Still in Motion

The Advocate: "Ten Films You Must See at Outfest"

On Wednesday, Advocate.com's arts and entertainment editor, Corey Scholibo, posted a list of the top ten don't-miss films at this year's Outfest which began last night and goes through next Sunday. 

Among the films he lists are Gwendolyn Wynne's American Primitive, Nancy Kissam's Drool, Ella Lemhagen's Patrik, Age 1.5, and a film near-and-dear to my heart, Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons.  Scholibo says of PS that "it's the standout film of this year's festival.  . . . With a smart distributor, this film would have a shot at getting nominated for an Academy Award.  Not to be missed."

To see the rest of Scholibo's list, click here.  Visit the Outfest site here.

Tribeca Film Festival Launches in Doha, Qatar

Tribeca Enterprises has just announced the official dates for the inaugural Doha Tribeca Film Festival as October 29th through November 1st, 2009.  The fest is a collaboration between TFF and the Qatar Museums Authority and will showcase "the best of the local Qatari community, as well as the broader Arab culture."  This cultural partnership was formed by Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.  The first edition will be hosted at the Museum of Islamic Art.

And for those who read from right to left:

     مهرجان الدوحة-ترايبكا للأفلام 
                        يقام من 29 أكتوبر إلى 1 نوفمبر 2009
 

أعلن مهرجان الدوحة-ترايبكا للأفلام عن انطلاق دورته الأولى في الدوحة-قطر من  29اكتوبر إلى 1 نوفمبر من العام الجاري 2009 . وبالتعاون ما بين مهرجان ترايبكا للأفلام و إدارة متاحف قطر ,فإن مهرجان الدوحة-ترايبيكا للأفلام سيطرح أفضل ما في المجتمع القطري والثقافة العربية بشكل أوسع. المهرجان سيرحب بضيوفه من المجتمع القطري, وبالمشاركين من فضاءات صناعة السينما العالمية و سيواكب مختلف النشاطات الراقية و البرامج الأسرية التي تساعد في بناء، إلهام، وتحفيز صناع و منتجي الأفلام على التركيز على المبادرات السينمائية التربوية الرائدة في دولة قطر.

على المدى البعيد, فإن مهرجان الدوحة-ترايبيكا للأفلام سيوفر المناخ الملائم و الدعم اللازم و التحفيز المستمر لصناع السينما المبتدئين, كما أنه سيمهد لتوفير منبراً تعليمياً وتوجيهياً على مدار السنة للنشاط السينمائي.

مهرجان الدوحة-ترايبيكا للأفلام تأسس من خلال التعاون الثقافي بين سمو الشيخة المياسة بنت حمد بن خليفة آل ثاني، رئيس مجلس أمناء هيئة متاحف قطر ورئيس اللجنة المنظمة للمهرجان وبين مؤسسي مهرجان ترايبكا نيويورك , جان روزنثال,كريغ هاتكوف, و روبيرت دي نيرو. وقد تم الإعلان عن المهرجان في نوفمبر من العام الماضي 2008 , وسيستضيف متحف الفنون الأسلامية في الدوحة- قطر الدورة الأولى لفعالياته.

تفاصيل برنامج المهرجان سيتم الأعلان عنها خلال صيف/خريف عام 2009.

من؟ مهرجان دوحة - ترايبكا

ماذا؟ مهرجان سينمائي عالمي

متى؟ 29 أكتوبر- 1 نوفمبر 2009

أين؟ الدوحة - قطر

Don't Miss Two Fantastic Outdoor Screenings This Weekend

This Friday and Saturday, July 10 and 11, Rooftop Films will be showcasing two wonderful documentaries in Brooklyn as part of their '09 summer screening series. 

First up, on Friday night, Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly will present their inspiring and award-winning film, The Way We Get By.  Through greeting troops at the Bangor International Airport in Maine, a major US military deployment hub, three senior citizens not only transform their own lives, but touch thousands of others' lives, as well.  I've dropped into several Q&As for this at various festivals and audiences are always just completely over the moon--not a dry eye in the house.  Gaudet's and Pullapilly's first feature project has had a bountiful festival run and this will be the second time it has exhibited in the Big Apple.  (Thom Powers showed it as part of his Stranger Than Fiction series this past spring.)  You can read my laudatory review on the film here.  Festivities will be on the lawn of Automotive High School in Williamsburg.  Doors open at 8 for the regular drill: fabulous crowd, great live music from a local band, great film, after party with free drinks at Matchless on Manhattan Ave.  Click here to order tickets.

Gaudet and Pullapilly are also gearing up for the film's theatrical release débuting at the IFC Center here in New York on Friday, July 17, with the filmmakers in attendance at selected screenings throughout opening weekend.  Visit their website for more information and to read about the other special events throughout the week-long run with one of their outreach partners, Operation Homefront.  They currently have dates set for runs in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall (August 14) and in Boston at the Museum of Fine Art (August 27).  Repeat after me:  a successful New York opening weekend will enable the film to exhibit at more theaters across the nation!!

On Saturday night, Rooftop will present Bill Ross and Turner Ross' feature début, 45365, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at this year's SXSW festival in Austin (the film's premiere), recipient of an honorable mention nod for the HBO Emerging Filmmaker Award at Full Frame, and a special jury prize at the Newport International Film Festival.  Many, many people think this is an exquisite movie-going experience.  I would be one of them.  A grandly cinematic piece, it's meant to be seen on a big screen.  So here's your chance to go see it on one.

Over the course of nine months, the brothers Ross shot this graceful and colorful portrait of their hometown of Sidney, Ohio--the title is the town's postal code.  We, as viewers, get to sit back and let imagery, from the sublime to the mundane, wash over us in a sensorial kaleidoscope of sound and vision.  It's a strangely relaxing experience with small jolts of exhilaration and glee.  There is no omniscient voice intoning inane (nor poetic) recitations about life in a small town on the soundtrack; there are no talking head interviews; there is really no discernible plot line.  What the film does contain are snapshots crafted to make the most of the mood and timbre and rhythm of a place and its inhabitants. 

Even if one was raised in the middle of a big, bustling city, there is some weird kind of universal nostalgia evoked through the lens of these native small-town sons.  Like the place it photographs, the camera's gaze is wide-open and friendly, most times keeping a polite distance while picking up intimate details in an oblique way (except for scenes like the full-on smooch in a bar, which is unabashedly voyeuristic, and the pulse-pounding physicality of the running-with-the-bulls shots at the football game).  The sound design is quite sophisticated, providing a contrapuntal element in both rhythm and harmony to the visual panorama, the passing snippets of vérité interwoven with transcendent sequences of flight and fancy.  There is a whole sequence shot on an amusement park ride that is absolutely thrilling in its beauty, creating an integration between "real life" and "art" that is evocative of first crushes and first drunken kisses and first rollercoaster rides and all those other seminal and intense human experiences we all hope we can recall over and over again, even into our dotage.  I can't think of a better summertime movie.

