Still in Motion

OUTRO -- Life After Death

According to our wise friend, Wikipedia, “In music, the conclusion is the ending of a composition, taking the form of a coda or outro. Pieces using sonata form typically use the recapitulation to conclude a piece, providing closure through the repetition of thematic material, [creating] altogether unexpected digressions just as a work is drawing to its close, followed by a return to a consequently more emphatic confirmation of the structural relations implied in the body of the work.”  (italics mine) 

In Russian, the word outro means "morning" or "morrow."

Julia Panasenko’s film, Outro, which just won the Grand Prix at the Flahertiana documentary festival in Perm, Russia, last week is a fast and furious piece, clocking in at just 43 minutes.  For most of the first half of this brief three quarters of an hour, I was completely disoriented.  (A sensation I experience most of the time, so I don’t panic about it anymore.) And then once I was somewhat orientated to what was happening, the film became a revelation in how breaking every formal "rule" of documentary can take one on a journey of intense discovery, viscerally tapping into extremely deep emotional territory.  So much so, in fact, I found myself shutting down completely while watching it since I didn’t want my molecules to fly apart in front of everyone else in the cinema since that would be messy and embarrassing. I can say that this film has not left my frontal lobe since viewing it.

I've spent the last decade or so of my life pondering the ins and outs of documentary filmmaking in all of its formal aspects—the dramaturgical alchemy of successful nonfiction storytelling; the technical aspects of how you cinematically illustrate the lives of your subjects with vision and sound; how to tap into the most appropriate tempo and pace of your film’s various aspects to build to a satisfying whole; the rhythms of the very complex and intimate dance in which the maker engages with his or her protagonists. It’s bloody hard work and, when you’re doing it as a solo act, it's also a small miracle of an achievement.  (The filmmaker, pictured above.)

And then I see something like Panasenko’s film and realize that the spectrum of creativity in nonfiction storytelling keeps expanding to new depths, and all the parsing of this, that and the other amounts to so much nonsense, really. Panasenko produced, directed, and shot the film on a small digital camera.  The film is, for the most part, pretty raw—not retouched or color corrected, with distorted or bad sound quality in several places, since she didn’t have the resources to do any extensive post-production work.  Panasenko also expertly and intuitively edited the piece, creating a gorgeous and moving homage to a dying friend.  You can feel the filmmaker groping for purchase with her camera, frightened, intimidated, tentative—and then she is completely there, running right up to the precipice with her protagonist.  And then, letting go.

“Judging from my looks, I think I have like three weeks left.”  Time is running out for Svetlana Donskova (pictured below), a vibrant woman in her late thirties whose life force is palpable throughout the film, even though it is quickly dissipating, the last grains of sand in the hourglass accelerating in an unstoppable flow towards the void most of us fear, the last moments of our lives. 

Some of us have allowed certain inalienable beliefs to embed themselves in our psyches and these beliefs provide succor and comfort about what awaits us on the other side.  Others of us question, wonder and ponder endlessly and / or stop our minds from “going there” at all. Others of us are quite sure there is just nothingness—not only our corporeal selves dissolve, but our spirits and consciousnesses flicker out, as well, and only live on in the memories and hearts of those we leave behind, along with some photographs, some recordings, and other documented ephemera that make up a life. 

We experience other, smaller deaths during the course of our lifetimes--heartbreak, the death of a loved one, the loss of something that defines us, such as a job, an identity, a bank account.  Through illness or accident, we sometimes suffer the loss of a limb or an organ or a part of our mind.  And we are often defined (against our will) in terms of what others think of us, how they relate to us, how they judge us and peg us as "that type of person."  It's all somewhat of a trap unless you choose to, somehow, break free of any and all constraints and use most of your energy to craft a personality and presence that is uncompromising.

This last bit, as Panasenko portrays her, describes Donskova.  The tug-of-war in which she engages as she’s dying—with her mother, in particular—is a testament to this uncompromising force.  In a flurry of dialogues, monologues, phone conversations, she seems to be saying, This was my life the way I saw fit to live it, despite all the lack, all the doubts, all the un-leveraged benefits of being young and intelligent, creative and beautiful.  And this is my death, and I will experience it also as I see fit, no compromises. 

The mother has done damage—purposefully / unwittingly, innocently / cruelly, doesn’t matter—love is selfish, love is cruel, love is narcissistic. Donskova makes it clear that her mother will have the rest of her life to deal with the results of the rift between them since she has that privilege still, more life to live. Donskova is moving on relentlessly and bravely towards the end of hers because she has no choice in the matter.  The film contains so many beautifully composed moments of overwhelming emotion unexpressed from Donskova herself, her friends, her father, and, finally, her mother, as well, so many shouts and cries of anger and grief are suppressed, that everyone is imbued with the kind of grace and dignity Sveta’s “good death” demands.

After listening to a lovely, delicate, sweet song composed especially for her by her friend and neighbor, Dima, she says pensively, “I still can’t figure out what I am.  Am I bad or good?  . . .   At least now I know what I am in musical terms.” As her father’s big, rough hands caress the body of his dying daughter, he says to her, “Soon you’ll get rid of your physical self.  At first you’ll fly above us.  And we’ll remember you very, very long.” Her friend, Panasenko, has also left an imprint of Sveta’s spirit in cinematic terms, so she can stay with us all a bit longer.

 

 

XI International Documentary Film Festival "Flahertiana"

I recently had an opportunity to take my first trip to Russia and ended up in the small city of Perm (population just under a million), traditionally an industrial spot which is currently trying to morph into a cultural one, that sits at the foot of the Ural mountain range.  This also happens to be the place from which many, many people commenced their long walk (thousands of kilometers) to Siberia from the days of "Ivan the Terrible" onwards, a place of exile, imprisonment and death, a place where both criminal and political prisoners had been sent for more than three centuries.  Siberia makes up about 77% of Russia's territory, but has only 28% of its population.  Lots of elbow room for those looking for space and some peace and quiet.

Now, Siberia is becoming a place with a nascent documentary film tradition with the help of a new initiative called the EurasiaDOC Project run by Rebecca Houzel (France) and Nicolay Bem (Siberia), financed by the European Union.  More from me on Houzel's and Bem's work in a future issue of DOX Magazine.  The two will be running an inaugural workshop in Perm next February and were at the fesitval to introduce the initiative to interested participants who will come from all over Russia to develop their documentary film projects.  Supposedly, at some point in the future, I will be invited to Siberia to see for myself what's happening up there.  Hopefully, I will not be expected to come on foot.

In fact, I became quite appreciative of experiencing a place like Perm before having a chance to visit the bigger cultural capitals of Moscow or St. Petersburg.  And, of course, my experience was circumscribed within the context of a film festival, its namesake that of the legendary filmmaker, Robert Flaherty.  The trip was further circumscribed by the privilege of being asked to be a member of the jury of this year's international competition where we were tasked with awarding several prizes--a Grand Prix, Best Feature, and Best Short, with some special mentions, if we so chose.  A separate FIPRESCI jury was asked to award a film from the same selection.  (Photo of cosmonaut façade in Perm, courtesy Bayou Self on Flickr.)

