Program #1
Friday, 7pm
UW-M Union Theatre

Ghost  Coversations (8 min, 2009, video)
Directed by Jeremy Bessoff (Syracuse, NY)
Heartbreak and loss becomes a character itself as a woman pines for the return of  her husband lost somewhere in World War II.  This dream conjures the ghost of a Flying Ace and traps him between two inescapable landscapes:  The desolation of war and the safety of  domesticity.  The drama is enacted between a life-sized marionette and a model airplane. 

I Began to Wish (5 min, 2003, 16mm, silent) *Juror’s presentation
Directed by Julie Murray (Milwaukee, WI)
The sea sucks the seed back into the ocean, the flowers fold like umbrellas, shoots recoil into hiding, in seeds that shrink. The plants accelerate their tremble and wobble and glass unbreaks all around them. Strawberries blanch and tomatoes grow pale. The father, leering, holds forth a flower and suddenly his smile fades to awful seriousness. In an odd concentrated ritual the father and son carefully tip over all the flower pots, laying the plants to rest and it is in this end, around the time he figures the flowers are talking to him, that the son wishes his father had killed him.

The Acrobat (6 min, 2007, 16mm)
Directed by Chris Kennedy (Toronto, Ontario, CANADA)
A consideration of the relationship of gravity and politics—the beauty and necessity of rising up, but also, perhaps, the significance of allowing oneself to fall. If the force of gravity is in relation to both mass and proximity, how does the force of politics resonate across space and time?

Keep the Home Fires Burning (8 min, 2008, 16mm)
Directed by Ryan O’Toole (Long Island City, NY)
Keep the Home Fires Burning is a short autobiographical film about duty and loss, seen in the home movies of a military family.  Focusing on fathers and sons, the filmmaker mixes the voices and imagery of three generations, accompanied by the filmmaker’s original score, to illuminate the effects of war on veterans and their children.

Ceibas: H(x) = -∑ p(xi) logp(xi)| Shannon’s Entropy (6 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Evan Meaney (Iowa City, IA)
Claude Shannon was the father of modern data compression. His legacy is one of sending, saving and retrieving – reminding us that all things which survive this process are of the utmost importance. To him, information was a series of signals, marginalized in their presence and lamented in their absence; being electronic values which carry what we know away from us, in the hopes that it will, one day, return unscathed. The source footage for this piece is derived from video files whose base encoding has undergone a revision by Shannon’s own algorithm. Each file, altered through his equation, becomes what we might call ‘corrupted’ – as the end point no longer matched the expectations of the receiver. Through these images we are left to excavate a site comprised of Shannon’s own allusions: emotive schematics, a multitude of voices, our digital ruptures, and a quiet love story.

Passage…s (30 min, 2008, 16mm, b/w, silent)
Directed by Telemach Wiesinger  (Riegel, GERMANY)
On one hand Passage…s is a subjective report of a journey and on the other hand it is a documentary film about movable bridges. Telemach Wiesinger visited waterfronts in France, Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.S.A. to make a note of historic swing- and lift bridges, the last hovercrafts and the gigantic ship hoists by means of moving images. Many masterpieces of bridge construction from the heyday of ship- and railway constructions are nowadays dismantled or fall into ruins. These technical dinosaurs become a document and an allegory of Wiesinger’s timeless imagination of travel.

I Remember That They Existed, But Not What They Were (6 min, 2008, 16mm)
Directed by Kathleen Rugh (Ithaca, NY)
Creating an environment centered around the flux of summer weather in the contrasting landscape of the northeastern and the southwestern United States this film uses moving storms as a representation of the cyclical nature of our lives.

Program #2
Saturday, 6pm
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts

If You Stand With Your Back to the Slowing of the Speed of Light in Water
(19 min, 1999, 16mm) *Juror’s presentation
Directed by Julie Murray (Milwaukee, WI)
The film aims to illuminate a vital sense innate to perception where inversion is counterbalance and focal myopia the articulation of space.  

All That Remains (8 min, 2008, 16mm on video)
Directed by Ryan Marino (Brooklyn, NY)
A study in the light, textures and ghosts that make up the abandoned.