45365 will be distributed through 7th Arts Releasing.

Why I Love New York, Reasons #849 - #854

Because you get to wake up in a Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn that's a throwback to 1978 Krakow, but with better shoe stores.  On the carpet in front of you are the two biggest, fattest, laziest cats to greet you with a blank morning stare, which uncannily matches their blank afternoon stare and their blank evening stare.  One of them (the female) has woken you up at some ungodly morning hour by trying to pounce on your head, but you've found the spiritual space in which to forgive her.

You then shuttle your way into the city with a coffee of Stumptown in your hand from the Variety Café on Graham, and arrive early enough at your first meeting point to breakfast alone with your book--a brioche and a cup of coffee, both the approximate size and heft of one of those aforementioned cats.

About an hour later, some absolutely lovely woman, who has taken a chunk out of her busy day to talk with you, sits across from you, orders some food and beverage and we then proceed to have the most wonderful conversation, gabbing like we chicks do.  That interview, with Cactus Three's Julie Goldman, will be posted here soon, so that's something to look forward to.  I learned a lot; I hope you will, too.

Then on to visit some of my favorite peeps in New York and get my bag filled with DVDs to view--the good, the bad, the ugly.  Again, I learn lots.  And sometimes, I'm lucky enough to see an entire film, finished by the grace of whomever,  a year after my last viewing of said film when it was just a few minutes long, dubbed a "work-in-progress," but, nonetheless, wrenched my sensibility around pretty good about my naïve relationship with history and the repercussions of what that naïveté might entail.  I'm obsessed with history right now for some reason and have luckily been asked to expound upon those thoughts for some articles--I'll keep you posted on that.  But suffice to say, that this imperative of nonfiction filmmakers today seems to be, not unsubtly stated, that we must take over where the world's corporate media stops short.  And it's stopping shorter and shorter lately, have you noticed that?

Then I met up with a filmmaker with whom I'm working who makes it possible for me to have a living, breathing model of what a graceful creature a human being can be.  That's a good thing to aspire to, I think; especially when I'm twisted up like a pretzel in all kinds of ways about my life right now.  It'll all be okay; we'll get through this.  Sentiments not spoken out loud, but expressed in the ways that she trusts you and has confidence in you and sees the worth that's hiding under a bushel.  I'll stop here 'cause I'm welling up.

Suffice to say that I did the pretentious, incomprehensible art opening bullshit and then went to have a lovely meal in a French outdoor bistro (where actual French people eat) with two of the most interesting people I've met in awhile, most interesting because they're so open and so enigmatic, simultaneously.  If the company you keep is any indication of your view of yourself, then things are looking kind of okay. 

Los Angeles: OUTFEST 2009

One of the longest-running film festivals in Los Angeles, Outfest, will stage its 27th iteration July 9 - 19 (starts this Thursday!). 

Presented by grand sponsor, HBO, Outfest will offer a week and a half of 182 narrative and nonfiction feature and short films and videos from 25 countries at seven different venues across the city, including outdoor screenings at Hollywood's Ford Amphitheatre, one of the most delightful places in LA to see a film under the stars. 

The program includes six gala premieres, 68 feature films, 10 shorts programs and thirteen panels and special events over the course of the eleven days.  This Thursday at downtown's beautiful Orpheum Theatre, the festival will present the 13th Annual Outfest Achievement Award right before the opening night film, La Mission, starring Benjamin Bratt.  On Monday the 13th at the Directors' Guild theater in Hollywood, the Legacy Project Gala will raise money to help preserve LGBT film history with ticket sales for a special screening of Choosing Children from 1984, a film Outfest and the UCLA Film and Television Archive restored this past year.  Also, Strand Releasing will showcase some of its catalog in a 20th anniversary film series. 

Jon Korn, one of the programmers for the festival says that he thinks "one of the biggest trends we're seeing in LGBT documentaries recently is an increased diversity in the types of stories being told and an increased range in their subject matter.  Whereas fifteen, or even ten years ago, a lot of films focused [solely] on the sexuality of their subjects as an exclusive topic.  Simply making a film about someone being gay or 'coming out' doesn't seem to have enough narrative heft anymore, barring some sort of extra twist."

He continues:  "While selecting films, the Director of Programming Kim Yutani, and I, as well as our crack staff of assistant programmers, certainly made an effort to program a wide variety of films.   . . . Of course, given the size and diversity of the LGBT community both here in LA and worldwide, this allowed for a lot of flexibility.  And I think our audiences appreciate the opportunity to take a chance and see films that might not directly reflect their individual lifestyles.  For example, a film like Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen, which explores the black transman community, will most likely have an audience made up of all kinds of different people.  On the other hand, we also have things such as Sounds Like Teen Spirit, which tracks the Teen Eurovision Song Contest.  There's barely any direct discussion of LGBT topics in the film, but we thought that our audiences would love it, regardless." 

Visit Outfest's online film guide to see all the other excellent fare on offer.

LIFE. SUPPORT. MUSIC. Airs on P.O.V. This Week

Eric Daniel Metzgar's second feature-length documentary is a beauty.  A deeply personal film about one of his music partners and close friends, Jason Crigler, Life. Support. Music. documents an extraordinary journey of healing, love and sheer determination on one man's part to sucker-punch the odds of recovery from a  near-fatal brain hemorrhage from a very discouraging diagnosis to performing and recording again.  And learning how to become a father to a daughter whose birth he doesn't remember.

In 2004, Jason Crigler's future was bright.  He was one of New York's hottest young guitarists on the rise; his wife, Monica, was pregnant with their first child.  At a gig one evening, Crigler suffered a severe hemorrhage.  After assessing his state, his caretakers wagered he would never emerge from a mostly vegetative state, would be unable to feed or care for himself, and would be unable to walk or move around on his own, let alone write and play music again.  With his and Monica's incredibly inspiring families' unrelenting support and encouragement, he proved them wrong.

This Tuesday, Life. Support. Music. will make its broadcast début on PBS' P.O.V. series; check local listings for showtimes.  Visit the film's website or its page on the P.O.V. site to learn more about the Criglers' story, read an interview with Metzgar, buy the DVD from Film Baby (both home and educational versions are available) and to listen to some of Jason's fantastic music.  You can also read an in-depth interview I conducted last year with the wonderful and talented Metzgar on the Shooting People site by clicking here.