It was a large and diverse competition, with nineteen films represented from eighteen different countries.  The films were all over the map stylistically, technically, narratively, and otherwise.  I juried with a Serb, a Frenchman and two Russians (I was the only girl), each of us as vastly different as five human beings can get.  But, somehow, we easily reached a consensus on the films we wanted to honor.

"The more your work corresponds to real life, the better it seems. . .," was said by Albrecht Dürer, a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician and theorist from Nuremberg.  These words express the major aesthetic conception of the festival, according to its website.  Keeping this in mind, as well as the legacy of Flaherty, whose film work focused on prolonged observation to realize "the naturalness of a documentary subject's behavior in front of the camera," we all voted for films that pushed beyond the boundaries of all of these various philosophies, instead choosing the ones that moved us into such profound and deep emotional territories, we could barely articulate anything about them at all after watching them.  I don't know about anyone else, but this is the place I want to reach when encountering any work of art, an encounter that illustrates and illuminates all the pain and joy of being human and leaves you temporarily speechless in its wake.  However "staged" or "natural" that encounter might be is of no import to me, whatsoever--the emotional reactions and reverberations are the same, and they're staggering.  (I usually have some kind of emotional breakdown / breakthrough during festivals and this is why I love documentary.  It's cheaper than therapy.)

For the very first time in the Flahertiana's history, the Grand Prix was awarded to a short film; also, for the very first time in the festival's history, we awarded the grand prize to a Russian film.  I would, in fact, urge the selection committee to pepper the main competition with more films from the Motherland in future, and, perhaps, stay away from much more mediocre fare from the international scene since "diversity," in concept or fact,  never ever connotes quality. 

Here are the three prize-winners (and a special mention), and our jury statements about these films: 

"The jury gives the Grand Prix to Yulia Panasenko for her radiant film, Outro.  The jury was shocked at the rawness and immediacy of Panasenko’s piece. With an exceptional balance of intimacy and distance, as well as unabashed courage in her dramaturgical choices, Panasenko gracefully navigates the ever-increasing complexity of the territory she traverses with her main protagonist. She uses her camera like the most sensitive metal detector looking for treasure on a vast and wild beach and, in that process, has achieved a highly proficient, remarkably restrained and economical construction that left us all moved beyond words."

This 45-minute piece (my latest film mantra: 45 Is the New 90) will also play at this year's IDFA as part of the mid-length documentary competition, and this is the director's third prize for this film in Russia.  I will attempt to articulate my thoughts on Outro in my next post. 

"The jury gives the Best Long Documentary prize to Marianna Kaat for her film, Pit no. 8.  Kaat grows a unique and complex relationship with her main protagonists, particularly in her portrayal of one very powerful man who still resides in the body of an adolescent boy.  We observe how he and his family try to survive under unbearable social pressures with grace, dignity, and persistent resistance against the forces that might pull them under at any given moment.  They display clarity and fortitude, as does Kaat in her filmmaking.  Pit no. 8 is an inspiring portrait of Ukraine, a country in painful transition, where there are no rules, but Kaat shows us plenty of examples of the miracle of humanity amidst inhumane conditions."

Happily, Kaat has agreed to sit for an extended interview with me in early November from her home in Tallinn, Estonia, so look for that in the near future.  The film also recently played at the International Documentary Film Festival of Mexico City (DOCSDF), will have its German premiere at the Film Festival Cottbus in November, and will exhibit at IFF Watch Docs in Warsaw in December.  More on the film's website here.

"The jury gives the Best Short Documentary prize to Piotr Stasik for his film, The Last Day of Summer.  This Polish director achieves a deep and profound penetration into a culture not his own, in the process portraying a warm, wry, and very humorous ode to the strange poetry of childhood."  More on this superb piece in a couple of days.  And, lastly:

"The jury would like to give special recognition to Andrea Roggon’s feature documentary, Soy Libre | I Am Free. Roggon has realized an impressive début, displaying a precocious mastery of formalism that utilizes an incredibly rich visual language in her documentary images of the people of contemporary Havana, Cuba."

Roggon's film was selected for IDFA in 2010, where it exhibited in competition for best student documentary.

And, FYI, the FIPRESCI prize went to another Polish director, Jakub Stozek, for his 30-minute film, Out of Reach, already a multiple award winner, and so here's one more to add to his mantle for creating the best half hour ride of your life. 

Congratulations to all the filmmakers.  And a huge personal спасибо to the beautiful and exceptional La Casa de Olya.

 

It Was Waiting for Me: A Conversation with Marie Losier

Filmmaker, artist and curator, Marie Losier, was born in France in 1972, and has been living and working in New York City for the past seventeen years. She creates singular portraits of vanguard filmmakers, musicians, composers and artists, although many of them are far from obscure.  Losier has given her distinctive filmic treatment to the likes of Mike and George Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman, Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge, the subject of her latest piece called The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. She also has intimate friendships with all of these talents.  Here’s what filmmaker Charles Burnett wrote to her in 2006 about her work, “I sit with a smile on my face. I wish there were more people like the characters in your films, in the world. It takes you on a ride that weaves the real and surreal.” And Maddin has dubbed her “Edith Sitwell’s inner Tinkerbell.”  

Her films have shown widely in museums, galleries, biennials and festivals all over the world, including P.S.1 in New York City, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Biennial, Rotterdam International Film Festival, La Fondation Cartier, The Tate Modern, The Wexner Art Center, Luxe Gallery, White Column Gallery, the Ismailia International Film Festival in Egypt, Anthology Film Archives (where she also curates experimental film and video shows), Ocularis, British Film Institute, the Musée d’Art Contemporain, among many others. She was recently the subject of a full retrospective at the Buenos Aires Festival of International Cinema.

Since 2000, Losier has also worked full-time as the film curator at The French Institute Alliance Française in New York City, where she presents a weekly film series and has hosted the likes of Raoul Coutard, Claire Denis, Chantal Akerman, Jane Birkin, Jeanne Moreau, Jackie Raynal, and Anouk Aimée.  As well, she has performed in films by George and Mike Kuchar, and Jackie Raynal, and in plays by Juliana Francis and Tony Torn.

Her work with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, born Neil Andrew Megson in Manchester, England in 1950, has been a seven-years-long collaboration, and has resulted in her first feature film, which will début as part of the Forum at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a glorious pastiche that features the story of the incredible love between Genesis and Lady Jaye. Tragically, in the midst of creating this project, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge unexpectedly passed away at the age of 42 on October 9, 2007.

Most famous for the bands, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, the 63-year-old Genesis  currently resides in the house in Brooklyn, New York where he lived together with Jaye.  There, Genesis reads, paints and writes.  He also tours extensively, giving lectures, talks and performances throughout the world.  As part of the Forum Expanded section, Genesis and Tony Conrad will perform an improvised violin concert together on February 19^th at Berlin’s Hebbel-am-ufer Theatre.