Yard Work is Hard Work (28 min, 2008, 16mm)
Directed by Jodie Mack (Chicago, IL)
Yard Work is Hard Work  is an experimental animation and musical that at times wants to be a romantic comedy. Using various 2D cut-out pixilation and animation techniques, the piece follows a pair of newlyweds as they learn the perils of homeownership and life in general. Disillusionment + hope in glorious color and song.

No One Wants to Eat the Parsley (6 min, 2008, video)  
Directed by Sharon A. Mooney (Chicago, IL) 
Part coffee Klatch, part baking party, a visit with baker/bartender Meredith in her Brooklyn apartment leads to talk of ‘happy ending’ and the horrors of getting old.  

Ichthyopolis (9 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Andre Silva (Wilmington ,NC)
The Fish Queen and Fish Wrangler manage their worlds with routine precision until a disturbance in the order leaves them helpless.

Paris Times Three (7.5 min, 2009, video)
Directed by Carina Johnson (Iowa City, IA)
Using the structure and aesthetic of Bruce Connor’s  Marilyn Times Five (1973) as a constant, Paris Times Three explores the audience’s reaction when just the actress is changed.  Replacing the beloved image of a youthful, innocent Marilyn with scenes from Paris Hilton’s infamous internet sex tape, the film draws comparisons between modern and past ideas of sex, beauty, innocence and celebrity.

Botched Eyeball Operation (1 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Clint Enns (Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA)
Botched Eyeball Operation casts a voyeuristic gaze at a common operation gone awry. This is the video documentation of someone losing their sight. Music provided by Sea Wizard.

Program #3
Saturday, 8pm
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts

Someone To Ride The River With (5 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Derek Taylor (New Haven, CT)
A map of recollection, the film consists of 286 35mm Kodachrome stills of varying landscapes, which mine the depths of memory. The film also pays homage to a patient photographer, whose lyrical impressions of the world evoke a feeling of genuine perception.

Hungry Ghosts see... : Dark Luminosity  (10 min, 2009, 16mm x 2, +)
Directed and performed by Ross Nugent (Milwaukee, WI)
A projector performance for two 16mm projectors, various film loops, 35mm slides, colored gels, 2 contact mics, and hand-jiving.

Vancouver (13.5 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Bryan Konefsky (Albuquerque, NM)
A five part diary inspired by a recent trip to Vancouver, British Columbia where, at the border a Canadian Customs Officer accused me of smuggling pornography into their country.  Ultimately this work is a meditation on paranoia, false perceptions, misguided judgments and a particular brand of  “profiling”.

Wwoofing (11 min, 2007, video)
Directed by Robin Whenary (Totnes, Devon, ENGLAND) 
 A no-budget, non-dialogue documentary about a man living and working on an organic farm in Cornwall, England.  Filmed towards the end of the two months he spent there, when the isolation and the sometimes harsh weather were making life harder.  A portrait of one man and his environment. 

Speechless (13min, 2008, video )
Directed by Scott Stark (Austin, TX)
3D photographs of human vulvae are animated and interwoven with surfaces and textures in natural and human-made environments. The genital images were taken from a set of ViewMaster 3D reels that accompanied a textbook entitled The Clitoris, published in 1976 by two medical professionals.

1 to 8 (4.5 min, 2008, 16mm on video)
Directed by Amy Schwartz (Montreal, Quebec, CANADA) 
A series of 30-second sequences, all based on the frames of super 8mm film and re-worked on the optical printer using different rhythms and methods.

Hold Me Now (4 min, 2008, video )
Directed by Michael Robinson (Spencer, NY)
A haunted sing-a-long made for the PDX Film Festival's 2008 Karaoke Throwdown.

 

Program #4
Sunday, 4pm
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts

O.W. Houts & Sons, Inc. (10 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Richie Sherman and Aaron Matthews (Pine Grove Malls, PA)
You’ve been given three days notice that your job of 25 years is ending. What will happen on that last day? O.W. Houts & Sons, Inc. is an independent short documentary about the final business day of Hout’s, a family-owned general store in Central Pennsylvania. After 88 years, Hout’s surrenders to make pressures and the current economic crisis, and shuts it doors leaving behind a devastated community. In lyrical, verité detail, the film follows the workers and patrons of Hout’s on their last day in the store and explores what happens when an emblematic American place succumbs to forces beyond its control.  