Playing directly after Life. Support. Music. will be an encore presentation of an extraordinary 6-minute experimental piece that débuted on PBS in 2007, Ariana Gerstein's Alice Sees the Light.

Who's Knocking Back the US Premieres? Rooftop

Brooklyn's own Rooftop Films just announced a new partnership with the International Film Festival Rotterdam--way to go, team!  These alliances are so important and are going to be so beneficial to both filmmakers and programmers, alike.  And Rotterdam ain't no slouch in the festival department.  They will have their 39th go-round in 2010.

RF and IFFR will co-present two films during this summer season.  On July 17 and 18, there will be US premieres of Edwin's Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly from Indonesia, and Eugenio Polgovsky's Los Herederos from Mexico.  Hot stuff.

Also on that weekend, Rooftop will host a forum with film industry leaders about the future of independent, alternative film exhibition--a timely topic, no question.  Come rub elbows with some filmmakers you'd otherwise never meet.  Click here for all you need to know.

Art, Music, Fashion, Film: Click To Browse

There's a new online site called Put It On, "home to the world's undiscovered artists," be they filmmakers, musicians, fine artists or fashion designers. 

The newly-launched site enables artists from all over the world to connect and share work, display portfolios and sell their wares (the site does not take a commission).  You get a free gigabyte of space to showcase your talent, and you're able to stream audio and video work, including live personal broadcasts.  There is also the capability of getting everything translated into ten different languages which is very cool. 

The site is very simply designed for optimum navigation, nothing fancy, nothing revolutionary; however, it provides another place to reach your audience and potential fans and supporters.  Click here to take a test drive. 

OCTOBER COUNTRY

Social conservatives in today's society often express concern over the purported decay of the traditional family and read ominous signs that this is leading to the crumbling of contemporary society.  They feel that family structures of the past were superior to those of today where families were more stable, much happier and healthier when they did not have to contend with illegitimate children, divorce, drug abuse, child molestation, domestic violence, and other Jerry Springer staples. You know, those low class issues with which the traditional, normal family unit never, ever has to contend.

In their feature film début, October Country, writers, producers and directors, Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher collaborate with members of Mosher’s family to create a portrait of a family that “wouldn’t know normal if it fell on us,” in the words of patriarch, Don.  And yet there is bottomless strength, raw honesty, sardonic humor and fierce love on display from the first frame to the last as each member grapples with their personal demons, standing vigilant over the ghosts of their pasts, hopeful that they will prevail, while simultaneously cognizant of the fact that, at any moment, they can be pulled under by forces so strong that their lives will disintegrate into vapor.  I believe this film represents such a healing force, not only for this family, but for us all, that that vigilance has a damned good chance of prevailing, even upon the most hurtful, damaging moments of our lives.

Shot over the course of one year, from Halloween to Halloween, in the town of Mohawk Valley, New York—where like so many working-class towns in this country, the only place of employment is the local plant or factory (in this case the Remington Arms Company) and the only place left to shop is the WalMart—Palmieri and Mosher and the Mosher clan show us, in exquisite and painful ways, that the modern-day family is holding strong despite contending with every social ill in the book, thank you very much.  As matriarch, Dottie, says at the beginning of the film: “If you don’t have family, then you don’t have anything.  Family is everything.”

The film just won the Grand Jury Award for Best US Feature at SILVERDOCS this past weekend and is up for the big doc prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival this week, where it should have an exceedingly good chance of winning, for Palmieri and Mosher have created a small and quiet masterpiece of transcendent filmmaking.  The movie is based on Mosher’s essays and photographs of his family and the town in which they reside. Palmieri, as the cinematographer and editor, gorgeously captures the shattered fairytales of Americana and the family unit that is supposed to reside within those fairytales, seemingly waiting for the most highly prismatic light at every moment with which to frame it all. I have not often seen too many other instances where visual, aural and emotional instincts are so delicate and clean and pure.  That delicacy and purity is in Palmieri and Mosher’s photography and in their musical score.  It is also in their deep sensitivity to the liminal world around them, their subtle innate understanding of human emotional strength, and in their flawless cinematic craftsmanship. I was utterly transported.

Their storytelling partners are the shuttered, yet eloquent Don; the stoic, emotionally resonant Dottie; the wry and weary Donna and her two daughters, pain-filled young mother Daneal, and the young Desi (pictured) who provides both uproarious comic relief and the wisdom of the ages; Don’s outcast and lonely sister, Denise, our guide into the spirit world (“Every family has its ghosts.  You just have to figure out how to live with them.”); and the damaged foster kid, Chris, an outsider’s outsider, shunted aside since he was five by his birth family and out for revenge ever since because of it, even against the people who have shown him nothing but love and forgiveness.  It’s quite a crew, and I fell madly in love with every single one of them.

Every aspiring filmmaker should watch this, for it will teach you everything you need to know about the craft of making great nonfiction cinema, one where the complicity of directors and subjects creates epic eloquence and poetry and grace.  In this case, the devil will definitely not be taking the hindmost for He has been called out for the weakling that He is.  It is the “weak” that are strong and fiery, and they will survive—as will their descendants. 

[Note: This review also appears on the Hammer to Nail site.]

Critic and Audience Fave AFGHAN STAR Now in Theaters

Havana Marking, director of Afghan Star, her feature directorial début, walked away with the Best World Cinema Documentary Director and World Cinema Documentary Audience Awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival.  Beginning this Friday at Manhattan's Cinema Village, in advance of its national theatrical roll-out, New York audiences will get to see this highly entertaining and deeply moving story of a country trying to awaken and normalize itself from decades of foreign invasion and brutal civil war--not to mention the banishment of music, dance, film and television since 1996 by the strictest faction of the Taliban regime. 

When those restrictions were lifted in 2004, Tolo TV in Afghanistan, among hundreds of others, jumped into the broadcast fray and produced a talent show called "Afghan Star," now in its fifth season, a wildly popular phenomenon where singers of every ethnicity could compete for the top prize in an "American Idol"-type weekly showdown, a vast majority of the audience casting votes for their favorite by mobile phone.  Marking's film focuses on the four finalists competing for cash prizes and a record deal.  Two of the finalists happen to be female and their participation caused a national uproar, particularly when one of them, in an act of defiance and rebellion when she was voted off the show, uncovered her head and danced around the stage with approximately 11 million of her countrymen and countrywomen watching.

Originally commissioned by Sandra Whipham, formerly of More 4, and Maxyne Franklin of the Britdoc Foundation, Afghan Star is an Afghan / British co-production, exec produced by Jahid and Saad Mohseni's Kaboora Productions / Tolo TV (which produces an astonishing 14 hours a day of programming), and Mike Lerner and Martin Herring of London-based Roast Beef Productions.