During a trip to New York at the very beginning of this year, I met with Marie at the charming East Village coffee and pastry palace, DeRobertis Caffe.  In walked a tiny figure, bundled up in a long coat and chapeau against the winter chill—an utterly charming and warmly-smiling gamine—to talk to me about her latest project, her unique and intimate relationship with Genesis, and the long and hard road she traveled to complete this film:

 

Still in Motion (SIM):  I think it’s always pretty easy to tell when the subject or subjects of a film have encountered the maker that’s meant to record their story.  I’ve seen wonderful examples of that several times in the last few years.  You have a distinctive way in which you do portraiture in film. Some of the first footage I saw of this piece was where you and Genesis were playing a game of hide-and-seek amongst the shelves of a gigantic home archive. It was so playful and so lovely.  And, of course, it’s an amazing and deeply moving love story.

Marie Losier (ML):  Very moving.  Gen is amazing.

SIM:  When and how did you first meet one another?

ML:  Seven years ago, I went to see a concert of Alan Vega with Suicide at the Knitting Factory [in New York City].  I was really excited because I loved his work but, unfortunately, it was a terrible concert—really bad.  However, the third part of the concert was Genesis, of whom I didn’t know anything.  It was Three Majesty, her third band.  So it was Bryan Dall, Genesis and Lady Jaye on bass, and she was reciting poems and it was so amazing, her energy and her presence were astounding.  I had no idea who they were.

The next day I went to an opening—which I never do—right in Soho.  I walked into this gallery and it was a show about music and painting.  It was packed with so many people.  I was crushed against a wall because I’m so small and I stepped on someone’s foot.  I turned around to apologize and it was Gen. She looked at me and all I saw were huge gold teeth in a big smile.  I told her that I had seen her concert the evening before, told her how beautiful I thought it was, how moved I was.  She looked at me for a couple of seconds, gave me her card and asked me to call her.  When I called, she asked me to come over.

When I got there, I was introduced to the basement where she greets people when she doesn’t know them.  I was sitting on this gigantic plastic chair shaped like an open palm. She was staring at me and then called Lady Jaye.  Jaye walked down the stairs, looked at me and asked me if I’d like a coffee.  She asked me what I did, what kinds of films I made, so I talked a little bit about my work. 

Something passed between the two of them and Jaye looked at me and said, “She’s the one. She’s the one who’s going to film our life.  We’ve been waiting for you.”  Ten days later, they took me on tour with Psychic TV. I didn’t know their music at all, but it had been a dream of mine to go on tour with a band.  It was really intense.  I jumped in.  That’s how we met.

SIM:  It sounds like you had no choice in the matter.

ML:  It was like it was waiting for me, yes.  I always wanted to be in a rock band and this was it.  And then, through the years, I learned about Gen and Lady Jaye.  I lived with them for a time.  It was then I saw the love story.  Also, filming the concerts and being on tour made me really sure I didn’t want to do a film about a rock band.  It’s very repetitive and a bit cliché.  I wanted something more.  Discovering their archives made me realize how much was there.

SIM:  The film belongs to Genesis, in essence, since he, she?  I notice you refer to Gen as “she.”

ML:  Yes.

SIM:  She’s front and center in this film.  It appeared to me that Jaye, at times, was a bit reticent about being filmed.  She could ham it up for the camera like in home movie fashion, but she seemed to almost shy away a bit once in a while.

ML:  She was more of a private person.  But also she had a very strong personality.  They would do everything together.  There was a complete energy balance with everything they did, all day long.  The pandrogyny project was as much Jaye as it was Gen. They were muses to, and for, one another.  So I saw something really balanced.  Jaye was much less comfortable being filmed.  I first did spend more time with Gen because she was so open. And then, suddenly, in 2007 Jaye died.

I thought that would be the end of the film, really, because it was so tragic, but I kept filming up until last year, 2010. I did really think that would be the end, though.  Her death was a complete shock and Gen was completely devastated.  It was the end of the band; it was the end of everything.  Gen stayed at home crying for about a year.  I spent a lot of time there and she said to me that she didn’t want me to stop.  She wanted me to keep making the film in memory of Jaye.  I had to adjust to both taking care of her and supporting her and also to keep the film going. It was just really painful and hard, so heavy.  I film alone so it’s not like I have a crew to make it a bit less intimate, so it tends to be very emotional.  You have to be careful—sometimes, you get taken into things you don’t want to and it’s very painful and, at times, very forceful.  Sometimes you see things you really don’t want to see and there’s no protection.

SIM:  One senses that vulnerability.  There is one scene where she’s sitting listening to a song and starts to weep and the camera gets put down immediately as you go to her.  There would be a lot of filmmakers that would have just sat there and kept shooting.

ML:  I’m really close to Gen; she’s a very dear friend.  We’ve been through so much and she knows me inside out.  She also knows how hard I’ve worked on this and that I’ve done it entirely by myself, including negotiating music rights, archival rights, credits, and other things where I really have no idea what I’m doing.  It’s endless—building a website, on and on.  Steve Holmgren, who came on as a producer after the film was made, is helping, but I’ve had to do everything else by myself.  Not to mention the fact that no funding for which we applied came through.  It’s been a hard film to pull out since I also work fulltime so it’s been one roll [of film] at a time.  I think the film is just too experimental for many funders, and I think Gen scares some people.

SIM:  Ironically, their story has been an inspiration for other films.  I think of Jake Yuzna’s Open, which won a Teddy at Berlin last year, for instance.  Also, the times that they lived through and the incredible people that Gen calls friends and colleagues is pretty damned impressive.  You’ve captured an important piece of literary, art and music culture in the 20^th century.

ML:  Yes, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, the list goes on and on.

SIM:  It’s possible you would have been supported more extensively if you had been making this film in Europe.

ML:  Well, it was also one of those instances where I just started filming.  There wasn’t a choice in the matter and I have never really worked with a producer before so I didn’t have one on this film either.  To then look for money three or four years into the project was difficult.  Thankfully, I had a few grants that supported me during that time. But the film was basically self-funded. I also didn’t want to bend at all in my creative vision for this piece.  When I did the IFP market, I met with a lot of people who really wanted to help but the film needed to be a bit more “commercial” for them to be able to do that, more of a traditional bio-pic, I guess.  So that made it clear that I just had to keep making my film my way.  I have so much material that is not going to be in the final film.  I’ve done many, many interviews that I’m not using and I have interviews of people who are no longer here, like Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle, who died a month ago, people like Gibby Haynes [of the Butthole Surfers], Peaches [Mermaid Café, The Shit].  I decided in order for me to really make it my piece, it would have to be Gen’s voice and Jaye’s voice.

SIM:  There are also these wonderful, whimsical interludes that you use where you dress Gen up in costumes and do little “passion plays” and such.  You externalize the flights of imagination she’s used throughout her career to express herself.  For anyone who knows your work, “playtime” sessions with your subjects are de rigueur.

ML:  I also live this way.  I do a lot of that playtime type of thing in my daily life with my friends.  It was great to push Gen to do it without a lot of thought; she just trusted me and dressed up and did what I asked.  She’s always portrayed as a rock icon, very posed, the whole concert/fan thing.  But I know the Gen who can be so whimsical and so out-there in another way.  I wanted to turn her into this other character.  She lives her life as a sort of fiction, anyway.  Gen fears nothing.  Yet she’s the most sensitive and emotional person, and quite shy, actually.  She loves being alone, reading books.  Everything else she releases on stage.

