed bear whisperer of Grizzly Man, was a vegan Herzog replied in his draconian way "We both have a passion for Butterfingers.") . The whole experience was surreal and beautiful, the perfect backdrop to a perfect film, redefining what documentary film is and can be. So when the power flickered back on earlier this week and an invite to a screening of Herzog's latest film, Into The Abyss, was sitting in Brent's inbox I instantly RSVPed and awaited traveling from my chilly barn adventure to almost the opposite: the warm theater seats of New York.

(more about Herzog, Maysles & the New York City Skyline after the jump!)

The film screening was part of the opening night gala for the second annual Doc NYC film festival. The fest supports documentary film in all of it's aspects and is complete with panels, Q&As and parties drawing from the vast doc film landscape of New York. Into the Abyss was an exploration of the American death penalty. The film followed one particular case involving a series of murders in Texas resulting in the two convictions of very young criminals, one receiving the death penalty and another narrowly escaping it. I understand wanting to provide a nearly unbiased portrait of events to show a documented account of capital punishment but, it is Herzog's reflections that make his films have an intense depth and philosophical wonder that I think this film was slightly lacking in. Not to say there weren't engaging moments of poignancy or beauty but it seemed a little too full of the bleak state of things as opposed to the rhetorical questioning & responsibility that Herzog usually strongly takes on as a director (the thing that made his other recent film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a relevant masterpiece). Also, watching the New York film audience react to the rural subjects of the film was a bit disappointing- predictably honing in on inadequacies and ignorance that the cultured metropolitan dwellers are not used to, leading to some gross displays of laughter or shock in the face of many people's reality, a judgmental position that I think is questionable at best... I do think that Into The Abyss will be a valuable tool for audiences who are unaware of this issue and that it will also act as a good cultural document of the horrors of civilized society but the artistry and urgency felt a little light for such a weighted subject.

Following the screening everyone piled into an elevator to retreat to the film festival's opening party. When Herzog insisted that our elevator could hold another and proceeded to board I felt a little rush of air as all of us in the tiny space inhaled out of fear, exitement and room making for the giant, mythic man that holds the disembodied voice we all have come to know in his films! The man who pushed a gigantic boat up a hill, single handedly saved a chunk of the rain forest and had Klaus Kinski & Mick Jagger secluded in the terrifying Amazonian wilds all to the tune of Popol Vuh for ONE film was in our elevator! What?!!? Once again some strange, strange real life Herzog-ian dream! The party was of the fancy variety with city views and sushi and drinks but it was watching Al Maysles (!!!) talking to Werner Herzog (!!!) that was by far the most jaw dropping part of entire evening: these two shaped the way I think of documentary film, the way the world thinks of documentary film, and there they were in all their graying glory- incredible! Also incredible was unexpectedly running into so so many film related friends at this event, too many too name, most of them on the path to documentary legend and all of them smiling in the presence of these amazing documentary forefathers! Now, back to the woods and trying to uphold the legacy of filmmaking that we were just plain lucky to have spent an evening with!

The Snow Visits Us

2011-11-04T20:26:00.000-07:00

I thought about scanning in the posts I've been writing down on paper...what do you think? Can you even read that? (Here is where the cat declares war on the pen! It's decided, I must type as well!). Maybe I should get a typewriter? Eh?

All this time without power made me pick up a few books I've been meaning to get to. First, I started reading the new Rin Tin Tin book, given to me by a publishing friend of mine from my old days at the office! Thanks Laura (Laura, who can apparently be seen being held at knifepoint in this goth rock opera film by alt-horror lady Lisa Hammer!)! The book is by Susan Orlean (author of The Orchid Thief who was lovingly? meta-ly? satirized? universalized? in Spike Jonze & Charlie Kaufman's amazing film Adaptation) and as a film nerd I am loving the way she describes early Hollywood! A place of dreams, opportunities and canines where stars were plucked from crowds (or like Rinty, plucked from a WWI battlefield!) and hundreds of movies were churned out of studios at record pace! Even if you don't like dogs (and you should like dogs! Look at them!) this book is also a great cinematic journey of the early film industry, complete with flowery descriptions of silent film productions! Can't wait to finish it!

I also started reading Gravity's Rainbow, did you ever notice how filmic Pynchon's writing is? He edits like a movie- so vivid you can almost envision a shot list for every single word! This book is so dense with, well, everything, I can't even begin to describe! I wonder if this rumor about the first film adaptation of his work is true? His writing is so thickly cinematic I don't know how it can ever translate to the real thing? I am also reading a lot of backlogged National Geographics too! Who wants to know about the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum? Anyone? It was an era that naturally released as much carbon dioxide into the air as we are about to! Resulting in drastic environmental warming & species alteration! Spooky....Ok, well, there are my film related (not including the science magazines!) readings for these times of no power and little else to do! Note: I will keep reading despite the sudden return of power!!!!

She Will Clean Out The Barn With A White Boa Thrown Round Her Neck

2011-11-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

The whole not having electricity thing was slightly charming at first but....after day three of dim light and daytime inside temperatures hovering around 40°F the charm wore out! Brent is residence-ing it up at Penn State (I don't really know entirely what he is making there but communication includes: "I just finished the chair legs! And the face! And I bought some mugs from some students!" which leads me to think a ceramics studio is involved in said face and chair? We'll see!) so my adventures in the wilderness are a lone battle, complete with baying coyotes which scared the cold right out of me last night!

In efforts to mostly stay warm (our little barn runs solely off of electricity- heat, well pump, stove- all of it! Which, after this debacle, the debate over getting a woodstove is settled!) I decided to spiff up the larger, non-living section of the barn where I found tiny little Nervousfilms milestones covered in sawdust (and regular dust) in every corner! Like a hand painted VHS copy of the 2nd film Brent ever animated called Francis, and (Holiday relevant!) gravestones that were props in Gravity, and this tiny window- what could this tiny window even be from? Anyway...more warming activities to be had! Like building a fire! No, really. I've been building small cooking fires outside and, if I do say so myself, I have gotten quite good at campfire cuisine! But that could be the campfire warmed spiked cider talking! Remember when I lived in a major city....? (picture of one of many neighboring barns slowly melting in the snow)

A Feather Thrown Into A Canyon

2011-11-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

Being without power for days has made me unable to officially announce the fate of the sculpture....! (...drumroll please.....) To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, a multimedia sculpture by Brent Green featuring a new hand drawn animation, is to premier at: The New Frontiers section of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival! YAY!!!! This marks Brent's fourth? fifth? time with work at Sundance and my first time ever to go to this awesome American legend of a film fest! Woohoo!

We drove through Park City Utah, the home of Sundance, awhile back on one of our long art hauls and I can't wait to see the beautiful, majestic, inspiring, mountain ranges covered in snow in the last few days of January! I also can't wait to cover the fest on the blog, a thing I find I like doing more and more with each film fest we attend! I wonder if there are any outside sources looking for someone to cover festival goings-on....? Hmmm...any leads on someone who needs a correspondent who just happens to already be there? We'll see! Until then, animate, animate, animate to have this thing ready for it's big Sundance premier! So exciting! Here is a picture of an almost entirely unrelated giant bird that has been living near the barn! Also exciting!

A Dime Found in the Snow

2011-11-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

Right now I am writing this down on a piece of paper to type into a computer (which I am obviously doing- right now!). Why, you might ask, am I reverting to primitive technology? Why don't I just write a blog post on a computer like a normal blog-type person? Well, I'll tell you why: there has been no power for 1 2 3+ days! All thanks to an early season snowfall weighing down tree limbs still full of leaves, knocking out a tree and then knocking out an entire telephone pole! Being a film/art studio without power is no way to be a film/art studio at all! It is especially fitting that my only analogue task here at Nervousfilms, screen printing t-shirts, has recently been dissolved along with our webstore. Too much traveling and not one working laptop DVD burner made the promptness of web order delivery shaky at best leading to one too many angry customer e-mails, a thing that wasn't exactly our intention with our (barely breaking even) webstore!

Speaking of which, since we abandoned t-shirt and DVD sales we have a bunch of t-shirts lying around! Which I want to share! I'll send along a Nervousfilms t-shirt, free of charge, to the first few people to e-mail me (donna@nervousfilms.com)- sizes are limited but I'll try my best to find the right one! Just a warning: it might take awhile...! Ok, more posts to be typed up soon in the warm glow of electricity!

Button Button Whose Got the Button

2011-10-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

The sculpture is up & running! Yay! A little course in QLab (a software used for...I don't really know what? Creative work flow management? Producing multimedia installations and theater productions through one workspace/start button? Eh...I'll get back to you when I understand more....), a primer in tripleheads (uh...a box that takes in multiple inputs and feeds them into one source in order to get information and multiple monitors synced- think daytraders and gaming/military set ups, which, according to the internet, both regularly use and which also adds another layer to the densely political contentthat will be displayed on these multiple monitors), and some understanding of computer networking/ISP linking led me to really help out on the reconstruction of this piece! It also led me to realize that we must mark EVERY SINGLE wire before taking it apart again! Now, we await the arrival of more polarized film, animate like crazy woods-dwelling recluses, try to streamline the wire-y tangle hidden behind the sculpture (abstract pic of piece seen here) and then premier it to the public in early 2012 (it is still a secret on where...! Soon I can shout it from the rooftops--soon!).