Go to the Zeitgeist site and click on "where to see the film" for more information on the 12-state national roll-out.  You can also watch producer Saad Mohseni's wonderful interview from earlier this month with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" by clicking here. 

Broken record time, but the first weekend is always, always so key for an independent film's theatrical success.  Flood that theater, people! 

Another SILVERDOCS Comes to a Close

Sorry I haven't posted in a bit but festivals are always such a whirlwind.  Today, the 7th AFI Discovery SILVERDOCS Documentary Film Festival comes to a close and I've seen a multitude of great films here (stellar programming) and encountered some of the makers who crafted these wonderful pieces of cinema.  I'll be writing commentary here on SIM and on H2N and, perhaps, some other spots throughout the week, so stay tuned for that.  I'm looking forward to catching up on all the things happening back home in NYC, as well.  (Film still from Nanna Frank Møller's gorgeous film from Denmark, Let's Be Together.)

In the meantime, you can read who won the big prizes at the awards ceremony yesterday afternoon on the FILMMAKER site.  And a very special thanks to my hot little spinner of a friend, Ionic, for making my last night in Silver Spring bearable; bless you, my brother.

SILVERDOCS In Stereo

Two, two, two mints in one:  On the IDA site, a wonderful chat between SILVERDOCS' artistic head, Sky Sitney, and IDA's Tamara Krinsky.  There's also a fresh post from moi on the FILMMAKER site about the upcoming fest (starts Monday, in fact, damn).  More and more friends keep writing me that they'll be there and that makes me quite happy.  And most of those friends are filmmakers with films in the fest so I'm keeping good company, apparently.  Very brilliant work out there, boys and girls, thank you from the bottom of my black little heart.

If you really want to delve deep, you can also read my interview with Sky on this blog.  I'm really looking forward to this.  See you in Discovery Land.  Lots of reasons for drinking there.

More On This Kind of Crap in a Bit (thanks, Dario)

Attention All Micro Budgeters

If you are currently raising money for an art project--film, installation, mixed media, anything visually based, really--and you are raising that money essentially on your own and are considering the micro-budget route (many sources of funding, small amounts from each funder model), I would like to talk to you, please.  Get in touch if you like or give your project a shout-out in the comments section--thanks.

Anthology Hosts New York Premiere of FLicKeR

Alive Mind is presenting the New York City premiere of FLicKeR.  This award-winning documentary will début this Saturday the 13th at 8:00 p.m. with another showing on Sunday, also at 8:00 p.m., at Anthology Film Archives.  Director, Nik Sheehan, will be in attendance along with special guests from the film.  DJ Spooky will be appearing in person for the Sunday show.

The film chronicles the life and ideas of Brion Gysin (1916 - 1986), poet, artist and mystic who created a "dream machine," a drug-free way to achieve altered states of mind through dancing pulses of light, which he and his friends believed would revolutionize human consciousness.  Gysin believed in the revolutionary power of art and Sheehan's film explores the nature of art and consciousness through Gysin's legacy and his relationships with musicians Kurt Cobain, Marianne Faithfull and Iggy Pop, poet John Giorno, filmmaker Kenneth Anger and many other shining lights of 20th century counterculture art.  There will also be a special program of classic "Flicker" films by Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits, Peter Kubelka, William S. Burroughs and Anthony Balch, among others.  San Francisco Weekly says of the film, "The rare documentary that jumps beyond informative and entertaining into the realm of mind-expanding, FLicKeR blends revelatory biography, energizing philosophy, and seductive trances."

To order tickets and see the rest of Anthology's special weekend program, click here.

Two Great Doc Panels Part of Rooftop Films' Panorama

Shooting People is partnering with Rooftop Films, Cinereach and IndiePix to stage two great panels as part of Rooftop Films' four day Panorama Weekend which starts tomorrow, Wednesday the 10th, and goes through Saturday the 13th.  To see what's screening each evening, visit the Rooftop site.

The panels will take place back to back on Saturday evening on the roof of the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus / Park Slope, Brooklyn.  From 5:00 - 6:00 p.m., there will be a panel called "Message vs. Craft: The Art of Effective 'Issue' Storytelling" moderated by Lina Srivastava.  Srivastava will talk with Justin Schein, co-director of No Impact Man, Fabio Wuytack, director of Persona Non Grata (which will be shown that same evening at 9:00 p.m., its US premiere), Bilge Ebiri, film critic at New York Magazine, Leah Sapin of Arts Engine and Paola Mendoza, co-director of Entre Nos, about taking on topics related to social justice or human rights in hopes of influencing public opinion and inspiring action.  They will discuss how a "social issue" filmmaker has to balance the need to educate with the imperative to entertain.

At 6:30, there will be another panel discussion called "Filmmaking Strategy: Tips, Tools and Wisdom to Help You Make the Right Decisions for Your Film."  This group will discuss how to learn to be the best advocate for your own project by pondering questions such as: How much work (and what work, specifically) do you need to achieve on your own before approaching a funder?  How can you tailor your pitch to communicate your vision to a foundation versus an equity investor?  What other funding options are there?  How do you balance traditional outreach to festivals, sales agents, broadcasters and distributors with the need to also create your own fan base?  Which distribution deals do you accept?  How do you know when a deal is a good one?  The panelists are Adeila Ladjevardi of Cinereach, Janet Brown of Cinetic, Liz Ogilvie of B-Side, Tia Lessin, co-director of Trouble the Water, Andy Bichlbaum, co-director of The Yes Men Fix the World, and Simon Kilmurry, executive director of PBS' P.O.V. series.  Should be enlightening. 

To order tickets ($9) for the evening's program which includes the two panel discussions, a courtyard reception with free-flowing sangria, live music presented by Sound Fix Records and the above-mentioned film screening, click here.  If it rains, which it's been doing a lot of lately, everything will be held indoors at the same location.

9th Annual Media That Matters Film Festival Unveils '09 Selections

I had the privilege of being asked to be part of the Arts Engine jury to help select the twelve short films for the traveling and online festival this year. 

Preceding the premiere screening at 6:00 p.m. this Wednesday the 3rd, there will be an inaugural impACT Salon where program partners will work with the selected filmmakers on outreach campaigns and new media projects throughout the year.  The event will feature "Take Action" opportunities for the attending audience at the world premiere of the festival.  At 7:00 at the School of Visual Arts Theater, the first public screening (and online launch) will showcase the '09 collection.  The festival is being co-presented by Cinereach; the organization just announced a new partnership with Arts Engine to further support young, socially-conscious filmmakers.  There will be post-screening discussions with all attending filmmakers and on Thursday, the 4th, from 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m., HBO Headquarters will host an awards ceremony for them. 