SIM:  Berlinale is, of course, one of the most important film festivals in the world.  Are you excited, intimidated, nervous?  You’ve exhibited films there before, but this time, Genesis is also going to perform a live show with Tony Conrad at the fest, which should be amazing.

ML:  Gen is nervous.  I introduced her to him for a scene in my film about Tony.  She saw the film [Tony Conrad DreaMinimalist, 2008] and just fell in love with him and asked me about him. She didn’t know his music or anything.  And I knew Gen’s favorite instrument is the violin.  So I set up a scene where both of them are playing the violin. I organized something more formally, since people really wanted to see this unique collaboration.  We made it into a two-day concert at ISSUE Project Room and also did an album.  They became really good friends and now are touring together.  I should be an agent [laughing].  So in Berlin, they’ll do their concert, which will be totally improvised.  (Still of Tony Conrad and Genesis in "Slap the Gondola," 2009, photo by Bernard Yenelouis.)

The curators in the Forum Expanded section are really amazing about pushing the edge, creating events for the festival. Vaginal Davis and Bruce LaBruce are always creating something really unique and special there, all these amazing artists that live in, or come through, Berlin regularly.

SIM:  What’s so delightful for me, always, is the fabulous sense of humor that accompanies all this madness. It’s great fun.  Gen, too, is a very funny person, almost like an old vaudeville performer.  The sections without synch sound are so evocative of the silent movie era

ML:  Well, the use of no synch sound in the film was a bit scary.  I worked for years without that.  I was afraid it would put a viewer too much outside the film.  But I think I found ways to bring a viewer in.  Gen’s always worked with cut-ups.  So, in a way, certain parts of the film act as kinds of cut-ups.  It works with the subject.

SIM:  Have you edited the whole film on your own, as well?  It’s beautifully edited.

ML:  Yes, essentially, but the editing started with the support and help of friend, Charlotte Mangin.  She went through all the footage with me and helped shape and build the story.  I also had invaluable help after eight months when everything was assembled, including sound.  My friend, Marc Vives, came in and helped me to move things around when I couldn’t see anymore.  The story needed some shaping and I wanted it to have more of a feature narrative storyline.  I’m not a narrative person.  And I couldn’t move the pieces anymore.  I’ve always edited my own films; it’s an essential part of the process for me.  It wouldn’t have my touch otherwise.  I had about 20 hours of 16mm film and about 60 hours of interviews on HD.  I also have non-HD video; there’s a lot.  I could make many movies [laughing].

SIM:  I would think that someone, at some point, would be very interested in the archive you’ve gathered.

ML:  Yes, I always keep an extensive archive.  Gen’s used some of the material for music videos or projections for her concerts.  You see some of that footage being projected during some of the shows—a movie within a movie.

SIM:  The way in which Genesis has recreated herself over and over again speaks to that way in which your footage will probably be manifested in several different ways. That’s the joy of making art and, to me, that’s apparent in all the film work you do.  Your pieces remind me in a way of handmade quilts, excuse the quaint analogy.  I guess what I’m saying is that no one else can weave together these elements like you can considering your emotional proximity to your subjects.

ML:  I’ve also learned so much from living next to Gen for so long.  As an artist, it opened many doors in ways of thinking about things and ways of being.  I see someone who is fearless, who doesn’t have a lot of money but lives in this uncompromising way and keeps going, really experimenting.  To me, that’s the key of life—that freedom.  It’s really hard to do it.

SIM:  How does she survive?

ML:  She sells some of her paintings.  Now it will be a bit difficult since Throbbing Gristle doesn’t exist anymore.  That was paying a good amount touring with that band.  Psychic TV also doesn’t exist.  There will be some shows here and there, but not enough to make a living.  She also lectures, sells artwork.  (Lady Jaye, second from left, and Genesis, center, in a Psychic TV publicity still.)

SIM:  Can you talk about your impressions of the pandrogyny experiment, this living art piece that Genesis and Lady Jaye created together?  It’s been called performance art.  It’s been called a lot of different things.

ML:  Well, I will say that, for me, that was not the subject of the film and not something I was interested in focusing on.  Their “credo” about all that and why they did it was not really the interesting thing for me, so much as the love it expressed.  What I saw in all that, almost exclusively, was the love story.  To do a story on two people who engaged in plastic surgery to transform themselves to look like one another as a piece of performance art wouldn’t be up my alley, frankly.  But I’ve known her for years and have an archive of rock music and so that pandrogyny was part of the cut-ups, being male and female simultaneously.  It’s part of the “performance” but it’s also so much about being Gen and Jaye and their love.  It became something else for me.  People might be disappointed because this is not a “fan” film about Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV.  It’s a disturbing love story.

It was a bit difficult for me since I was moved by both Gen and Jaye, as people.  But I was compelled to tell this story of this unique transformation.  These are real people.  As strange as it is, when you think about what they go through, it’s just a human story.  For Gen, it’s not about becoming a woman or being transgender.

SIM:  But the “he” has become a “she.”

ML:  She likes being “she” right now.

SIM:  A way to stay close to Jaye.

ML:  Jaye is always there.  She’s unbelievably present.  Gen still uses the pronoun “we,” not “I.”  It’s both of them, all the time.  I’ve only known Gen as a “she,” so it’s pretty straightforward for me.  It’s much harder for people who’ve known Gen as a man to say “she,” the daughters, for instance.  They call her Dad.

SIM:  To me, the most important thing this portrait of a life says is that all of us are separate but equal to everyone else and we can do whatever we want with our lives. Genesis is inspiring in that way of never asking permission from anyone about how she feels she needs to realize and validate her existence.  I really hope audiences will tap into that more than anything else in your film.  That and the amazing music she creates.

ML:  Yes, the music is something that has attached me most strongly to the film.  Seeing her perform makes me remember that, how much I love the music she makes, her voice, that singing / talking voice that carries everything.  Gen’s voice, for me, is just beyond.  I want this film to be a musical ballad; this is why that word is in the title.  It’s also, of course, a love ballad.

SIM:  There must have been moments over the past several years when it all became too much for you considering this devotion you’ve had to Gen and Jaye and their story.

ML:  [She laughs, shaking her head.]  There were moments when it was really hard and I wasn’t really that strong yet.  Gen was hard on me, as was the band, at the beginning.  They were testing me.  I had to go through a lot.  And there were some really heavy times, emotionally.  I was fragile and sometimes it ate me up.  There were times I wanted to stop.  I was also making other projects and keeping up with my everyday life.  It’s hard to only be with one person for so long.  Gen also saw how stubborn I am and has discovered other things I do, all the friends I have, the life I have.  But she also knew I would never give up on her and the story and the project.