I've also been learning a ton about animation cels...two things I have learned already: hairs stuck on glass can be very, very distracting when shooting the frame and, when painting a cel, it is good to go heavy on the paint right up to the line of the image (especially with Brent's jagged little sharpie marks flying on the edges of all things!). So much work to do still but, I know, it will be worth it! Now...what is all of this about snow? It looks too much like Fall for this to be happening...or maybe just my laundry looks like Fall?

At Home With the Sculpture

2011-10-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

We brought home the sculpture from EMPAC and are trying to get it in working order! Thanks to my crash course in computer networking (thanks Peter & Dave!) I was able to access the tower that holds all the secrets, I mean animation clips, which is just a small part of the reconstructive battle! We also had to get a piece of it re-welded (no, it wasn't because I am a welding novice, it was because Ryan had to grind it down to fit in the car!) which meant a trip to a local fabrication factory where an old friend of Brent's (who just started making these awesome lights!) helped put the metal back together!

Now it is a matter of finessing wires and then, soon, it will be alivein the house! Much like the tiny mouse I keep seeing running under thesculpture! O yes, winter friends! Here is a pic titled "At Home With The Sculpture." Notice the home to art ratio?! It's getting hard to tell the difference, hmmm...

The Band

2011-10-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

We are in animating mode over here- sorry for the lack of posts...! Cutting cels, drawing, shooting- it really puts your head in a weird spot making it hard to remember what talking to people is like and making chilly Autumn walks a blessing from the exacto-knife and sharpie kingdom you are the ruler of! So, since my brain is stuck, I thought I would take this time to talk about what our fellow bandmates have been up to lately! They are the ones who are lucky enough to see those finished frames flash by during our live shows but not have to paint the cels themselves leaving their Fall season packed with excitement...!

We've played Gravity with a lot of people over these past few years so here are just a few updates of what some of our fellow musicians are up to...let's see: Drew Henkels (theramin player extraordinnaire!) has been touring around with his band, Drew & The Medicinal Pen! He is also working on his new album, has made a video compilation of his music video work and is developing a new idea for a live performance art installation piece that seems pretty exciting! Go Drew! Go! Our sometimes cellist John Swartz has reformatted his beautiful photography website, where you can see some of his images from our touring...very weird seeing another eye capture these experiences! Look out for cameos of me & our other fellow travelers! Upright bassist Todd Chandler recently was awarded a grant from Rooftop Films for his newest short film about the Norwegian seed bank, an episode in his series of fictional truths that creatively explore natural topics through an artistic lens of film and art. Todd was also involved in the Occupy Wall Street Suits for Wall Street event that outfitted protesters in professional attire so they will be taken seriously by the media and not pigeonholed as un-showered hippies meaninglessly banging drums!

Speaking of which...in drummer news: Brendan Canty has a new band! They are called Deathfix! And they recently played at a HS football field in the D.C. area! Can't wait to hear them! Last Friday Jim White played a live soundtrack to Eve Sussman's newest, poetic, lush film piece White on White. On November 10th our most recent drummer, David Freeman, will be performing some live music as part of the exhibit Jews on Vinyl, a gallery/museum show of record covers telling the visual story of popular music and Jewish heritage. And Mike McGinley (sometimes drummer, sometimes horn player, always hilarious!) still hasn't made an internet outlet for his amazing paintings and drawings...come on Mike! I will set up a tumblr for you, just send me some photos!

And Brent & I? Still on the animation front! Hurrah! Here are a few stormy Fall pics I've managed to take in between frames! O, and I have an old Fall pic up on this site too! Seasonal fun for all! Stay tuned!

Plastic in the Afterlife

2011-10-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

Ever since I learned of 3D printing technology I have been in disbelief. And now that I have spent some time with an adorable little 3D printer in action I not only believe, I am a full on convert! So the way it works is you create a coded file of the object you want, feed it into the little printer, the printer melts and shoots a spool of material (colored plastic! which, after my inquiry, we all discovered does in fact come in glow in the dark!!!!!) onto a platform given your specifications and there is your little three dimensional entity! Immediately upon seeing it Brent sprang into action insisting that glasses should be made for his piece (which needs to be viewed through a polarized lens in order to see the images on the screens, piece in progress pictured at left! photo by Brent Green)...I really want to make a polarized monocle I can wear around my neck so I will be able to see the animation on the ghostly LCD screens at any moment... or a monocle on a ring...or just plain rings...or shower curtain rings, or a ring to hold my kitchen measuring cups together or a replacement handle for that broken knife in the kitchen or a replacement part for just about anything for that matter....absolutely addictive!

So...we learned this week that one should never own a Makerbot! You never knew you needed lots of little things made out of plastic until the possibility of immediate object creation presented itself!

Massachusetts Please

2011-10-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

Despite insane thunderstorms and other odd occurances the band arrived safely at The Museum of Fine Arts Boston on Friday! Yay! Mike (whose plane was delayed due to weather!), Todd (who, while visiting family pre-show, got a scalding soup burn all over his hand!), David (our drummer for this show! whose water logged car stopped working once he reached the museum!) and Drew, Brent & I (who made it in record time thanks to Brent's terrifying speed brought on by fear of being late due to weather! even with a stop off at Lakeside Diner in CT, pictured, whose homemade donuts I literally had a dream about last night, we made it with time to spare!) piled onto the theater stage in the MFA and performed to a room of those brave enough to fight the torrential downpours! When approaching the museum I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the space itself, of the towering columns and vast entrance system but it wasn't until I began setting up my foley gear in front of a huge, looming Frank Stella piece did I start to really see the scope of what was inside this space!

Luckily enough we were able return to the museum the next morning to pick up our remaining gear and shuffle around the collection, a collection that is just as vast and impressive as the physical space itself! I mean seriously. Picassos, Van Goghs, Monets, Degas, Gauguins- it was like a whose who of the best of painting & sculpture with the additional landmarks of other, less recognizable but equally as compelling artists (like Max Beckmann!! Karel Appel!!) and a brand new contemporary wing with some of my old favorites (Matthew Day Jackson, Kate Gilmore, Warhol) and new favorites (Sigalet Landau!). There is even some ancient art scattered around in separate galleries in the form of mummies and Greek vases and a current textile exhibit dedicated to the cloth of Britain during WWII (the propaganda scarves are amazing!). We even got to see the The Clock. (loquacious discussion about this piece after the jump!)

Whether negatively or positively Christian Marclay's video piece (a twenty-four hour loop of thousands of clips from feature films loosely depicting each minute of a clock) has been haunting me lately...and now I think I understand why. A collage of nicely edited film clips that mimic the MTV brain giving us intense snapshots of other fictional worlds yet grounding us through real time, The Clock extrapolates moments of a reality, a usually quick paced fake reality inside cinema that the up-to-the-minute media obssessed culture is consumed by, and slows them down into something useful, into a utilatarian function of a clock, embedded within all the glitter and glamor and emotion of cinema. Clock towers used to be a beacon of society, of government, of human advancement but in Marclay's piece the clock is stripped down to a prop in a film, functionally useful but in the most arresting setting imaginable: a museum theater filled with wasteful minutes of a static audience.

I'm not saying this is a waste of time at all, I think the piece is encapsulating a very real essence of current American culture that should be perseved, an empty bombardment of images complete with an inactive audience, but there is a fine line between recognizing the loss of time/the manufacturing of other worlds/our need for sensory stimulation and actually leaving the theater. But I guess the mere act of slowing down to watch this piece unfold is an act of cultural defiance in itself, fulfilling our want of image and sound but doing so without the pretense of any other fulfillment (or advertiseing), an almost meditation on the "real world" outside the film, all while acting as a ticking time piece marking our inaction in a much greater sense. The other part of this piece that I think lends to it's popularity is familarity. Watching this patchwork of minutes made me filled with recognition, it made me recall an entire field of memories I don't normally access, every film I have ever seen coming to the surface in a weird flood almost solidifying the existence of these alternate realities. Overall The Clock is (unfortunately) a perfect example of contemporary art and American culture as a whole: images, sounds, forms, time hurtling by, getting somewhere but to what end? To the continuous end of the spinning clock, an end I think we all have been realizing is a cycle that needs to be broken.

Thanks so very much to the MFA for our New England art experience! And a very special thanks to one audience member at this show, the curator who introduced Brent & I onefateful day in a gallery four years ago resulting in the very thing we were allgathered together for in Boston, Gravity! Thanks again!

Feature Film and The T

2011-10-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we embarked on the first line tests for Brent's newest feature film! YES! Walking around the neighborhood I followed behind lugging a tripod and some gear as we set out to see what some things looked like through a camera in anticipation of the next in the series of projects. I don't know too much for right now other than that I see Brent scribbling in a new notebook and retreating to the piano in the barn every so often to record...but I do know that I am excited! Here are some photos I took of our (first of many) film shoot/strolls!

And by the way: if you are in the Boston area tomorrow (Friday October 14th) come out to the Museum of Fine Arts for our live Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then show! We even have (another) new addition to our band in the form of a different drummer! Can't wait to see good old Beantown, which I haven't been to since I was a kid! Hope I don't die in a molasses flood (which really happened and which my Massachusetts bred Mom TERRIFIED me with as a child as she read me a children's book all about the deadly sticky situtation, complete with light hearted, cutesy illustrations! This explains so much!?)! Anyway...come to the show!

S.S. Shelley

2011-10-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

While moseying around New York at the end of our Gravity tour last week I headed over to MoMA to see if I could get a peek at the new Willem de Kooning retrospective. I don't know much about him other than he was part of the New York group of painters usually lumped in with Pollock, loosely called "abstract expressionists." I've also heard rumors that this particular show is valued at $4billion (!) and I will admit, as someone who has recently learned a thing or two in museum show budgeting/insurance, I was a little intrigued by what a show worth $4billion would look like....