Right (13 min, 2008, video )
Directed by Scott Stark (Austin, TX)
A playful study of one of the U.S.A.'s most ubiquitous symbols, and an attempt to re-invent it as a thing of problematic beauty. Overlayed on top of the imagery are snippets of an email exchange I had with a person who was and remains a staunch apologist for the Bush administration's hundreds of lies leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as for the administration's many other crimes, corruptions and failings.

Cleopatra’s Teeth (17 min, 2008, 16mm)
Directed by Mika Kiburz (Moab, UT)
An oral historian pursues a long distance love affair with the most powerful woman of the ancient world, on an expedition to fill the cavities of decay.  Oh, how we must communicate with the future!  And upon its excavation in the year 8113 Common Era,  this text will be obsolete.

Night Side (4 min, 2008, 16mm)
Directed by Rebecca Meyers (Cambridge, MA)
A side of the universe turned away from the sun.

28.IV.81 (Bedouin Spark) (3 min, 2009, 16mm, silent)
Directed by Christopher Harris (Oviedo, Florida)
 “… the Bedouin spark one saw but never quite caught.”
The first installment of an ongoing series of films collectively titled “The Angle of Dust.” The series is dedicated to the poet Nathaniel Mackey and inspired by the improvisatory serial form of his epistolary novel Bedouin Hornbrook. Each film in the series is a single 100’ roll of film that is edited in-camera and improvised as it is shot. 

The Indomitable Human Spirit (approx 25 min, 2008, video +)*Juror’s presentation
Directed and performed by Brent Coughenour (Milwaukee, WI)
The Indomitable Human Spirit is a live audio-visual performance for thumb piano, Guitar Hero video game controller, and computer. Incorporating a broad array of audio and video analysis and synthesis strategies, the piece creates a hinted and tenuous relationship between sounds and images, between abstract and concrete, between performance gesture and software response.

Program #5
Sunday, 6pm
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts

To Be Regained (10 min, 2008, 16mm)
Directed by Zachary Iannazzi (Williamsburg, MA)
An exploration in wilderness authenticity, the images seen are of an unintended intersection between natural and artificial landscapes, where restoration efforts now attempt to return what was once lost. 

Visions of Wasted Time (5 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Neil Ira Needleman (Katonah, NY)
It’s impossible to look back at 1985, the year my father died, without feeling bitter about our relationship. To his consternation, I became interested in art, classical music, and shooting and editing moving pictures. These were useless things that didn’t fit into my father’s very practical notion of life. But I am what I am, and I shot what I shot. And I’m still shooting. And I guess I’m still a little bitter.

? Mystery Film ! (approx 10 min, 16mm +)

Somewhere Between Here and There (10 min, 2008, video)
Directed by Liss Platt (Hamilton, Ontario, CANADA)
Comprised of images of Brooklyn, New York, Hamilton, Ontario and the roadways that connect these cities, Somewhere Between Here and Thereis a rumination on places we call home. It explores the complexities of coming and going, and the loss experienced when trying to return. The experimental for and aesthetic of the film is, in part, a homage to my filmmaker friend, Diane Bonder.

Spillway Study/ Carpe Diez (7 min, 2009, 16mm x 3, +)
Directed and performed by Ross Nugent (Milwaukee, WI)
A projector performance for three 16mm projectors using reprinted found footage, colored gels, canned sound. Original footage credit: Tom Diez

Tape Film (5.5 min, 2007, 16mm, silent)
Directed by Chris Kennedy (Toronto, Ontario, CANADA)
Made as an experiment in hand-processing, the film cycles through five different film stocks and a variety of processing methods. The result creates dimensional havoc in the image. The concept of inside and outside is troubled and the act of enclosure creates a screen on which to project the filmmaker’s own image.

Into the Mass (6 min, 2007, 16mm x 2, silent)
Directed by Tomonari Nishikawa (Tokyo, JAPAN)
Images are originally shot by two super 8 cameras, capturing the side views of me riding a bicycle, from Marin County to San Francisco. The dual projection shows new landscape of photogenic city. The ride ended after joining "Critical Mass," an event occurs every last Friday of a month in San Francisco.