But now that the project is finished, I am looking forward to just going to a movie together with her, eating ice cream together, and not be filming everything!  But I relate to people mostly through my work, working and collaborating on something.  And our relationship is based on this creativity so I’m sure we’ll keep doing things together.  And we have several months ahead touring together with the film, of course.

SIM:  Gen’s life, post-Jaye—what does that look like?  I know from what you say, Jaye’s presence is always there, but do you think she will want to spend the rest of her life alone?

ML:  She explains it this way: Jaye was the ultimate love of her life.  She told me that in order to be with someone else—which she would love because it’s hard to be alone all the time—that person would have to love Jaye, as well, and accept that Jaye will always be there.

SIM:  That would take a pretty expansive individual. It sounds highly romantic, but difficult.

ML:  That person will be very hard to find.  Most of the time I see Gen, she’s alone and she seems to be okay with it because Jaye’s there.  And she’s also surrounded by a few, genuine, really good people who care for her deeply and have been a part of her life for a very long time.

SIM:  You chose a very open ending for this film which is, obviously, appropriate for a life far from finished.  What were some of the harder editing choices you had to make for the cut audiences will see at festivals?

ML:  There were some really, really beautiful scenes with Peaches dancing that were really great.  There were some fantastic and funny scenes with Gibby Haynes. Those kinds of things were hard for me to let go.  There were some with Sleazy.  But it became too cliché to have those scenes in the film.  They really belong to any kind of “extra” material.  Ultimately, they distracted from the main story.  There were also some beautifully shot, very whimsical scenes with Gen with great costumes and things that were hard to let go.

SIM:  What’s the distribution plan post-festival run?

ML:  The only thing I know for sure right now is that the film will be distributed by Arsenal in Germany.  Stephanie [Schulte-Strathaus, co-director of Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video Art, member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum, and founding director of Forum Expanded] was the first person to show my work at a major festival and has had a huge influence on my ability to exhibit my films.  I owe her a lot; she’s been an incredible mentor. 

But other than that, I don’t really know.  Steve has some ideas.  It’s so nice to have someone working with me with so much passion and excitement, someone who’s working so hard without getting paid.  It’s such a gift to have such a dedicated producer; I’m not used to that.  Also, I must mention, too, that Martin Marquet, a dear friend, is working on the producing and publicity aspect.  And Elyanna Blaser-Gould, my assistant, has my eternal gratitude.  Without her constant support, I could not have done any of it.

SIM:  I’m looking forward to meeting you and Genesis in Berlin.  People there will love the film; I know it.

ML:  We’re both so nervous and anxious, but also incredibly excited.  Yes, see you there!

 

(All photos courtesy marielosier.net, with the exception of Psychic TV still, courtesy Dan Mandell, www.danielmandell.com.)

 

 

 

KINO SATELLITE: Convergence

Warning:  This blog post contains inordinate amounts of shameless self-promotion.

Next Tuesday, November 2, a new screening series will launch at Berlin's Direktorenhaus in the Mitte district.  Film critic and co-director of Benten Films, Andrew Grant, and I will début our weekly series.  We've dubbed it KINO SATELLITE.  Our lovely logo was created--in record time--by filmmaker and designer, Eliane Lazzaris.  We'll be hosting shows in a newly-built micro-cinema every Tuesday evening, curating programs of new, innovative and groundbreaking work from some of today's most talented filmmakers, animators and multi-media artists.  Material will consist of original programming, as well as co-presentations, with an emphasis on the illustrative arts.

Direktorenhaus is a newly-renovated art and performance space "where a simulation of a temporary Gesamtkunstwerk, the total artwork, is explored.  Traditional methods are coupled with analogue technology and digital media, presenting an experimental directive with social resonances, breaking down the boundaries between art and design."  It also happens to be located in a super sexy spot, housed in a big mansion that sits directly on the riverbank of the Spree.

The owners of the gallery, Pascal Johanssen and Katja Kleiss, were looking to host a weekly screening series in their new space, a renovated two-floor gallery (with studio space for visiting artists).  The house was the dwelling of the director of the State Mint (thus, Das Direktorenhaus).  Clare Molloy, the invincible programs coordinator, and I had conversations about this in late summer.  A bit daunted by taking something like this on all on my own, I found the perfect producing and curating partner in Andrew Grant.  He moved here about a month after I did, and when I took him to see the space and asked him if he'd be interested in collaborating with me, he jumped out of his skin with excitment at the opportunity.  He and I believe strongly that the only way underrepresented work gets seen is through this bespoke way of creating a community of like-minded individuals--the people that make the work and the people that want to access it for a regular dose of inspiration.  The gallery's dedication and commitment to support such work makes them an ideal partner.

Opening the series on Tuesday will be Alison S.M. Kobayashi, a Japanese / Canadian multi-disciplinary artist.  She was one of the guest artists at the Flaherty Seminar in 2008 when I was there as a Fellow.  Kobayahsi will be presenting four of her distinctive video pieces.  Joining us for the second half will be Christopher Allen, creative director and founder of Brooklyn's UnionDocs documentary collaborative.  Both of them will be there in person.  In fact, Kobayashi and Allen happen to be on their European honeymoon.  Lucky for us Berlin was on their itinerary.  We're thrilled that they'll be here with us.  As well, all of the work they will be showing will be Berlin premieres.  (Pictured, Kobayashi in Dan Carter.)

Shows to come include an evening dedicated to the films of avant-garde filmmaker, Ken Jacobs; a screening of Berlin-based producer and director Zoran Solomun's wonderful feature-length doc, Super Art Market (with the director and special guests in attendance for a post-screening discussion); a co-presentation with the Warsaw-based animation and special effects production house, Platige Image, with brand-new works by some of Poland's most incredible animation artists; a co-presentation with Portland, Oregon-based distributor, A Million Movies a Minute, run by Steady Diet of Film's Erin Donovan; a show of new German animation and an AnimaDoc show fresh from the Leipzig fest; a co-presentation with Rotterdam-based film collective, WORM.kino; an evening of music, food and multiple projections of London-based artist Max Hattler's work; and more.

Right now, we are a "satellite" on Direktorenhaus' website and on their Facebook page.  That's where you can look for info on upcoming shows.  Andrew and I are also very open to receiving submissions and ideas for collaborations, particularly from Berlin-based artists.  We look forward to meeting our audiences.  (Pictured, still from Michal Socha's Chick, Poland, 2008.)

Next week, I'm off on a European tour of my own as I make my way to Sheffield in the UK, CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, a few days back in Berlin to host a show, and then off again to Amsterdam for IDFA.  It's bound to be an invigorating, sleepless, alcohol-infused joyride--pitching projects, screening films, meeting filmmakers, partying.  Rinse, repeat.  And I'm so looking foward to seeing friends I haven't seen in a while.  Wir sehen uns im Kino, meine Schätze.

Herbst, Meine liebste Jahreszeit

The reason why you're seeing pink, is that every year at this time, I write a blog post in this color to focus on breast cancer awareness, adding my voice to the effort of encouraging everyone (both men and women) to pay attention and respect to their bodies before something catastrophic happens. 