If you represent an organization or venue that would be interested in screening any, or all, of the Media That Matters films, contact festival@artsengine.net.  A DVD of the collection will also be available for purchase online directly following the premiere, or you can pre-order it now by clicking here.  To order tickets for the screening in New York this week, click here.

To My Beloved Granny Rose February 11, 1911 - May 31, 2009

She was a marvel and a blessing, that's all I know how to say right now.  98 years of love, laughter and generosity that knew no bounds.  As a wordsmith, I am speechless.

Doc U Session with Ross Kauffman

The International Documentary Association is presenting an evening with Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Ross Kauffman, as part of their '09 Doc U seminar series in Los Angeles, home of IDA's headquarters. 

Marjan Safinia, member of the Board of Directors of the IDA and co-host of The D-Word Community (which you should join if you're at all involved in nonfiction cinema), will moderate a special evening with Kauffman as he talks about the journey making Born Into Brothels, his very first film, co-directed with Zana Briski, which went on to garner an Oscar for Best Feature Documentary in 2005.  Kauffman's latest jewel, In a Dream, which he exec produced, was shortlisted for the '09 Oscars, and he is the cinematographer of Senain Kheshgi and Geeta V. Patel's Project Kashmir.  No slouch, our Ross.

You can register by clicking here for the Thursday June 11 event at the Kodak Screening Room in Hollywood.  Keep checking the IDA site and this blog for information on upcoming Doc U sessions:  next one up will be Thursday, July 9.

I've Been Told to Re-Post / Rejoice the Fuck Out of This Article

From a Hammer to Nail comrade, so here it is:  go forth and rejoice and enjoy the fuck out of it.  I'm mighty proud to be an H2N contributor.  Times are tough in case you haven't noticed--support independent film!

Dardenne Retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

Beginning today and going through next Tuesday, June 2, with a special appearance by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne this Friday night at 8:30 p.m., the Film Society of Lincoln Center is presenting the most extensive Dardenne retrospective ever with eight of their films on exhibit, some rarely seen.  The Kent Jones conversation with the Dardennes will be followed by the 6:40 p.m. screening of La Promesse (a ticket to the screening includes the live chat).  A series pass is $40, $30 for Film Society members, admitting one person to five titles in the series. 

The other titles exhibiting are L'Enfant, Falsch, Le Fils, Je pense à vous, Lorsque le bateau de Léon M. descendit la Meuse pour la première fois, R. . . ne répond plus, and Rosetta.  Go to the Film Society's website to purchase tickets (you can also buy them in person at the box office), a complete screening schedule and more information on the program.  Don't miss it.

Grants Are Hatching at Chicken & Egg

Working Films is now accepting applications for the first annual Fledgling Fund and Chicken & Egg Pictures Grantee Residency at the LifeBridge Sanctuary Retreat Center August 12 - 15.  Eight filmmakers will be selected to participate in the retreat where they will concentrate on audience and community engagement campaigning for their nonfiction films.  All applicants must already be a grantee of either Fledgling or Chicken & Egg.

Working Films will guide the proceedings, educating filmmakers on how to link their film projects to organizations committed to social change.  The deadline is the 24th of June.  Click here for more information.

The Good Pitch at IFP's Independent Film Week

Just blew back in from the countryside where I did nothing but eat, sleep and swim for four days so am still blissfully flatlining.  However, wanted to mention, since it's sneaking up fast, that the deadline for entering your nonfiction project for the Good Pitch at Independent Film Week has been pushed to June 1.

The call for entries is now open for the Good Pitch's third forum in North America--the first was at Hot Docs in Toronto last month at the Toronto Documentary Forum; next up will be the one at SILVERDOCS (check the entire program, up since last Thursday, and the projects that have been chosen for the Good Pitch by clicking here); the third one will be in September at the 31st Annual Project Forum in New York City's Chelsea district.

In accordance with the UN's Millennium Development Goals, the round table format is designed to maximize the "powerful convergence of interests between issue-based organizations, documentary storytellers, broadcasters/funders/distributors, and audiences hungry for relevant, moving stories of our current realities."

You Can Have Both Love and Art: A Conversation with BARBARA HAMMER

Artist and filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, has made close to eighty (yes, that's 8-0) film and video pieces since 1972.  She says that her work is about "revealing, showing, expressing, uncovering that which has not been seen before."  Working mostly within a non-linear, metaphorical, vertically-structured methodology, she has created an extraordinary body of work, groundbreaking in its bold imperative to break taboos with her subject matter and in the ways in which a viewer interacts, physically and emotionally, with the images she projects on the screen.  In the 1970s, Hammer came out at a time when it was "a political act to work and speak as a lesbian artist in the dominant art world, and to speak as an avant-garde artist to a lesbian and gay audience."

Each decade since then has marked a new direction in her work since she never ceases to explore and delve deeply into the innermost reserves of her being to talk about sexuality, womanhood, illness, aging and mortality.  Her pieces are unflinching and raw in their immediacy, yet always carefully structured, aesthetically rich and rigorous in their use of the tools of modern media.  To sustain this creative impulse over a lifetime is truly remarkable.  What is also truly remarkable is that after just recently surviving ovarian cancer, this month Hammer celebrates her 70th birthday.  This year will be one of celebration with several international retrospectives in the works and the forthcoming publication of her book, simply called HAMMER.

A couple of days before her birthday, I visited her in her studio in New York's West Village to talk about this dynamic compulsion to constantly be in a state of creativity and what keeps her inspired:

Still in Motion (SIM):  You’re going to be celebrating a significant birthday in a couple of days.  And the last few years have been an exceedingly intense time, as well, filled with lots of profound transitions.  As an artist, a creator, how does this period of your life differ from any other time in your career?  You share a lot about what you’ve been through recently in your new film, A Horse Is Not a Metaphor; what compelled you to document your illness and survival?

Barbara Hammer (BH):  After four decades of work, I developed ovarian cancer.  Upon its discovery, I went through surgery and eighteen rounds of intensive chemotherapy, very aggressive treatment.  I’ve been in remission for two and a half years.  I never thought I was going to make a film of my experience, never ever.  When people would ask me about it, I would say no.  I went deep inside myself during that time and hung out very quietly and waited for a recovery.  Then, as I got better, I did feel like I wanted to give people hope because ovarian cancer is pretty severe.  I was also able to get women who own ranches to lend me their horses to ride—I love to ride.  You know, the C-word helps you get things sometimes [laughs].  You get on the airplane first, that kind of thing.