The answer is: AMAZING! One of the things I've learned as a part of the Nervousfilms crew is that all of the artists I come across never want things to be easy. They want things to be difficult, to be pushing the boundaries of their capabilities and to constantly be propelling forward in craft and form. I don't think I have ever seen an exhibit (except maybe the Miro one in London) that you could so visibily see the strange growth and pushing into the future that, in my opinion, is the mark of true artistic genius. With style, color, shape and layering (and the eventual pulling back of these things) you can trace the ways in which the artist was searching for a new way of expression proving that de Kooning really took painting into a whole new realm.

This is the first major retrospective of this incredible painter which I kind of can not believe?! Even his biography (coming to America from Rotterdam as a vagrant stowaway, starting his New York creative career as a sign painter & window dresser, sharing a studio with Arshile Gorky, working for the Federal Art Project, becoming a recognized member of art history) is so bouyant, an example of a creative American dream, that makes me wonder why this kind of museum validation has taken so long? Either way it is finally here in the form of a breathtaking exhibit by a real master- go see it! These poorly scanned postcards are not right to have put up here! Bah!

Experimental Prototype Performing Arts Center

2011-10-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

The other day I realized that EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center) is a kind of embodiment of what Walt Disney envisioned for his beloved EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). Disney saw it as a utopic city that could use advanced technology to create a better society and EMPAC is pretty much doing that, elevating man through the arts and sciences, pushing the boundaries of our cultural capabilities, expanding the scope of the visual and the scientific. Since we've been working here on Brent's project we have seen so many performances, pieces of art, lectures and some things that can't even be defined each one consistently moving forward in terms of art history and ingenuity. Watching Brent collaborate with brilliant engineers is an incredible feeling- troubleshooting from two entirely separate fields whose gap keeps closing further with accessibility.

During our most recent stay at EMPAC the director of the space came to offer his curatorial expertise on how people will break the sculpture (a terrifying experience for all)! He reasoned that there is an accesibilty, a familiarity with media arts that make people more comfortable and more likely to break them! It never occurred to me that multi-media is a medium that permeates all of our existences and that EMPAC is trying to push open your home tv to make way for more useful creativity, as seen in the beautiful messages of Brent's new piece which is, in fact, exploded LCD monitors! Here is yet another in progress pic of Brent's piece along with a picture of the futuristic walls (and spheres!) of EMPAC, a place that enables creative ideas to come to life...now I do sound like a Disney ad! But, come on guys, look at this place! It truly is a haven for all kinds of minds! Our last leg of residency is coming up and I am so sad to leave this completely inspiring place...stay tuned for where & when the premier of Too Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, the result of our EMPAC stay, will take place! (It is an exciting secret! Yay!)

Internet Film Readings

2011-10-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

After beginning the morning with cutting animation cels for the newest in Brent Green adventures I have taken to the internet to peruse the world of film! I think the mindless measuring and cutting and counting and measuring, cutting and counting made me need to put the film world into a little bit of perspective...to remind myself of the movie magic at the end of the painstaking production!

First off...what the heck is this? Apparently a lady saw a film and she thought the trailer was misleading and she thought some of the characters/themes were racist and she was expecting a film with more explosions or something so she is now suing the film distribution company?! This is terrifying. Seriously terrifying. Dear movie gods, please throw this case in the trash! I cannot imagine a world where going to the movies results in a courtroom battle from an unhappy audience...why not just throw popcorn at the screen to express dissatisfaction like in the good old days?

Speaking of popcorn...this article in Cabinet Magazine was a pretty interesting read! The author discusses the sensory experience of seeing films in foreign countries with different snacks, realizing that the cinematic experience is one of habit, expectation and sensory overload, filling in the senses of taste and smell with food! As someone who has watched movies in theaters all over the place I do have to say that the familiar smell of popcorn, the lights dimming, the chair slowly lowering as I angle up to the screen, the memories of soda sticky floors and tearing red seat cushions with chalky exposed foam are all overwhelming feelings that lull me into the complete dream world that movie going should be! No matter where in the world I see a movie there is a meditative familiarity that will always make me feel at home in a movie theater audience!

Lastly in film internet readings: an interview with Ruggero Deodato over at Electric Sheep Magazine! I have squirmed at Deodato's film Cannibal Holocaust before on the blog but, after reading this interview, I think my squirming has turned to (a squirming) admiration! Concerned that his film of fiction caused more outrage than actual political atrocities, that media is a sensational farce and that the anger over his portrayal of animal killings is hypocritical given that every meat-y meal comes from the same action leads me to think that Deodato was actually politically motivated in his grotesque, awful, horror film! Even if I don't think his messages were portrayed in the best way...I am actually a little comforted to hear his defense/reasoning! Schlock horror with a message! I had no idea!

Ok internet film world...I must leave you now! To go back to the realities of filmmaking! Measure, cut, count, measure, cut, count....o! And by the way: our IFC Center live show has been postponed to further in the Fall so there is still a chance to see Gravity after our upcoming Friday show in Boston! I don't know if there will be popcorn at this live performance since it is at a museum but I do know that we'll try to make it an awesome show- and not just to avoid lawsuits! Hope to see you there!

A Muncie Girl!

2011-10-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

When I first got to Muncie Indiana, napping on my hotel room bed, I could hear a real live marching band rehearsing in the distance which immediately brought to mind filmic images of Tim Robbins in his gangle-y glory singing about fighting eagles and cawing like a simpleton in the Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy as he sang "Fight on dear old Muncie" and flapped about the room like a maniacal bird! I guess that is a bad first impression. As is the abundance of fried food (who invented the "grilled cheese" made of mozzarella sticks anyway?). But, after wandering around Ball State University for a day, I have a few great things to add to my understanding of Muncie.

First off, Ball State is named after the brothers who invented the classic glass Ball jar! What?! Awesome! Jars! Love those jars! And the history of pickling that they conjure up images of! Second, the art museum on campus (The David Owsley Museum of Art) was surprisingly great! Despite it's tiny size the space held everything from a small ethnographic room of artifacts from all over the globe, a Renaissance painting room, a beautiful array of modern & contemporary art (including a piece by one of my favorite artists Mel Bochner! and a stunning piece by Lee Krasner!) and a thorough collection of just about every era & type of cultural expression (medieval icons, Asian scrolls, modern furniture design, Greek coins etc.) tastefully curated to maximize the space. Thirdly, the campus art making facilities are also beyond your average art school fare with giant ceramics studios, metal working shops, wood shops and more all housed inside a huge arts complex- even with a food court (though I don't know how much I suggest eating there, see above note about fried foods...)! The artist/professor that brought us out, Maura Jasper is the final reason why Ball State rocks. You might recognize her work from Dinosaur Jr. album covers or maybe her Punk Rock Aerobics project that took moving to music to a new level of bad ass expression in the face of evil fitness culture! She is an inspiration and I am so glad she's making her home out on the plains be as cool as it can be!

The show was pretty good, taking place in an old recital hall with wooden beams and lecturing projection system in the geology wing of the school out behind the art museum (where glass cases loaded with geodes and dinosaur casts reside!)...the audience seemed a bit stunned, not knowing what they were in for and being politely (extremely!) silent during the films duration, but, being that no one walked out, I guess it went over ok?! Fight on dear old Muncie and thanks for the tree picked pears & unexpected overabundance of art! Hope you have a reaction to our film since we left, did you? Please? Muncie audience comments welcome!

Bloomington, A Place for Cinema!

2011-10-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

After our live show in Bloomington Indiana we were loading the truck up and were obstructed by a woman wheeling a huge harp on a hand truck into the back of her own vehicle at the very same loading dock we were piling our ample drum set & guitars into: the symphony orchestra at Indiana State University was in the midst of a show at the time of our own musical performance, right next door! Not only did I not know that Bloomington is home to an enormous music conservatory but I also did not know that they are starting to become more and more recognized for their cinema as well!

The IU Cinema, which we performed Gravity in a few nights ago, not only looked incredible (with WPA-type murals curtained as the lights dimmed [side note: why don't we have a Federal Art Project equivalent right about now?] and heavy deep purple-y red velvet drapes drawn back just before the screening) the programming and programmers are incredible as well, even their calendar is expertly conceived, glossy and intriguing as it displays the season of everything from classics like Hitchcock, to (one of my faves!) King Vidor's Stella Dallas to a TON of new indie & foreign films I've never even heard of that all look equally compelling! The show was pretty well attended and Peter, who runs the amazing local film screening collective called The Ryder that takes place in venues throughout Bloomington and who was instrumental in having us in town after seeing us perform over at (the best docu-fiction film festival in the world) True/False gave us such a heart warming, thoughtful intro that stunned us right before taking the stage (and even made me tear up a little!), an intro that definitely got us ready to put on a good show!

Without Brendan for this leg of the tour Mike (and even Brent!) took over drums and I added a melodic, driving glockenspiel to the mix making the show another new musical foray for our crew! The crowd seemed to like it too with plenty of film lovers staying to talk after the performance (including a few students who learned that Brent doesn't like talking about frame rates the hard way!). When thinking of great film one doesn't immediately make the jump toBloomington Indiana but after our live performance there my mind willprobably link the two from now on! I'd also like to thank whoever invented the Chaicoff-sky drink (half chai latte! half coffee! all pun!) over at Soma for making me highly caffeinated prior to the show and to Secrectly Canadian studios for occupying Brent & the band after the show while some of Mike & Todd's friends were recording there, giving this here blogger some quiet post-show downtime! I hope we can go back to this bustling cinematic, musical college town sometime again, an environment that made Gravity feel right at home! Bloomington! Who knew?!