Autumn is my favorite season (so says the title of this post).  I am one of the few people I know who actually looks forward to winter.  I love this time of year when one can feel a profound energy shift in the air, knowing it's time to hunker down, find a cozy spot and commune with your inner muse in a quiet but invigorating way, reflect on the past (frenetic) year, and plan what will be necessary to the soul and spirit when a new lighter season rolls around again.  (Berlin street photo courtesy Nizhal Nijamagiradhu's photostream.) 

I can't say I'm surprised to still find myself in this city since I had a feeling a more permanent stay than the month of July was in the works.  As has been my habit in the past few years, I travel extremely lightly, realizing that in my maturing years (ahem) the burden of possessions (and sometimes the burden of places and certain people) can be easily discarded, when once upon a time they meant way too much.  To most of those people, in fact, I'm sure it's as if I was never there. 

So it was with just one lousy suitcase that I landed here and felt embraced according to my expectations--which were nil.  Unlike my expectations when I moved to NYC--goodness, what a load, what a burden, of expectations!  But I realize, as well, that I wouldn't be here where I am now, doing the things I'm doing and getting the opportunities that are coming my way, if I hadn't settled there (and I use that term very loosely) for a while.  So I will continue my quest to become a "new European" in a more legitimate way, since I've found a place that feels like it could be a true home.  I would not be the first artist, and won't be the last, to experience that in this "poor but sexy" city.  As most of us know, there are very few places where poor but sexy people can survive these days with our dignity intact.

Some interesting things (at least to me) of note in NYC this month, a place that will have to serve merely as another spiritual home instead of a physical one:  Just in time for Halloween, Carnivalesque Films will release the DVD for Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher's October Country on the 19th of this month.  It's no secret to readers of this blog that I adore this film and the filmmakers (pictured right) have become precious friends.  I will be conducting an interview with them that will be published soon somewhere--we're hoping for Senses of Cinema!  However, to legitimize the proceedings, some other critics love it, too, and here's what they've written about OC:  AO Scott of the New York Times says, "Like a Joyce Carol Oates novel rendered as a documentary.  The filmmakers are as sensitive to visual nuances as they are to details of behavior."  Andrew Barker at Variety calls it "breathtaking."  And S. James Snyder of ARTFORUM calls it, "An hypnotic, impressionistic spectacle."  I just showed it here in Berlin to an extremely appreciative audience.

Filmmaker, James T. Hong, was one of the guest artists when I attended the Flaherty Film Seminar as a Fellow in 2008.  During that week, guest curator, Chi-hui Yang, showed us selections of Hong's work, all of his pieces shocking, haunting and incendiary.  He is a filmmaker who breathes fire into some of the most heinous instances of historical and modern-day revisionism and propaganda, searing away the encrusted detritus of deeply-embedded public lies to expose the truth behind carefully constructed ideologies.  It's powerful stuff.

The October Flaherty screening on the 11th at the Anthology Archives will feature Hong's and Yin-Ju Chen's Lessons of the Blood with a post-screening discussion with Hong and Yang.  In 2008, the participants of that year's Flaherty only got to see a small portion of this 106-minute film, as it was a work-in-progress then.  "Stylistically aggressive and often controversial, the films of James T. Hong tackle the things of which we'd rather not speak, in ways designed to provoke us to respond.  Focusing on the history and victims of Japanese biological warfare, Lessons of the Blood is a meditation on propaganda, historical revisionism, and the legacy of World War II in China.  This arresting film highlights how nationalism and the United States have influenced the Sino-Japanese conflict, and how governments, ideology, and propaganda affect the reception and perception of 'historical truth.'"  (You can watch the riveting trailer here.)  Hong and Yang will also be appearing at UnionDocs in Brooklyn this weekend.  Don't miss seeing this film.  I hope to show it here in Berlin soon with the cooperation of the filmmakers.

Julia Bacha's award-winning documentary, Budrus, will open in theaters this month in the US.  The Quad Cinemas in NYC will open the film on the 8th; the Music Hall in Los Angeles will open the film on the 22nd; and, on the 29th, the film will open at the West End Cinema in Washington, DC.  I saw this extraordinary film at the Berlinale this past February where the audience was treated to a wonderful post-screening discussion with the filmmakers and the amazing main protagonist, Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar.  I cried from the first frame to the last--and also through the entire Q&A.  (Look for my review coming soon on Hammer to Nail.)

The International Documentary Association will host a Doc U session with Bacha at the Tribeca Cinemas in New York City this Tuesday, the 5th.  IDA Board President, Eddie Schmidt, will be in discussion with the producer, writer, director, editor of Budrus.  You can register and buy a ticket for the event here.  (Pictured, film still of Morrar's 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, who joins her father in the fight to save their village.)

Okay, Berlin stuff:  I just posted my interview with Philippine filmmaker, writer and musician, Khavn de al Cruz on the BOMBLOG.  Please read our great conversation here!  de la Cruz will also be touring Denmark with his band, Vigo, this month.  I met de la Cruz at Dokufest in Prizren, Kosova in August where we both served on various competition juries; the festival featured a program of eight of his short film works.

Coming soon on SIM:  the third in my series, Projects on the Brink, essays featuring long-form documentary projects about to launch into the world.  I will be talking to Marie Losier about her new feature film, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye.  Frenchwoman, Losier, has made intimate film portraits of Guy Maddin and The Kuchar Brothers, theater director, Richard Foreman and composer, Tony Conrad.  Her work has been presented regularly at museums and festivals around the world, such as the Tate Modern, the Whitney Bienniel, PS1, MoMA, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Berlin Film Festival and Rotterdam.  The New York-based artist is currently the film curator at the French Institute Alliance Française.

This month, I will introduce twice-monthly film nights at my friend Giampiero's warm and intimate wine and antipasti bar, Speziale!, in my neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg.  On Thursday the 7th, we will be showing an incredible documentary from 2007 directed by Raúl de al Fuente called Nomadak TX.  Click here for more info.  Then on the 14th, courtesy of Benten Films, I will be showing Azazel Jacobs' brand new film, The GoodTimesKid.  Films will start at 8:30 but it's a good idea to come early to grab a seat since space is limited.  There will be a lovely selection of wines, beers and yummy snacks.  Join Speziale!'s Facebook page for more upcoming events, including poker nights and film screenings.  It's a great, cozy place to eat, drink and commune with international friends on chilly winter evenings. 

Benten Films' Andrew Grant (also a new Berliner) and I will launch our new weekly screening series at Das Direktorenhaus Tuesday, October 26.  Our first show will be devoted to the recent work of Ken Jacobs; most pieces will be German premieres.  Jacobs (Azazel's pop) is one of the founding fathers of the New York cinematic underground and a major figure in the world of avant-garde cinema.  So far, the program is shaping up to show the following pieces:  Nymph (2007, 2 min, silent); Sky Socialist (2007, 18 min, color, sound); Capitalism: Slavery (2006, 3 min, silent); Capitalism: Child Labor (2006, 14 min, sound); Pushcarts of Eternity Street (2006, 11 min, silent); Ron Gonzales, Sculptor (2009, 20 min, sound); The Pushcarts Leave Eternity Street (2010, 13 min, silent); and, a loft (2010 16 min, silent, 3D).  More information coming very soon on our fall/winter program! 