But now, I’ve been in remission for two and a half years, the film has been out for about a year and life has come back to normal.  At first I was just so happy to be alive; I still am.  I just noticed every little thing, like irises pushing through the soil in early spring; those things meant a great deal to me because it helped me to push through, too.  Now I find myself wrapping up because once you get a life-threatening illness. . .

SIM:  “Wrapping up” in what sense?

BH:  I’m finishing a book; I’m handing it in on Friday.  I just got all the stills together to burn a DVD today, and tomorrow I’ll go through some details in the manuscript and I’ve been working on the captions for the stills for a couple of weeks.  So, I’m really eager to turn this year’s work, nine months of work, over to the editor [Amy Scholder at The Feminist Press at CUNY] and take a breather, ride a horse, get outside.

Also, after I got cancer, I worked with my assistant to get my film archive in order.  I found that I was missing elements of one film, Bent Time [1983]. I wrote a grant proposal and New York Women in Film is paying a lab to restore it.  I just got an email before you came in the door that the MoMA [Museum of Modern Art] is buying it, along with A Horse Is Not a Metaphor and Lover Other [2006].  They’ll also be giving me a retrospective next year.

SIM:  You’re having a series of retrospectives next year.

BH:  Right now, it’ll be the MoMA, which will be in conjunction with the kickoff of the book, and then it’ll go to the Tate Modern in London and then the Reina Sofia in Madrid.  There’s also a possibility that the Irish Film Institute will do something, as well; I’ve heard they’re interested.

SIM:  So you’ll have a very well-deserved year of celebration.

BH:  Yes, a year of travel and celebration.  So, I’m getting my archives in order and I also have a large paper archive [pointing to many boxes lined up against a wall of her studio] to get organized by decade, or by film.  Now, I need to sell them to a university; there’s one that’s very interested in 1970s work.  My archive goes back to the 60s.  I kept everything all the way through.  I didn’t know that it was valuable but there’s interest.  Universities, oddly, don’t purchase film collections, so far.  The artist gifts them to the institution.  The archive will be compiled and moved out when it feels like the right moment.

Every time there’s a completion, there are new beginnings.  I don’t know what mine will be.  The trouble is, I always have a new film.  I have a film I’m working on now with a young woman called Generations: Two Bolex Dykes.  We’re waiting on a grant for that.  We just did a shoot last Wednesday, so we finished all our shooting.  She hand develops and cross processes the work so it looks very do-it-yourself.  We still have some sound to collect and then we both will be editing over the summer.  The idea is based on Shirley Clarke’s Bridges Go Round, a film she made in 1958 about the bridges of New York City, a beautiful film.  There’s a jazz track and also a classical track.  When you watch the film, the images are repeated but the sound is different; you feel like you’ve seen two different films or two different versions.  You can’t remember that you ever saw a certain shot before, and yet you have.

We’re going further with that by taking all of our visual elements and all our sound elements.  She'll get the packet and I'll get the packet.  It’s a mentoring kind of a project but we’re going to reverse stereotypes since she’ll edit in film and I’ll edit digitally; we’ll have the exact same material and then her work and mine will be joined, displaying two different versions.

SIM:  How does she perceive herself as a working artist versus your own perception of yourself as a working artist?  Are there generational differences that you can discern, different approaches or sensibilities?

BH:  I think in the case of Gina Carducci, I wanted to inspire her to make work because she hasn’t made a film for five years.  Here was a talented person not using her talent.  Like many women and men who come out of college and are used to the structure of that environment—due dates, assignments, etc.—once you’re out in the working world, you can lose your way.  She works at a film lab so she’s working with film all day long.  It’s hard to generate enthusiasm for her own work.  But she’s so enthused now.  She lives, drinks and breathes this film.  I have to say, “Down, girl!.”  I wanted to jumpstart her.  The letting go will be in the editing process where we each do our own work.  If we continued to work together through the editing process, there would be a concern that at the end, she would not make a film again.  I don’t really think so in this case.  At some point, the person who’s mentoring wants the one being mentored to recognize her own development and then there’s a letting go.  This is the reason for this kind of editing structure.  She’ll gain so much authority.  The other leg up for her will be making the film with me.  She’ll get it shown at the Museum of Modern Art and it’s only her second film.  Her first film is great; she showed it at the Venice Film Festival [Stone Welcome Mat, 2003].

The bottom line is that I can’t generalize about a generation; I can only talk about this one person that I chose to work with to pass on my skills.  She’s a technician so she’s very measured in her approach to film and I’m not a technician; in fact, one might say I’m the opposite of that.  I work very spontaneously.  We both mentored one another in those differences.  That’s the great thing about collaborating.  You get to be more than yourself.

SIM:  What kind of characteristics does it take to be a working artist over the course of a lifetime?

BH:  Belief in yourself:  that you’re worth it, that you’ve got something to say and that it’s important to say it.

SIM:  Does that belief ebb and flow?  Is it fairly consistent?  Do you have a choice in the matter?

BH:  For me, it wasn’t so much a choice as much as it was a compulsion.  I was driven to make work.  I felt like I had a lot to say, especially after I came out.  In my film history classes there was absolutely no women's cinema, let alone lesbian cinema.  I spent a whole semester watching films at least three hours a week in this class and then we finally saw the films of Maya Deren [born, Eleanora Derenkosky].  Then I knew, for sure, I was a filmmaker.  There was a whole blank screen to be filled. 

I guess after a while I thought, if I kept making work, it wouldn’t be ignored.  Stan Brakhage was my model; he made a hundred films.  Like him, I have a discipline and a commitment.  I don’t think you can make discoveries in your work unless you’re at it every day—discoveries in writing or interviewing techniques, whatever you’re doing.  I have chosen to make this my life’s work.  It never came up, an option to do something else.

SIM:  Tell me more about how someone like Deren inspired and informed your own work.

BH:  She was not only the director of her own films, she was in the films.  Her presence in her films exhibited a kind of creative imagination I'd never seen before.  You knew that an image of a person clad in black with a mirror had come from her own aesthetic decision or dream or vision.  It gave me, and many others, the strength to believe in my own vision and put it out there, not do a traditional narrative or a traditional documentary, but to work in film as poetry.  That’s what she writes about. 

Also, there’s Man With a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov (1929).  That inspired me because of the spontaneity, because the camera was a protagonist.  Somehow the camera’s always been my friend.  In fact, in one of my films, Synch Touch from 1981, I take it to bed with me.  People film me with my camera in bed.  Even when I took women out of the cinema and I was the woman behind the camera, you feel the camera as it’s swimming underwater in Pond and Waterfall [1982]; you feel the presence of the gathering of that light by this machine.  When I use the optical printer, I try not to hide the fact that I’m using a printer; I show the frameline; you hear the click of the printer in Optic Nerves [1985].