Hoosiers?

2011-10-02T21:42:00.000-07:00

Have we ever done a show in Indiana before? I don't think so? Hm. Well, then I guess it makes sense we are embarking on three shows in Indiana! The first took place at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (co-sponsored by the progressive community non-profit Big Car and by IndyMOCA) and I think the band hit a stride with this show that added a little bit of experimentation to our steady lurching rock phase that we seem to be in on this tour! Since setting up the show at the IMA people who have been there kept telling us of how wondrous the museum is but I guess I had to see it with my own eyes to really understand!

The building is a sleek modern beauty and the grounds include acres of ponds, parks and public art (including an amphitheater that we were supposed to play in but ended up having to move indoors thanks to the quickly approaching Fall chill!). Given the nature of touring I, once again, didn't see a ton of the art on display but I did read a lot about what goes on in the space: a classic Old Masters exhibit, an entire project dedicated to exploring the local river ecosystem and the balance of our modern existence within nature, a sweet local pop artist's meditation on the nature of the childlike joy of space travel! Even the loading dock (pictured at top) was the semi-permanent home to a prime Robert Indiana piece while it undergoes a little maintenance! On top of all of this the huge theater we played in, The Toby, had the best sound I think we've ever had and such a great, super clean video projection, not bad for a space that only recently reopened after years of disuse! Who knew that Indianapolis had this little gem out here! Go to Indianapolis for the art! And stay for the sugary sweet bed & breakfasts (Mike pictured behind said b&b's baby grand!)

Ohio-o-o-o!

2011-10-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

Brent & I had been through Columbus Ohio before with Gravity in a last minute decision on our way down to install the set in Arizona way back when! This time, with band in tow, we performed the live version in the very same film theater in the depths of the Wexner Center for the Arts! The Wexner is an amazing contemporary art museum who I wish I had a chance to spend more time with! Their film programming is perfection, the art they have on view is superbly curated and very much on the forefront of what people are doing artistically and every single person who works there is undoubtedly the nicest! Their current show of the apocalyptic bio murals of Alexis Rockman looks insane and the delicate little worlds of terrariums by Paula Hayes beamed out as hopeful little messages into the museum lobby. Maybe one day we can come through town with time to spare and I can really take in the wonders of the Wexner!

As for the Gravity show...another strange, new musical territory that we haven't really delved into before! It never ceases to amaze me the range of music we've produced for this film, so much so that there is some talk of releasing a recording of a live Gravity soundtrack so others can share in understanding the diversity of musical changes! Before we move onto the next city though a special thank you to Dave from the Wexner for being a lovely host/film scholar, North Market for having way too many options of the best of all that is culinary and to the musician behind Time and Temperature who I wasn't able to shower with musical praise due to just plain exhaustion! Your voice is so pretty Val! So, so pretty! Overall Columbus has taught me that I need to spend more time with it so I can appropriately thank it for all of it's hidden splendor!

Carnegie, Heinz, Warhol

2011-10-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

Pittsburgh is one of those places that seems surreal...tough steel bridges, an insane amount of art, serious (serious) football culture, boarded up architectural wonders, a funicular rising up the side of a mountain- the whole place just seems like some weird dream and each time I go there I feel transported into a strange Pennsylvania microcosm so unlike our own!

Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the Three Rivers Film Festival brought about the PA premier of Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, live show and all! The Regent Square Movie Theater is a great old movie house, complete with patented sticky floor (which I have nostalgia for from the red concrete gooey-ness of my childhood theater!), on the outskirts of Pittsburgh proper where a large crowd watched as we performed one of the last few Gravity live shows. Our band for this show was Brendan (on drums), Mike McGinley (as Mike McGinley, not Leonard, on an array of things ranging from trombone to violin), Drew Henkels (on various trash picked items! and a theramin! and harmonium! and a guitar!), me (foley lady) & Brent (narrator, band leader, guitar) and, our newest addition to the line-up, Todd Chandler (on upright bass) and we made an all new, improvised soundtrack settle just below the film in a way that I think really picked up on the strange-ghostly town! This show really sounded different than any of the other ones we've played...I don't know what it is but a really gruff rock noise percussive jazz or something permeated the soundtrack and it felt like a whole new life was in the film!

After the show we ambled around ending up over at Kelly's Bar, a seeming P-burgh legend, where I learned of the local org LUPEC: Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails! There mission of a general good time and a mild feminist social archive is exactly how I live my life as a lady- strong, warming and shared with good friends! (Clinks glass to the ladies of Pittsburgh!) The next morning we foraged for delicious food (Quiet Storm pictured below!) in a deserted stretch of the city before heading on to our next destination...it is so unsettling to be in an old industrial boomtown with tons of shells of houses and the remnants of eras past, it really makes you wonder how we keep repeating this cycle of industrialization! Here's to hoping recent efforts can bring about real change! (Clinks protest cow bell to those occupying Wall Street!)

"better protection of theatres for the benefit of the nation"

2011-10-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

Just found out that Gravity is screening at Cube Cinema in the city of Bristol, U.K. tomorrow! Fittingly enough one of the (amazingly great) sound engineers at our live show tonight (which took place in a renovated theater that had been shut down for years and only recently resurrected as a beautiful sonic wonder complete with 35mm film projection and gorgeously sharp digital projection!) was telling me of an organization based out of London called The Theatres Trust. Apparently following a government Act from 1976 the organization came into being to support the art of the movie theater. Through consultation, planning and just plain magic this group of preservationists can do everything from objecting to theater demolition on the basis of cultural importance in the name of history to giving advice on sustainable eco-theaters in the name of the future! So so great! Also, after some research, it turns out that the Cube Cinema has an amazing social conscious as well, pioneering a children's mobile cinema traveling around earthquake torn Haiti in addition to a ton of other socially progressive & interesting projects that make me so glad to have our film be a part of this awesome, inspiring place!

Rust Belt Tour Fall 2011!

2011-09-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

Just a friendly reminder that the Gravity team is on a little tour right now, probably the last one for awhile! Last night we (finally) had our Pennsylvania premier out in the rust belt of Pittsburgh and will continue on today to Columbus Ohio! More info is below, hope to see you at the show!

September 29- Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Pittsburgh, PA

September 30- Wexner Center, Columbus, OH

October 1- Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN

October 2- IU Cinema, Bloomington, IN

October 13- IFC Center, NYC

October 14- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

Mere de la Mer

2011-09-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

Years ago I was sitting in a cubicle, distracting myself with the internet when I came across an article about a puppet performance taking place in a basement theater on the outskirts of Soho. At the same moment a friend e-mailed me an article about the same thing so tickets were purchased and plans were made! There wasn't much information about the show out there...just that it was called The Fortuneteller, it was a tale of the seven deadly sins and the few pictures of the actual puppets were dark, folky, textural beauties whose craft was far beyond your normal image of a puppet. The production was put on by the company Phantom Limb, with the creative minds of Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko at the helm. The set design (a giant house that overtook the small stage with sections that would protrude forward with lowered creakily-hinged front facades revealing different scenes), the characters, the music were all so enchanting...a strange & beautiful world indeed!

So when I found out Phantom Limb had a new production, this one based upon an ill-fated yet triumphant Antarctic journey of the explorer Ernest Shackleton I was very, very excited. A story that lends itself to so much vivid imagery imagined in the spooky artistic style I had seen before seemed like a perfect match! Even more lucky is the fact that we happen to be at EMPAC during a series of final dress rehearsals for this new show, titled 69° South.

I don't want to give too much away and, since this isn't the official premier, things might change but....impeccably edited & projected grainy black & white film of the Antarctic collaged with other images on all surfaces of the stage in an overwhelming looming eerieness (made by a duo whose video performance/ installation work I now covet!), coupled with the rising and falling of delicately glowing gigantic cloth glaciers, mixed with perfectly made puppets all set to a partly recorded soundtrack composed by Khronos Quartet & the ambient, texture of the live musicians (of the band Skeleton Key ) came togther to form a truely interesting vision! The puppets really inhabit and feel like a tiny microcosm unto themselves, the felty, neutral warmth of their costumes, the heft in their step, their facial expressions make the stilted puppeteers recede into the background- a perfect metaphor for our own strange earthly scale of control. This is most definitely a work in progress though with some bizarre modern dance components (pic of such from the video documentation room above) and a vagueness in terms of story, meaning and form but the shear artfulness of the show was a ghostly marvel that I suspect (and hope) will only solidify with time...I just keep thinking if there were intertitles, which would fit in with the near German expressionist theater/early silent film aesthetic that was midly present, the story and meaning could be made a bit more bold and captivating against this gorgeous setting.

Out of all of the elements of this show the heart of this piece (that I think the production I saw was searching for a way to more strongly say) is the real wonder that stands out: we must accept and survive for the good of mankind and nature, a message I am constantly looking for in art and am so relieved to have found (however clouded it is in it's current incarnation). This piece is set to travel over to Dartmouth, BAM and other places around the globe bringing this message of hope and understanding (and the bones of a potentially epic show! ) along with it! Now, like after any puppet show, who wants to make some puppets? Brent? Eh? PUPPETS!

Russian Premier?

2011-09-25T06:10:00.000-07:00

Gravity is currently screening at the Message to Man International Documentary, Short Fiction and Animated Film Festival! Woohoo! It is pretty hard to find too much info about this fest in my native tongue but...the fest seems to want to bring a wide range of cinema to the people of St. Petersburg Russia, each year expanding into something bigger- this year with the inclusion of more experimental films!