Another Benten acquisition, Modern Love is Automatic, will open the 5th Porn Film Festival Berlin (October 28 - 31), new friend Jürgen Brüning's celebration of all things porno.  Ambitiously, Brüning has put together a program of 134 films to exhibit over the course of four days.  He's also planning a naked smoking lounge, topless arm wrestling, and "hands-on" workshops such as "A Whore's Guide to Safer Sex for Queers" with Berlin/San Francisco-based sex worker, Sadie Lune; an introduction to Japanese bondage "including basic knots, bondage of upper and lower body, securing a suspension rope, health and safety," with Hamburg-based Matthias T.J. Grimme; and, "Porn and Feminism" with Amsterdam-based erotic film director, Jennifer Lyon.  All workshops are limited to 20 people and include a buffet.  :)  This fest I will not miss.  However, about five kilos will have to come off my body between now and then if I'm to enter the smoking lounge sans culotte. 

As for other upcoming festivals (not in Berlin):  Because I've enrolled myself in German classes full-time, like the good school kid I am, I have to wait for proper vacations to go anywhere.  However, I will be playing a bit of hooky since this is the season of many important European documentary film festivals, and I do tend to brake for documentary.  Instead of sitting here on a calm Saturday afternoon blogging, I was supposed to be at the International Hamburg Film Festival; however, one week ago I ended up at the Charité-Universitätsmedizin hospital undergoing emergency surgery.  I am recovering fine, but damn, I really was looking forward to going to Hamburg!

On a happier note, I do have a school break coming up mid-October and am deciding to go to one of three fests:  the 8th Zagreb Film Festival in Croatia (October 17 - 23), a festival that features only first and second directorial efforts; DOK Leipzig in Germany (October 18 - 24), one of the oldest and most important documentary exhibition and market events; or, the Viennale (October 21 - November 3) in Austria.  I'll keep you posted on where I end up as soon as I know--a wealth of riches, to be sure.  November will bring Sheffield in the UK, CPH:DOX in Denmark and the IDFA in the Netherlands.  And, of course, more news from sexy Berlin.  Haben Sie einen schönen Herbst!

Matthew Porterfield's Nostalgic Realism on BOMBlog

Read it here.

Festival of New Peruvian Films

Cinema Tropical will be presenting PeruFest: Festival of New Peruvian Films this Thursday and Friday, April 14 - 15, at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU.  The fest includes both an opening and closing reception.  The festival has been curated by Ph.D. candidate, Claudia Salazar from NYU's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. 

All screenings are free and open to the public and directors Melina Léon, Juan Manuel Calderón and Cady Abarca will be on hand for Q&A sessions.  Visit the site to read more about the program.

Orphan Film Symposium

The Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program (MIAP) at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts will present the 7th Orphan Film Symposium at the SVA Theatre in New York City, April 7 - 10.  The symposium is entitled, "Moving Images Around the World," and is being touted as something between an academic conference and a film festival, showcasing new works, newly restored prints and archival finds. 

Since its inception at the University of South Carolina in 1999, the OFS, under the direction of Dan Streible, has become a destination summit for those interested in the study, preservation and exhibition of "orphan" works--motion pictures abandoned by their owner or maker.  This includes silent films, commissioned pieces, independent films, industrials, avant-garde work, home movies, ads, etc.  More than 70 presenters from 16 countries will meet in New York to exhibit 80 works dating from 1894 (!) to 2010.  Highlights include:

Gustav Deutsch's Film ist. a Girl and a Gun (2009), a narrative collage constructed using fragments from several European film archives, as well as the Kinsey Institute.

The premiere of a new restoration by Anthology Film Archives of the independent documentary from 1959, The Cry of Jazz, with filmmaker, Edward O. Bland.

The first film by Henri Cartier-Bresson from 1938, With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, presumed lost until it was recently discovered in NYU's Tamiment Library.

The premiere of a never-released film called The Velvet Underground Rehearses from 1965, shot by Danny Williams shortly before he disappeared.

A rare program made for British TV from 1955, Orson Welles' Sketch Book, from the Munich Film Museum.  And much more.

This year's Helen Hill Award, named in honor of the late animator, will go to filmmakers, Danielle Ash and Jodie Mack, both of whom will present recent works.  Go here for more information on the program and to purchase advance tickets.

March Cinesalon

Cinesalon was introduced a couple of months ago as a monthly screening series and social hour showcasing female filmmakers.  It's held the fourth Thursday of the month at the American Association of University Women NYC Branch House at 111 East 37th Street.

This Thursday, March 25, Cinesalon will present Lisa Merton and Alan Dater's award-winning feature doc, Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, which chronicles the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist's reforesting project in her homeland.  Co-director, Lisa Merton, will be attending.  To find out more, contact [email protected].  There's a suggested donation of $4 at the door.

A Whole Lotta This and That

Long radio silence since I haven't posted anything since mid-December!, so apologies for being out of touch.  It happens from time to time.  That is not to say that there hasn't been a hell of a lot happening, with much more in store on another continent starting, gulp, in less than a week.  Sometimes, just trying to keep  up with your own life is a full-time endeavor.

This Thursday, the 8th, in conjunction with my outreach and social engagement work for filmmakers David Heilbroner, Kate Davis and Franco Sacchi for their film Waiting for Armageddon (opening at the Cinema Village this Friday), there will be an interfaith roundtable at the Puck Building's Rudin Auditorium at 295 Lafayette Street that is free and open to the public starting at 6:30 p.m.  The filmmakers will be joined by panelists, Richard Cizik, an influential, left-leaning Evangelical leader; Professor David Elcott, Taub Professor of Practice and Public Service and Leadership, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU; Rabbi Justus Baird of the Auburn Theological Seminary; Minister Galen Guengerich of the All Souls Unitarian Church, NYC; and Sabeeha Rehman, director of Interfaith Programs at the American Society for Muslim Advancement.  The panel will be moderated by journalist Michelle Goldberg, author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.  Should be a fascinating talk with select clips from the film being shown to galvanize discussion.  A small reception will follow in the Rudin hosted by our partners, The Fledgling Fund and The Foundation for Jewish Culture.  (Pictured, filmmakers Kate Davis, David Heilbroner and Franco Sacchi at the film's premiere this past fall at the New York Film Festival.)

In other news you might find interesting / pertinent:  the Full Frame Garrett Scott Documentary Grant applications are now being accepted.  This grant funds first time doc makers for travel to and from, as well as accommodations at, The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, April 8 - 11, 2010.  For four days, grant recipients will be given access to the full film program, participate in master classes and be mentored by experienced filmmakers.  Two filmmakers will be chosen for the grant which is now in its third year.  It was started by filmmaker, Ian Olds (Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi) and Garrett Scott's family in memory of Scott who passed away suddenly in 2006 at the age of 37.  Previous grant recipients include Elinyisia Mosha and Cameron Yates (2009), Rebecca Richman Cohen, Nathan Fisher and Mai Iskander (2008), and Robin Hessman and Lee Lynch (2007).  Click here for more info.  The deadline is the 5th of February.