SIM:  Sensuality and an immediacy are markers of all your work.  You’re very fluid in terms of form, as well, allowing the material to dictate the way in which you tell a certain story.  A lot of your work strives for a three-dimensionality, a physical heft and weight to it, which is accomplished in many of your pieces.  You also pay a lot of attention to sound and music, which create really rich counterpoints to your visuals.

BH:  I did some experiments by leaving the sound completely off.  In the instance of Multiple Orgasm [1976], you see eight orgasms on the screen [four vaginal, four facial].  I left it silent because I wanted people to hear their neighbors in the theater breathing.  But everybody held his or her breath [laughs].  So that didn’t work.  Another film in which I experimented with this silence was Pond and Waterfall, which I just mentioned, an underwater film.  I wanted people to be aware of how much water they have coursing through their veins and their blood.  So I brought stethoscopes and had members of the audience wear them and listen to their own blood flow.  That was their soundtrack.  I also chucked that because everybody was spending so much time looking for some area on their body to listen to, they missed the film.  So those films both remain silent experiences for the viewer, as much silence as there can be, anyway.

I like to work with composers.  Meredith Monk is someone I work with a lot.  Neil Rolnick is another one, as is Helen Thorington.  There’s also Pamela Z.  I’ve been lucky to have been involved with a number of composers who bring their talent to the film.  I specialize in visual imagery; they specialize in aural imagery.

I’ve also collaborated with other filmmakers from time to time but only for three or four films.  But sound collaboration is something I’ll always be interested in.  For me, filmmaking is a very singular process, a very internal process.

SIM:  How has your relationship with audience changed over the course of your career?  Have there been certain times when your work seemed to resonate more forcefully than at other times due to what was happening in the modern culture?

BH:  In the late 60s and through most of the 70s, I didn’t know there were places to show films like museums or cinemathèques.  I showed my films at women’s centers, dyke coffee houses, bars, community buildings, anyplace where there could be a projector installed and a wall to project images upon.  One day, Terry Cannon called me from the Los Angeles Filmforum and invited me out of my community in San Francisco to come down to L.A.  I went down and was given a check at the end of the screening, imagine.  I showed my lesbian films to a mixed audience, most of whom I don’t think were gay.  People enjoyed them.  I got paid for it.  There was a program, an announcement in the Los Angeles Times.  I saw a whole world open up. 

Audiences have changed.  They’re more sophisticated now.  There’s still a small group who really like experimental films.  But people also like to peg you.  Audiences get stuck in their ways just as much as any of us can.  I made a dozen documentaries during the 90s, essay documentaries for the most part; some are more traditional, as in cases when I was working in a country other than the US, or in a language other than English.  When I returned to experimental film with A Horse Is Not a Metaphor, I think most people who knew my name thought I had made a straightforward film on what it’s like to have cancer.  They wouldn’t know the depth of imagery I’ve used, the layering I use for the emotional development of the piece through verticality.  Maya Deren talks about this poetic way of working, how a poem carries emotion versus how a story does; the images follow one another in a narrative.  This poetic way of working is when images build upon one another.  Mine builds in Horse through superimposition.  So this is a way that I can let audiences know there’s been a change in the way I’m approaching current work.  It behooves all of us to mix it up a bit and be more open to different ways in which an artist might work.

SIM:  Thankfully, there are curators and programmers out there that will help to push that agenda a bit, although they’re few and far between.  The stakes are pretty high for artists now and being creative in the work is not enough anymore, somehow.  The creativity has to extend to how you supplant that work into the larger community.  One might say that audiences now are too sophisticated, quick to have certain expectations, spoiled for choice. 

BH:  I never chose to make big budget films, which perhaps might be an expectation after a certain point in one’s career.  I never chose to make films that would be shown commercially.  I don’t think about meeting anyone else’s expectations.  It would be fine if I did but it’s just not my predilection to do so.  We are definitely more sophisticated—we have the Internet, YouTube where you can see, literally, anything, anytime; we can download programs whenever we want.  But still, experimental cinema doesn’t have its place in the world that it should have.  It should be just as strong as documentary film.

SIM:  Why do you think it isn’t?

BH:  Because young people aren’t exposed to it.  How many eighth graders see the work of Maya Deren?  I’ve taken my films, not the sexual films, but the underwater films, for instance, and shown them to kids that age.  They all got it, of course.  I think that’s the reason why we shut down and just learn that there’s "Howdy Doody"—well, that’s dating me, but—you know, "Sesame Street" and whatever else is on now.

SIM:  Well, kids are always being talked at; they’re still not listened to in any kind of conscientious way by adults.  They aren’t really allowed to take in things without some kind of mitigating filter.  What you also have in your work, to a large degree, is a lot of joy and humor which is very childlike, no matter the subject matter or how it’s treated.  That resonates deeply with anyone of any age.  You can’t fake that kind of thing.  It’s very effective in breaking silences, breaking societal rigidity or its denial to acknowledge a whole population of people. 

BH:  I think that by playing you can definitely change people’s minds.  But it’s not like that was a conscious decision on my part to use humor for that affect or to think of play as a political strategy.  It is, but I wasn’t conscious of it.  I just think it’s more fun; I mean if you can find a way to enjoy, especially if you’re not getting paid for what you’re doing as many of us artists are not, well, we have to find our own pleasure.  Pleasure can be in the making of work or the discovery of a creative impulse; concomitantly, you get to share that pleasure with others.  Maybe they will enjoy more, too.  Minds are changed through laughter, maybe more so than strict political treatises.  That’s not always the case.  There’s some humor in Nitrate Kisses [1992] but it’s also a very serious film.

SIM:  What’s happening in experimental work now that excites you?

BH:  I’ve been seeing a lot of this throw-away kind of art, in terms of visual art.  I go to galleries a lot and I see this way of being hugely creative in putting things together out of refuse, found objects or cut up pieces of velvet thrown on the floor.  There’s a feeling that anything can be art right now.  It’s a period where a certain kind of art like “abstract expressionism” or “geometric art” or “feminist art” is not dominating the field.  In other words, everybody is out there working.  There’s a rebellion against the wealth of the 80s and 90s before the recession.  So that if you make something out of ice cream sticks and Kleenex, it’s a good way to show a creative piece made by a creative mind out of the simplest materials.  I think it’s an attempt to shake up the curators and collectors and the big auction houses that have raised the prices so high.  Those things become a truer sign of the times.  And, in turn, they are curated, gathered, purchased.  It’s all cyclical.