If anyone knows Russian please let me know some more info! Especially the translation of the title, so far my favorite interpretation brought about through language has been the German one: The Force of Gravity Was On Everything At That Time.

Welding Is Pretty Much the Best!

2011-09-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

After our seeming endless stay in New York City Brent and I trekked it home and them continued our journey, this time heading back up to Troy New York for continuing work on his residency at the otherwordly EMPAC! His piece is officially titled To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given and it is quickly coming together in an awesome way! Wooden phonograph horns, huge metal armatures, almost a dozen deconstructed LCD screens, a soundtrack that is bellowing into a beautiful comment on the state of the world and his rickety hand drawn animation are all pieces to this intricate sculpture that gets more and more exciting as each part is fashioned!

In the midst of all of this building Ryan Jenkins (a go to guy of not only EMPAC but, after hearing of his heroic post-hurricane flood rescueing, a superhero of the greater Troy area in general- he is pictured below in some supreme welding gear!) taught me the basics of welding! Ever since the first time Brent decided to build with metal we've been entertaining a home welding set-up and opening a shop in the corner of the barn but it really just seemed like wizardry that we could never possess! But, after Ryan's tutorial, I have been pricing welding rigs and having the desire to build a car...! I always thought welding was like soldering, which I have done my share of at Nervousfilms, but the heat (which can reach temperatures hotter than the sun!), pressure and electrical current makes the whole experience a bit more akin to shooting a gun! I can't describe how utterly satisfying it is to have a solid, nearly unbreakable piece of bonded metal in your hands that you made that way! The possibilities are endless! And even the names of the blinding welding ailments you can get are the coolest, Arc Eye?! Who doesn't want that? And look at that welding helmet! Golden flames! Consider me a total welding convert! Now, can I weld for you? Please?

The Color and the Shape

2011-09-22T07:54:00.000-07:00

Why does Art in Chelsea gotta be so pointless? I'm not gonna write about the pointless because that in itself is pointless but...c'mon Art! We've got tons of wars and government overthrows and ecological disasters and a spooky looming election and no real strong loud voice for change and what do you have? Shapes? Do shapes really cut it right about now Art world? And yes, shapes can represent other things but this time around the shape excuses (artist statements) were even lacking ("The artist had jet lag so he was interested in time." No joke???!!!) Well..there...I finally said something outwardly negative on this here internet platform (which is really like yelling into an open field anyway...sooooo....there's that.) But, I digress, let me at least talk about the non-pointless Art I saw!

After stopping by a friends opening in Chelsea this past Thursday I did a quick breeze around the galleries lead by Jem Cohen as a hesitant Brent dragged behind! While walking down 25th street I saw a crowd of people with cell phone cameras aloft so I got curious... Put on by The Pace Gallery, wedged in between two large, unassuming New York buildings I was confronted with a giant, inflatable globe! It's glowing presence pushed against metal girders in an abandoned lot while a pulsating drone engulfed the entire soundspace! It was absolutely flooring! Titled Tight Spot I should have known immediately that this piece belonged to the mind of the incredible David Byrne (speaking of which, did you know David Byrne made a feature film called True Stories in the 80s? And it is on Netflix streaming? Check it out! It is a fabulously weird musical about suburban sprawl, Texas and tabloids!). Byrne, once again, manages to simply, beautifully, poetically, comically comment on the state of the world- just plain wonderful! See Art, you CAN do it!

Another piece I saw that stuck with me in a different way was the video piece of Pawel Wojtasik showing over at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. The piece is called Nine Gates and has something to do with a poem about sex written by the risque writer Guillame Apollinaire to his lover as he fought during WWI (the gallery was busy so I could not read the text and I can't seem to find a translation online! but) frankly, I found this aspect of the piece uneeded...The film was a stark exploration of the landscape and depths of the physical human body. At times pornographic and at other times softly sensuous this piece moved along bodies as if encountering an alien planet for the first time, showing things only a hi-def camera could (I don't know what was used but the camera seemed dense far beyond the detail of the human eye!) and in such close, tight proximity it was beyond intrusion. The sound was slightly destracting, not entirely captivating for a piece that could entrance so easily (but I think this might actually have been a tech problem more than anything) and the flourishes supporting the piece (the poem, the text on the wall, light boxes that I somehow missed?) all seemed to take away from the creepy, raw beauty that was on display. If anything, it made me want to see other images made by Pawel Wojtasik and see this one in a more optimal viewing situation...

Now, Art...what else was good? There were a lot of elements of things I really liked- a skate ramp shaped film screen at James Cohan, potent pictures of birth and the overlooked graphic nature of family by Elinor Carucci at Sasha Wolf Gallery, the gimmicky but entertaining elevators (a full scale remake of an elevator shaft positioned horizontally so that you can walk inside, a freestanding cube of a stuck elevator delving below the floor, others) at Sean Kelly but this is only a fraction of the things I saw. Art...sigh...I am buoyed by the good things but sometimes the empty shapes just really weigh me down...! Good Night Art! Sweet dreams (that should only be part of your inspiration)!

Fellow Traveler

2011-09-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

Entering the darkened corners of a Chelsea gallery, pulling aside the standard issue black curtains and trying to configure yourself in an art-film viewing space is such a tense, near nerve wracking experience. The anticipation of discerning where you are in a room full of strangers and the non-standard images and sounds you will be confronted with is a feeling I realize I love, the invisible contract you enter and share with the room and the art- I love it! It is like movie going compressed, edgier and overall with a much more risky chance of enjoyment! With this being said, Eve Sussman's new piece currently being screened at the Cristin Tierney Gallery in Chelsea New York was a stunning force to encounter behind one of these curtains, a force unlike any other I have ever seen, dialectically opposed to the compressed, brazen, shock value so much film art lends itself to and I absolutely love it!

The piece is called White on White and is described as an "algorithmicnoir." The story beautifully presents itelf as a tense cinematic expanse with a seeming narrative structure but this is just the beginning of this deceivingly simple introduction. White on White consists of 3,000 film clips, 80 narrative audio clips and 150 music clips all ranging in length. A programmed randomizer matches these segments up to endlessly create the project each viewer views, a film that can infinitely be reconfigured telling a version of the same idea forever. I can't begin to describe the intensity that one can watch this film with; looking for patterns, patterns emerging, the random seeming so selective, the deliberate, constant layering of ideas that had to occur in production for sense to be made- the thickness of actual construction is art alone, a new frontier in editing!

The narrative and imagery revolve around the story of a man's journey through his life as some kind of ecologist/spy/vessel evoking themes of Russian surveillance, natural disaster, exploitation, covert life and existences hidden on the edges of all areas of living. The story is framed in perspective with the addition of Eve's (blurrily pictured with Jim White, margaritas and maracas below!) collective company, The Rufus Corporation, as they write on their blog about their travels, trials and inspiration for filming as they voyaged alone, thrown out into the heart of the Asian Steppe, journeying toward something in the same (supposed) random manner life, and the project, progress. The lush cinematography and the barren landscapes of the locations the work was shot in are so unique in both content and style alone- a true, strong artistic vision!

White on White challenges art to be better, viewers to be more aware/engaged and pushes the boundaries of the cinematic and new-media mediums more so than any art I have ever seen. The film plays at Cristin Tierney (in a risered theater area that is comfortable enough to watch the piece for hours while a small monitor simultaneously runs the source code- and don't miss the back room which reveals photos inspired by the film work by both Eve and the wonderful eye of Simon Lee) through Saturday October 22nd and I am sure it will have a long, long life after that! If you have any interest in the future of art and film do not miss this stunningly brilliant work!

Movie (and Magazine) Magic

2011-09-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to a multiplex theater in solong that immediately upon entering one this weekend I choked back onthe smell of popcorn butter and was made dizzy by the busy carpetpatterns and escalators and almost instantly regretted my decision tobe there. But, I know some films should have the respect of beingseen on a big screen and, unfortunately, a lot of those big screens arehoused inside these horror show venues, melted chemical nacho cheese& all! The movie I ended up seeing was Drive. I knew it won something big over at Cannes and I remember really liking the style of the other film I had seen by this director so I thought hell, why not? Driveis a basic hero thriller story cased inside a super stylizedmeta-shell. The main character drives stunt cars and fixes cars anddrives getaway cars and eventually gets caught up in some prettyintense gangster action in the name of love. The music and productiondesign were a near 80s aesthetic (think hot pink and synths) and thefilm quality itself had this glowing 70s vibe about it that made onethink of Steve McQueen speeding away on the lonesome Californiastreets.

The Hollywood story, complete with the cinematic tropesmentioned above, remind you that the film you are watching is justthat, a film, making me think that this is why Drive, and thedirector in general, have gotten so much interest: they have decided that movie magic is a new medium untoitself. The serious(ly awesome) blood and gore, the car chases, themasks, the extended dramatic pauses, the ironic Hollywood qualities allblended together in search of what it means to be a new cinematic hero(and, in turn, a new hero identifying cinematic viewer), taking theaudience along for the ride (pun most definitely intended). I hate whenpeople say "I can't wait to see what he does next" disregarding thething they just watched that the director has slaved over, seeing thepotential for improvement but the obvious raw talent, but I left thetheater with this exact thought...so close, but not quiet right...allthe film-making skill but not the most perfect display of ideas? Maybenext time! (shrugs while holding enormous popcorn tub)

In the near opposite realm of the multiplex fiasco Brent and I headed to another spectacle in the form of a Triple Canopy (the best online culture magazine out there) new issue release party! Art events in loud bars (in this case a nice little, loud bar that felt like the living room of a NY five and dime baron tucked under the The Woolworth Building in the depths of lower Manhattan- chandelier pictured here) filled with the super stylish aren't really my thing nowadays but I was there to support the magazine more than anything else. I've read Triple Canopy fromthe very beginning mostly because it is constantly at the forefront ofcontent, ideas and just plain interesting-ness across all disciplines.I will admit that sometimes things get a little jargony but...anarticle about a man who invented a card catalog of the world, anotherof a man who foresaw the future of technology predicting tablet lifedecades ago and a steady stream of cutting edge online contemporary artis more than enough to keep me reading! They are so on the cutting edgemy computer no longer supports their reading platform so I can't linkto articles directly... or even read them right now for that matter!Ha! Time for an upgrade! An upgrade in the name of Triple Canopy! Huzzah! (raises invisible glass to the air)

Kid Friendly

2011-09-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

You know a way to get exhausted to the point of obliteration? Spend an entire day making crafts at a kid friendly neighborhood street fair with live music, tons of artist run crafty booths, dance performances and absolutely delicious food in a heavily trafficked area of New York City- whew I am beat! The Kitchen, an amazing performing arts space in Chelsea NY that has housed a bunch of Brent's live shows within their legendary walls, hosted it's annual Block Party this past Saturday and Brent & I had a grand old time leading kids in making Victorian optical illusion toys and some screen printed flags!

Thaumatropes (which I just learned actually means "turning marvel" or "wonder turner"), as they are called, are the classic animated picture disk. The most famous thaumatrope has a bird on one side with an upsidedown bird cage on the other which, when quickly spun, produces the little bird trapped inside of the cage. When one kid prompted me with "Why is the bird in the cage the most famous one?" I had no idea how to answer the inquiring little one...you never know what is going on in those tiny kid brains, sometimes I wish I could still see that clearly! I think that was my favorite part of this event, seeing all of the kid's minds hard at work trying to think of what to put on their disks, of what two separate things could magically combine to make one! Some of them included a rocketship with an opposing fiery lift off, a pair of eyes with a pair of glasses, an umbrella and rain, a toaster with a leaping piece of toast. Every kid had their own idea and each idea was incredible! I also tried to make little flag banners that one could screen print their name on but the crowd was much younger than expected so only a few teens took me up on the offer, creating pennant flag chains emblazoned with words- a super sweet craft that left me with some pretty bad ass, multi-fonted alphabet screens if anybody wants anything monogrammed?!

The other artist lead booths had some great things too including the lovely Paul Sepuya & Timothy Hull taking Egyptian inspired/abstract/alternative dimensional portraits, my pal Bryan Zanisik & his pal John Ehrenberg making pirate/nautical flags, a booth where a woman painted tattoos out of edible ink and even the classic macaroni necklace (made sophisticated through gold spray paint for the stylish New York child!) and that is only a handful of the many tents full of glue sticks, pipe cleaners and paint spread throughout the closed off city block! It was overall a great experience that I think every kid should have, a creative free for all lead by some beautiful artistic minds that I hope will lead to creative sparks amongst the younger generations! Special thanks to Lumi the magnificent for helping to curate and execute such a huge event and another huge thanks to The Kitchen for providing such a great resource for families and for artists in general! Now, how do parents cope with kid exhaustion? Because, days later, I am still feeling the effects....zzzZZZzzzz

Art and Geese Season is Upon Us!

2011-09-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

I tried to see art at New York's PS1 this past weekend when we were passing through town but....more than half of the museum was closed and there was a band sound checking in the courtyard the whole 15 minutes I could stand! I only bring it up because, in a conscious effort to support the arts, I paid the entire suggested donation price (a whooping $15 and, yes, o yes, they ARE one of the many clandestine suggested donation spots in NY!) only to be met with closed corridors and blockades of security guards. PS1 is sort of the kid sister of MoMA (MoMA which is not only a paid admission price but a recently raised $25 paid admission price!) perched out in Long Island City Queens housed inside of an old school in sort of a strange spot for a museum. I really don't get how drawing a huge crowd with their Warm Up Series (the cause of the soundchecking mentioned above/summer Saturday live events in their large, art & architecture ravaged courtyard) and then not having much art to see is a smart move? I know things need to be installed and openings need to be had but this is some seriously poor planning! Displacing a party for art, making art an inaccessible thing during a time when people who wouldn't normally go to this museum are there, it just seems really....jerky! I normally love PS1, it being the place I have been introduced to somany great contemporary artists (like the intensely brilliant paintingsof John Lurie and the music making machines of David Ellis and the funeral ship of Matthew Day Jackson) but this experience really bummed me out. Also as a side note, I know that public funding is a necessary part of museums operating costs but$15-25 is a lot of money for a lot of people, especially for families. Whatnormal family can pay $100 to see art? There has to be some kind of sliding scale solution? Or maybe, at the very least, less (seemingly unnecessary) expansion?

Another New York place that really introduced me to some artists early on in their careers (Kate Gilmore the great! Brian Dewan! Patrick Jacobs! Ati Maier!) is the Pierogi Gallery just over the bridge from PS1 in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Friday night we went to the opening of the artist Tony Fitzpatrick's new show in this Brooklyn institution. His lithographs (one pictured at right) are small, intricate, collages of imagery pulling from old comic strips, vintage iconography and an almost art nouveau geometric style- they all had a very Chicago feel to me (a kind of yellowed, jazzy throwback to the towns heydays that a lot of art coming out of there tends to have) so learning Fitzpatrick is from Chicago was no surprise! Turns out he also does theater work, performing a one man show in conjunction with the exhibit at Pierogi's newer, larger space called The Boiler (which Brent and I saw during it's construction and whose high ceilings we lusted after being that we were embarking on Gravity at the time). The other exhibit opening at Pierogi was by Michael Schall and was composed of a bunch of silky, well executed graphite drawings of rocks & nature and their collision with manmade & industrial looking forms all made with perfect chiariscuro that soothingly drew you into their sense of space...I think I need to see them at a less harried time than an opening to really enjoy their meditative beauty! At least some of New York let me see some art this weekend! And some city geese near the art! Look at those geese! And beautiful New York! (Geese picture by Brent Green)

We Were All At The Drive In

2011-09-11T17:36:00.000-07:00

While hurriedly setting up a show in an abandoned drive-in movie theater trying to beat the quickly descending sun and a giant yellow schoolbus rolls up full of joyful, waving New Yorkers while you wave back with equal excitement and anticipation is the kind of memory that will always make me smile! Last night we performed at the Last Chance Picture Show in a shady little town north of New York City. Even as performers we were uninformed as to its whereabouts so we all met under the BQE and followed the directions handed out by our fearless leaders/organizers: Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark. The original concept for their Empire Drive In project consisted of banged up stacked cars, a screen made of salvaged materials and a radio broadcast that would pipe the sounds of the show around a structure that housed the whole experience! The project was part of the 01SJ Biennial last year (whose title was aptly "Build Your Own World"- a sentiment Gravity, oddly enough, promotes in those exact words!), an artistic exposition that encourages builders to augment the world for the better (a sentiment that I think all art should promote!).

This beautifully curated version of the project was a little different. After selecting a disused drive-in theater in upstate New York (and then choosing another after the original location was demolished a week before showtime!) the two set out to put on a screening of short films along with live musical accompaniment. We began the show with Todd Chandler on upright bass, Jamie Reeder on violin, Jim White on drums, Drew on harmonium and theramin, Brent on guitar and me on flute & foley all playing an eerie marching version of Brent's Weird Carolers film, asking the audience to hum along to Beethoven's 9th behind us. The feeling was incredible as a whole crowd sung along to this haunting film in a forgotten space, bringing a weird life to everything all at once! After our set Todd and Jamie played a beautiful banjo and violin duo to a film by Maya Deren! I always have images of Deren's lush, spooky, grainy movements stuck in my head and the soundtrack they played is now the sound I will always hear when picturing! Beautiful!

Todd Griffin and Catherine McRae of The Quavers scored along some animation by Lotte Reiniger while George Graham and the Royal Garden Jess Band (a sweetly skilled brassy jazz ensemble)played along to such classics as Buster Keaton in a Keystone Cop film, some weird IBM animations and a silent short with femme fatales, early plane flight and crowds going wild! There were also plenty of cutesy intermission shorts, an encore screening of the ever so twisted cult classic Wild Zero (Japanese punk band saves the world through sexuality and laser guitar weapons?) and some crowd members even dressed up like car hops hawking candy with a wink and a smile- the whole thing was so so enchanting!

A highlight of the event though was, by far, Jem Cohen. With a secret musical cast of Jim White and Guy Picciotto, both musicians whose depth of playing is something I can't quite wrap my ears around, scored a new film Jem just completed called Real Birds. The film was a beautiful meditation on nature, both of the natural world and that of man, the intersection of both hidden under bridges, in murals, in plastic streamers, in puddles, in food scraps, in the ways nature and man interact and react within a city. Jem really is the quintessential New York filmmaker and the way he manages to capture the multi-faceted, ever changing New York existence is awe inspiring, the work of a real filmmaking genius!