SIM:  It’s so hard to stem the tide of the consumer culture in which we live.  Set in motion several decades ago, it really shows no signs of faltering, although the economic times now dictate a more conservative and responsible approach to how we spend our money.  But it is relentless, nonetheless.  It still seems that if one’s work is not commodified in some way, somehow you’ve missed the boat.  There’s an intense fear of obscurity.

BH:  It’s hard when there are just so many celebrities that are allowed an extraordinary amount of attention.  But I tend to ignore most or all of that kind of thing; I don’t know who the movie stars are.  I’m sort of a cultural nerd.  I don’t really pay much attention.  But that’s not the case in terms of “rich” culture, just the “junk” culture that’s around.  Sometimes the celebrity is well-deserved but the big deal about famous people doesn’t affect me much.  I want to talk about somebody who’s really pushing art and is having a show opening.  Carrie Moyer is a painter I respect very much. Sadie Benning has a show up right now at the Whitney, which I’ve heard is very good.  There’s Derek Jarman. 

[She gets up and grabs a bunch of DVDs stacked on a desk.]  What do I have here?  I showed my work at the London Film Archive.  They’re not allowed to pay you money for your work, but they asked me what I wanted from their collection and they gave me these.  Chris Welsby does beautiful landscape work in his experimental films.  Here’s [Abbas] Kiarostami from Iran; François Ozon, a very sensual filmmaker and I love the French language; Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating, one of my favorite films ever; Still Life by Jia Zhang-ke which is a brilliant film; Looking for Langston by Isaac Julien, another great filmmaker from England.  Oh, this is one of my favorites, Woman in the Dunes by [Hioshi] Teshigahara—it’s an incredibly sensuous film, skin against the sand, the black and white cinematography, the sand constantly coming down, always falling; there can be just one image in a film that inspires you and then you love that film.  Oh, this is great, too; have you seen Pasolini’s Salò?  That really shocked me when I saw it.  I love it.  I love taking taboos and breaking them and he was a master.  He had people eating in the toilet and shitting at the table publicly.  It just makes us think how we’ve proscribed ourselves culturally in a very strict way.  None of us are free. 

Taboos are there to be broken—why were they formed and who formed them and how many centuries old are they?  Where are we now?  Why can’t we talk about menstruation?  We are now, but for a long time we weren’t.  Menopause, cancer, all of the things that are the “fear” words, you know?  Old ladies making love?  They’re not sexual anymore.  There’s nothing that’s sacred as far as I’m concerned, that shouldn’t be looked at, shouldn’t be explored.

SIM:  For your forthcoming book, what themes emerged for you as you were writing it and structuring it?  You have this opportunity to write your own “tome” if you will, instead of having somebody else do it.

BH:  It has been a great opportunity.  Essentially, the book is by decade.  It’s the easiest way, really, because each decade, I took a different direction in my work.  In the 70s it was a time of coming out, both physically and with my films.  I wanted to put lesbians on the screen for the 20th century and into the 21st, so there were a whole group of films that did break taboos from that period.  In the 80s, I wanted to be known as an artist because I was only known as a lesbian filmmaker.  That wasn’t the way I defined myself; I defined myself as an artist.  So I took women out of my cinema and kept working on films that exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art until I got my own show.  There was also the thrill of working with an optical printer.  I tried to become a painter before I became a filmmaker but I decided I could use every frame as if it were a painting.  With the optical printer, I was able to paint the film as I did in Optic Nerves [1989], a film about my grandmother in a nursing home.  John Hanhardt saw it.  I was teaching in Chicago and I sent him a print.  He called me up, told me it was brilliant and that he wanted to put me in the [Whitney] Biennial.  That put me on the map as a film artist. 

From there, we moved into identity politics in the 90s and I felt I had already been there way before then.  I was doing that in the 70s.  But I returned to it with more of a “cultural studies” theoretical bent and brought theory into my practice, developing an intellectually rich cinema, as well as this hallmark of sensuality that I’d done in the 70s.  Now, in the 2000s, I’m looking at mortality; I’m looking at death and that shouldn’t be something that we’re afraid of talking about.

SIM:  That’s the taboo of all taboos, seemingly, beyond anything else.

BH:  I’m reading David Rieff’s book on Susan Sontag and her fear of death.  [Rieff is Sontag’s son; the book is called Swimming in a Sea of Death.]  It’s quite extraordinary because she was such an intellectual and faced so many things and had such a difficult time coming to terms with her own demise.  That’s been in my films since ’89 or ’90 where I danced with a skeleton looking it right in the face [Vital Signs, 1991].  But that’s quite different than having an illness and seeing your own bones deteriorate because the chemotherapy is destroying them.  We know death through life, our vitality and the appreciation of it, being conscious of that vitality.  All that is coming together in the work that I’ve made and am making now.

The book has newly-written intros to each of those periods, followed by reprints of articles I’ve written. There will also be the first thirty pages of a novel I wrote in 1970.  So it’s a diverse collection touching on many things, sexuality, film form and structure, the politics of abstraction.  It’s more of a compilation, not so much a memoir that I sat down to write except for these introductions for each section.  It was an interesting process; I liked it.  It’s tedious right now because I’m checking facts and dates, getting permissions from photographers, trying to track them down.  I’m also working with an amazing editor.  Amy comes over and looks at photos with me.  They’re too close to me.  We’re doing fifty photos for the book.  So we’ll look at the 70s, for instance, and she’ll pick out the ones she thinks we should use.  Later, I’ll look those choices over and realize her choices were exactly right.  It’s too hard for me to see.  I really respect her eye.  My partner [Florrie Burke] helps me with the writing sometimes since she’s so good with the English language and grammar and Amy does the fine corrections.  So that’s where we are.  When I get the galleys back, we’ll do the whole process again.  It’s a lot of work.  I always wanted to have a book; I always wanted to be in the library.

SIM:  I look forward to seeing and reading the finished product of all your hard work.  Thank you so much.

Carnivalesque Announces Its 09 Releases and Hits the Road

David Redmon and Ashley Sabin of Carnivalesque Films announced today that they will be releasing six films this year under their distribution label:  Intimidad is available today and Kamp Katrina will release on June 30.

Invisible Girlfriend will release on August 25, Woodpecker will release on September 29, The New Year Parade will release on October 27, and Low and Behold will release on the 24th of November.

Carnivalesque will also have an accompanying road show where they'll bring the entire collection of films directly to audiences during road trip screenings throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky with the goal of eventually becoming their very own traveling film festival.  Stay tuned for more details about this by summer's end.