On the eve of the anniversary of such a historically tragic day I can't help but be filled with almost a sense of pride, or maybe just happiness, knowing that this kind of event can bring people together in the polar opposite of the way tragedy can. Everytime artists conceive of something that puts wonder into the world they are chipping away at all of the horror that people can also create. I don't know the future of this drive-in project at all but I do hope it can become part of an annual NY tradition to balance out at least some of the memories. A special thanks goes out to Flux Factory for organizing the bus, Rooftop Films for the equipment and to any & all who helped make this event happen, including the local police who deemed our actions peaceful early on and let the show proceed without a hitch! What a wondeful world!

Stars, Sounds and Projectors

2011-09-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

A screening at an abandoned drive-in movie theater on the outskirts of New York City featuring silent film classics, new film legends and amazing musicians (including a few secret ones) in this beautiful Fall weather? Yes please! RSVP at this link for the meet up location, it is about an hour drive out of the city and space is limited so RSVP wisely! Brent, Drew & I will be performing a few shorts as will many friends...! BYOP: Bring Your Own Popcorn, hope you can make it out!

On Art, Marriage and Opening Champagne With A Sword!

2011-09-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

Whew! What a weekend! It all began with transporting styrofoam puzzle pieces to New York, moving tables and lighting an entire wedding in Connecticut and winding down from the wedding a few days later with a long trek home, including a stop off in an expansive upstate NY artspace! (Insert nap here!)

First, the puzzle pieces were for part of a brain storming session put on by an artist about what to do with this abandoned lot next door to her home in the East Village after it's current, semi-permanent art project disappears. The semi-permanent art project came about when the dilapidated space needed some help leading to the Guggenheim stepping in to use the area as a launch for a huge undertaking in the form of the BMW Guggenheim Lab (partly pictured above). This project seems utterly inspiring, an attempt to motivate community through workshops and discussions inthe form of pop-up think tank structures traveling throughout the globe and on theweb. Focusing on issues of urban living, environment and habitation, from NY to Berlin to Mumbai and beyond, this idea seems like a portable utopia taking up real important issues within the landscape it is effecting! So great! If only every dieing building could meet this type of end! I wonder what this space will become next?

Next, Brent, as the officiant of this past weekends wedding, gave the bride and groom the perfect welcome into the world as man and wife, Drew sang his sweet songs of love (pictured above), and I bench pressed a few hundred pounds worth of tables all to celebrate the union of our good friends! It was a wonderful event filled with hugs and surprises...some of which included an oversized Yoda statue lurking in the brush, a serious ~~amateur~~ sabrage event (pictured below), the dance floor induced crutches of an amazing filmmaker on a new dancefloor, an accordianist being arrested (the horror this induced in other accordianists as we tried to find a last minute replacement made me privy to an accordian code of ethics I knew nothing of!) and even commemorative wedding spoke cards for the many bike enthusiasts in the crowd! We all had such a wonderful time! I wish the happy couple (blurrily pictured below) the world!

On our drive home the weather was an eerie, car pounding rain so when we passed by the artspace Dia Beacon I forced Brent to stop for a bit and take in the minimalism! I don't really think he was too thrilled walking amongst the barren landscape of strings, colors and shapes but one cannot discount the massive beauty of Richard Serra after experiencing his pieces at Beacon. The light & shadow, the gradation of color (going from pale orange to pitch, swallowing black to every shade of brown), the curves of these massive, towering steel shipsides engulfing you into a feeling and space that I think all art should strive to match: it is downright transformative in an unrivaled way. A Joseph Beuys sculpture of shapely stacks of felt that dampened and expanded sound and space as you ducked between them also had a similar, physical reaction that I have come to really appreciate in art mostly due to my own experiences with building structures and learning about the complicated construction of tension. Apart from these pieces, being at Dia Beacon and seeing the scads of young art students wandering around made me a little wary about the future of art...

Art Rant continued after the jump!

What is the point of making something if there is no reaction? If the message and meaning is muddled in form? I do recognize that the message and meaning can be the form but I have a hard time grappling with abstract, minimalist art that needs a textbook to defend it's importance...art should be an accessible way to change perception not an esoteric jargon club, right? I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy the Blinky's or the Knoebel's at Dia Beacon (both sort of making color fields of uniformity but revealing a little bit of the hand, maybe a comment on the human in the industrial?) or that these works weren't understood/expressed the movement from which they came but, I sometimes worry that the new class of makers that seems to find inspiration strictly from art and the increase in the institutionalization of art has caused a bad case of tunnelvision in the art world that really needs it's scope widened!

So many things in the world need to be addressed, so many things are beautiful, so many colors exist outside of the one framed on the wall in the museum! Did you see the mountains surrounding Dia Beacon? Or the look on someone's face at their own wedding? I hope contemporary art can find a way to synthesize what it means to exist now or what it should mean to exist now-and I'm not saying it is easy, it shouldn't be easy- but I really don't think that, historically speaking, we should want art to only speak to art! Come on art world! Stop looking in the mirror! Please...?

Pennsylvania Power and Light

2011-08-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

A full day after the hurricane that wasn't...our power went out? Pennsylvania, always behind the times! It was a weird day of candles, kerosene lamps (which were originally purchased as Gravity props!), an Amish farmstead in the parking lot of a strip mall (no idea how to explain that one? It was literally in between a chain retailer and a pizza buffet!) and coffee rationing! Our woodsy studio was sort of at a halt given this situation (O, and the fact that the internet keeps going on and off too...! ) but I guess it forced us to take a much needed break from noise and animating!

Speaking of which, during recent animating adventures we were looking up images of swordfish for part of a scene Brent is drawing and I read that swordfish have adapted their eye muscles to heat their eyes and brain for better vision! What!? Who knew?! Heated eyes to see better? I wonder if they make heated glasses specifically for animators weary, frame ridden eyes....?

Also, a quick update on our upcoming whereabouts: Brent is visiting Penn State today (if you are up there you should go see him lecture, it is a beautiful campus and I'm sure the rivers are high and mighty with post hurricane rains!), on September 17th we will be participating in The Kitchen Block Party in NY where the fabulous venue hosts a kid-friendly street fair complete with food, music and crafts (our craft table is currently working hard on preperatory cutting and crafting right now! Hope to see you there!) and, lastly, this weekend we visit New England to usher in the nuptials of our friends Mark & Steph (an event that is sure to be full of filmic surprises being that Mark is the founder of Rooftop Films, an organization dear to my heart...so dear that Brent is actually marrying the two! What does one wear to officiate a wedding anyway...? A cape perhaps? Yes! A cape!). Ok, off to get things going- have a happy hurricane-less, electricity-filled day folks! O, and by the way, we were only inconvenienced by the storm but a lot of people, especially in Vermont and upstate New York, have suffered greatly from this natural disaster. Here are a few links on how to help out! Stay dry and safe everyone!

What's New Drew?

2011-08-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Our (oftentimes) bandmate Drew Henkels (who will be accompanying us on the upcoming show dates I just wrote about) is up to a lot lately! Apart from his work with us (which includes a near hilarious set up of everything musical: a harmonium, a gourd/thumb piano, some jingle bells, aguitar, a glockenspiel, a maracas, a water filled mason jar, a drum or two, what else Drew? I'm sure I amforgetting something? Theramin! I forgot the theramin!), Drew does everything from being the acting delivery ~~boy~~ man for the NY area print music scene calendar Showpaper while also performing at their rooftop benefit/potlucks (one of which is pictured here, Drew listening at bottom), he records his sweet yet intense albums in his dank basement, he does sound at the undeniably awesome Glasslands, he soundtracks some film work for great organizations, he constantly sketches up his dreams in his notebooks and, right now, he is looking for a drummer on top of all of this!

If you know of a drummer in the New York area who is looking to play some bedroom folk-punk wonderfulness send him along to Drew! His dedication to music making is looking for just the right person to help make his songs listenable outside of his head and your drumming collaboration is just what he needs! Spread the word!

The House Began to Pitch

2011-08-23T17:16:00.000-07:00

Apparently, when Brent is recording a new soundtrack, stamping in the barn and causing general noisy havoc one might mistake an earthquake for him. Yup. An earthquake. In the barn. Insane. Also, that's right! Brent is working on a new soundtrack for a new feature length film! Anticipation is killing me! Until we get to that though, here are a few confirmed dates for our upcoming Gravity live show Fall mini-tour taking place in the east coast and scattering around the midwest in the upcoming months! A few cities I've never been to (Indianapolis! Bloomington!) and a few that I haven't been to in ages (Boston! Pittsburgh!)! Yay! More info to come soon, maybe even another show or two to add!

September 29- Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Pittsburgh, PA
September 30- Wexner Center, Columbus, OH
October 1- Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
October 2- IU Cinema, Bloomington, IN
October 13- IFC Center, NYC
October 14- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

I don't know if it is related to the earthquaking at all but...after listening to this recent podcast on the subject: please sign those petitions against fracking in your area if you live in a shale zone! Drilling holes in the rock beds we sit upon can't really be good, regardless of whether they did or did not cause our whole house to eeriely shake for seemingly endless minutes today...! Friend and animator Martha Colburn recently took up the anti-fracking cause and the highly informative documentary Gasland warned early on of the ~~potential for~~ disasterous effects it can have. I mean, who knows...it could just be the dreaded approach of 2012 (bring on the solar storms! and volcanoes! or whatever!) but, if it isn't, I'd like to try to keep the bedrock intact even moreso after this weird little warning from the earth...now, back to those (geological mimicking) drums Brent...and keep PA (pictured) quake free!

You Are So Grand and Golden! America!

2011-08-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

So yesterday we went to our nation's capital! No not to protest the incoherent babblings of a presidential hopeful but to visit with the man, the myth the legend Brendan Canty! And to take advantage of his stellar film/music studio space hidden in the depths of Silver Springs (outside of space pictured above)! Brendan's studio, Trixie, releases not only his Burn to Shine series but tons of other music docs and commercials, in addition to using the space for record productions (the last time we were around Benjy Ferree was there singing his large churchy pop as Brendan mixed, tinkered and even played some drum tracks!) making it a sort of secret haven for artists who are well aware of the artistic awesomeness that has happened in these former industrial walls!

Brent wanted to do a few Gravity sound tweaks for a few American screenings so while he and Brendan slaved away over mics and programs I went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum (possibly doing research for a short film I am working on? YES!) and walked past historical architecture, memorials and fate deciding institutions. Often I feel like the core of Gravity is a portrayal of our crumbling American dream, of the loss of freedom, wonder and thought that our nation was founded upon so walking around D.C. and feeling the palpable sense of pride and nationalism was kind of awkward... one can only hope that these patriotic pangs people feel can once again be justified through the eventual righting of this ship! On an amazing note though, I saw a really big diamond, some ground sloth skeletons and learned about how now we think living things developed in small carbon ponds as opposed to the huge oceans that I learned about in elementary school (with no mention of the co-existance of dinosaurs and humans!): America, slowly making progress...?! O, and America? Please don't let that lady become president...

Pictures of an Exhibition

2011-08-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

The lovely folks over in lovely Louisville sent over this link of photographs from the Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then opening that we had a few months back in their fine city!

The event was absolutely amazing, packed with people and food and wonderful art at every moment that Magnus, the taker of these awesome photographs, really managed to capture! He is definitely an artist bringing his own vision into the event but portraying it in a moving documentary style that made me tear up a little bit (did you see that one of the baby in that link?!).

Good work Magnus! And good work to us too, it is so nice to see the film set come together after all of that back breaking work (literally being that during de-install a large piece of a set house facade fell on me, which I caught! only to be followed by another house frame that knocked the wind right out of me!)! Now...how to convince Brent to rebuild it in the yard?? Hmm....

Film Fests Are Fabulous!

2011-08-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time writing about film festivals our film is in but...I should write about a few film fests/events I've come across in my travels that Gravity hasn't been a part of and that seem like pretty amazing enterprises! The first one I recently came across was The Quadrangle Film Fest that takes place in Kent in the U.K. This nonfiction film festival occurs in a series of barns in the countryside and features a small program of rare, interesting and in depth documentary films ranging from the classic (Les Blanks film Burden of Dreams that followed Herzog into the jungle during his trying filming of Fitz Carraldo), to the obscure (The Moon and the Sledgehammer, a doc about a rural British family cut off from the modern world, creating their own piece by piece- with steam engines!), to the controversial (The Good Woman of Bangkok, about the directors relationship with a Thai prostitute, exploring the wavering lines between sex and love, art and life). This idyllic setting seems perfect, I can't imagine a nicer place to watch these moving portraits of the world! Another film fest/outfit I just learned about in the U.K. is The Floating Cinema! Yes! That's right! A cinema on a boat that travels through the London canal system! This thing is made even more wonderful by the fact that they have free family screenings, open screenings to bring your own films to, and films that are culturally relevant (boo! canal pollution!) to boot! Movies Ahoy!

I have talked a ton about the True/False Film Fest but I haven't talked about their mini-sister event/fund raiser Boone Dawdle! Boone Dawdle is part bike tour, part picnic, part concert, part film screening and it seems wonderful (of course)! After meeting in town the whole audience treks, via bike, to a remote vineyard where movies are screened, performers sing and food &amp; drink are plentiful- it sounds like such a nice summer day that just yesterday I was wishing I lived closer to Columbia, MO so I could volunteer for this lovely event! On a completely different, almost opposite note....as a teen I was initiated into the creepy crazy cinematic mayhem of midnight movies at a run down southern New Jersey multiplex theater where Cannibal Holocaust (Ew! Gross!) roared across the screen, brought to me by the bloody gore of Exhumed Films! Now operating out of the International House in Philadelphia, Exhumed showcases a lot of feature length schlock horror, B Movie classics and vintage previews for a lot of movies whose actors and actresses mostly came to or from porn. Their programs are an insane line up of insanity (it looks like they are keeping up with the cannibalism too with a screening of something called Cannibal Carnage this month!) that I don't know if (my adult self) would really advise going to but...they are definitely a nauseating experience any horror junkie will love!

There are plenty of other film fests all over the place that are championing the margins of cinema too including Rural Route Film Fest (featuring the best country themed cinema screened in and coming from all over the back-roads of the globe- including, most recently, on a rooftop farm in Brooklyn, right in my old hood!), the Bigfoot Film Festival (a local event that features Pennsylvania's love of the mythical hairy beast on celluloid! The PA BigFoot Society is a no kill organization you know...!) and the Black Maria Film Fest (named after Thomas Edison's film studio and composed of a TON of short films that tour around to notable Eastcoast art/film institutions &amp; universities, a perfect outlet for huge exposure and interesting programming!).

Film fests are such a valuable resource for filmmakers and audiences, giving filmmakers a live audience and giving audiences a total film experience! It is a (secret) dream of mine to start a fest somewhere nearby in one of the many dilapidated theaters of PA or to even help program a fest at some point (hmm....anyone need a screener??? I am very, VERY good at watching movies!) but, for now, I will keep on reading about these awesome organizations that are projecting wonder across screens across the world! Here are just a few pics of various screens across the world that Gravity has played on over these past few years!

Podcasts or Internet Comes to The Barn!

2011-08-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Let's see....as I sit here watching Brent painstakingly animate, frame by frame, redrawing each WHOLE image over and over I keep finding myself dumbstruck! He is crazy! But, while this is going on we've been listening to the wonderful offerings of podcasts brought to us by the internet! Yes! That's right! When I moved here a few years ago we only had dial up internet service but now, after signing petitions and slowly watching ditches being dug and wires being buried, WE HAVE HIGH SPEED INTERNET!

The first order of podcasts we've been catching up on are from our two film friends Mike Plante and Marbelle. Mike Plante, the founder of Cinemad, has recently started offering up interviews he conducts with filmmakers on the web. The interview with Bobcat Goldthwait (yeah, THIS guy! But also the man behind the amazing recent feature film World's Greatest Dad that was so graphic and touching you wouldn't think it was made by the guy known for starring in a movie with a talking horse! Did that horse talk? I think it did? At least he wasn't the voice of the talking horse, that would be way worse....I did love that film as a kid though!) was pretty amazing! Mike's questions and interview style reveal what a film lover he is and how knowledgeable he is on the subject, and the subjects he is interviewing. Listening to Cinemad's podcasts you know that Mike loves what he does as much as the people he is interviewing love what they do, a rare and perfect combination!

As for Marbelle, who I got to meet in London (pics of our trip seen here) during our recent live show tour, his Directors Notes series is unbeatable! He has been at it for awhile (I think it said the most recent podcast was number 213?!) so his refined interviewing is precise and thoughtful, leading to a lot of filmmakers sort of storytelling their way through their process and development. Directors Notes features a lot of cutting edge filmmakers, many of whom are obscure or undiscovered, and gives them a platform to speak out on the thing they love to do (filmmaking!) and the things that make them the unique artists that they are. Giving these filmmakers a louder voice & a wider audience is an amazing, noble feat in a film world where I find a lot of people are hesitant to be the first one clapping! In fact, Directors Notes was one of the first places to interview Brent early on in his filmmaking career (and early on in the career of Directors Notes!)- double applause! Keep it up MarBelle! If London remains in one piece that is...

Please don't burn down London, look at how pretty it is...! So, what other film related podcasts are out there o wise internet beings who I am about to rejoin? INTERNET...ok, I already need to monitor my internet ~~use~~ abuse (I say through bloodshot, pixel weary eyes)!

Gravity Is Still Everywhere

2011-08-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

Today I finished (another!) Gravity trailer as part of our Fall mini-US tour! Yes! We are hitting the road with the film again in late September and early October! Mostly Eastcoast and Midwest towns (with a slight chance of California and the Pacific Northwest if things can get in order)! Will keep you posted if the trailer ends up on the internet (it has some footage completed after the other trailers were made!) and will also keep you posted on our Fall whereabouts...especially since our Gravity live shows are soon to become even more rare as we embark on the next series of projects!

After sending the trailer off, after TONS of computer malfunctions, I went into the yard to see what is left of Gravity...seeing the set stacked into neat little piles almost makes me forget how unbelievably heavy the thing is! How we built it outside behind the barn in the coldest of winters! How we shoved it into two twenty-six foot long trucks and drove it across the country! How we had to fireproof the entire thing in order for the set to reside in the desert conditions of the Southwest! All the care and painting and staining and nailing that went into building and rebuilding over and over again! What a crazy history these little pieces of wood have! While admiring all of the hard work laying in pieces in the yard I did come across another little piece of Gravity production history: the cloudmaker! Or, should I say, a fishing rod with cotton snow (I remember it specifically being cotton snow since all other cotton fill had a shine to it, a quality that the packaged snow did not possess) attached to the end that I, sitting on the roof of Leonard's house in the freezing temperatures, moved frame by frame growing the cloud out of the wooden hand of our backyard embodiment of God as Brent stood on the ground taking picture after picture (part of the finished scene you can see a little in this trailer over here!).

I have a feeling the rest of my time in this barn will be filled with little unexpected moments of Gravity and I couldn't be more happy! Hope to share the happiness this Fall on our little tour! But, for now, working and swimming, swimming and working! And baby deer! Twin fawns! In the yard! Yay!