Also:  the 2010 Flaherty Seminar is now open for registration.  They are now accepting applications for the 56th seminar taking place June 19 - 25 at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.  You can find all the details about the upcoming seminar and info about registering here.  Media makers should take advantage of attending this; it's really an essential event to experience at least once.  And, Dennis Lim is on board as the curator this year which is another strong reason for considering going.  Space, however, is very limited, so making your decision early is wise.

I'll be slipping out of New York in just a few days to spend the next month in Helsinki, Finland to teach some film seminars in the documentary program at the TaiK, the national art and design school, and will also take a trip out to Lahti, one hour outside of Helsinki,  to teach at the Folk High School there.  Amongst other activities, I will be attending the DocPoint Film Festival representing all the wonderful American short and feature-length films that will be playing at the fest in a special strand of this year's program (the "Family Chronicles") and welcoming American filmmakers to Helsinki, including Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher, makers of October Country; Kim Reed, director of Prodigal Sons; Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, makers of The Way We Get By; and Darius Marder, director of Loot, among others.  Visit the site to find out about more info on this year's program.  Also look for more information coming soon for special events in New York in support of DocPoint's 10th anniversary next year. 

I will also be attending the DocPoint festivities in Estonia where the festival will be held for the first time in Tallinn.  Estonia hasn't ever had a festival that focused only on documentary film and since the Estonian and Finnish cultures are so similar, Erkko Lyytinen, the artistic director of DocPoint, felt like it was a natural collaboration when approached by the folks in Tallinn.  I will be attending with filmmaker, Kimberly Reed, whose film will play in both Finland and Estonia.  Much, much more to come on the Prodigal Sons front very soon.  The film will open at the Cinema Village here in New York on February 26th, and then open widely at Landmark Theatres across the country through March and April.  Visit the First Run Features site for more info and play dates.

I will then be headed to Sweden to attend my very first Göteberg International Film Festival, its 33rd iteration, January 29 - February 8.  I will be representing Nicole Opper's début feature doc, Off and Running.  One of their programmers saw it at its festival premiere at Tribeca last year and snagged it right away.  It will be the film's international premiere.  And why will I be there and not the filmmaker?  Well, I'll be next door in Finland (and I've been collaborating on outreach and social engagement for the film) and the director will be busy with the New York theatrical run at the IFC Center which starts the 29th of January.  Keep checking the site and here and here for updated info on special events happening this month leading up to the run, as well as news on special co-hosted evenings at the IFC that week.  Also, look for my interview with Nicole soon on the Hammer to Nail site as part of our "In Conversation With" series.  Good stuff.

Let's see, what else?  Oh yes, after Sweden, the plan will be to attend my first Berlinale (their 60th), as a journalist and critic for Hammer to Nail (thanks, Ted).  Look for daily postings from Berlin on HTN and SIM in mid-February. 

Okay, that's the latest and greatest.  I have duly blogged and promise to be a bit more vigilant.  Back to work.

DOX BOX 2010: The Little Nonfiction Festival That Could

Today, DOX BOX festival co-founder and co-director, Orwa Nyrabia, sends word that the 3rd iteration of the Damascus, Syria-based event is ON.  There is a new website and the call for submissions is open.  The festival will take place in Damascus from 3 - 11 March with select films, including the Audience Award-winner, traveling to the nearby cities of Homs and Tartous. 

DOX BOX is organized by Proaction Film, the only independent documentary production company in Syria, in collaboration with international cultural partners.  The festival is under the patronage of the National Film Organization of Syria with local partners, The Tartous Cine-Club and The Homs Cine-Club.  Arab partners are ArteEast, Cinémathèque de Tanger in Morocco, Metropolis Cinema in Beirut and the NAAS Network.  International partners include the European Documentary Network in Denmark and the International Documentary  Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in the Netherlands.

DOX BOX is looking for creative documentaries that have a "unique and organic point of view from filmmakers about their lives, families and societies."  Click here for rules and regs and to download the entry form.  The deadline for entries is the 20th of December 2009.  If you're a North American filmmaker, contact me for a personal recommendation.  Read my coverage from last year's festival here and here and here and here. 

This is a festival in need of endowment and support; they are working miracles with very small budgets and very little in the way of resources.  I'm sure they would welcome any financial help they can get from the international film community. 

The DOX BOX organizers also offer a small Documentary Campus from the 3rd to the 8th and they are calling for applications--six days, ten international tutors, twenty-five participants.  The deadline is 5 January and regulations and application forms can be downloaded here.  For more info, you can send an email query to [email protected].

Missive from UK

Hello from Sheffield, where I'm knee-deep in the hoopla of a very bustling festival and market.  Last night at the big party at the local roller skating rink (fast becoming a Sheffield tradition), the 2010 Cinema Eye Honors announced their nominees for the ceremony that will take place at the Times Center in NYC in January.  Visit the site to read about all the nominees, and the latest and greatest on the best of nonfiction. 

Umbilically connected to New York wherever I happen to go, I wanted to say "hey," and mention a few things coming up: 

I've been part of the "getting butts in seats" brigade, aka Outreach Producer, for Four Seasons Lodge, a beautiful documentary film opening at the IFC Center this coming Wednesday, November 11.  The director, New York Times' journalist, Andrew Jacobs, some of the subjects of the film, and other crew and special guests, will be there for Q&As throughout the week, and some of our best indie film orgs will be on hand to co-host and join in the festivities for after-screening drinks shindigs.  Shooting People will host Friday night, Arts Engine / DocuClub will be with us on Sunday night, and UnionDocs will host on Monday evening.  Visit the website to get all the info you need, watch the trailer, and meet the extraordinary subjects, the last living generation of Holocaust survivors (two of them, pictured above).  Don't let the "H" word keep you away--it's an exceedingly heart-warming, uplifting and life-affirming film.  You can also visit the First Run Features site to keep abreast of where else the film will be opening across the nation.  Next up on December 11, Four Seasons Lodge will run in Los Angeles and Boston.  If you live in those cities, contact me to learn how you can help us get the word out and plan some special events around the screenings there.  The IFC Center puts up showtimes very close to the opening, so keep checking there and buy your tickets in advance.  There are discounts for groups of 10 or more.

Also on the 11th, which is Veteran's Day, The Way We Get By will have its national broadcast début on P.O.V.  The film is now also available for purchase on DVD--probably will become one of the top 10 stocking stuffers of all time, I would wager.

Rooftop Films sends news that their 2010 submissions have opened and they are welcoming entries for their summer series next year.  You can find downloadable information here or submit through Without A Box.  The superb series runs from May to September and will feature more than 200 films in various outdoor screenings throughout New York City.  All genres, formats and lengths are welcome.

On Monday, November 9, The Flaherty has a hot animation program on tap at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village.  "Experiments With Animation" will feature short works by such talents as Phil Solomon, Martha Colburn, Signe Baumane and Jeff Scher.  Go here for more info.

Okay, gotta pull myself back into the fray here.  I will be having lunch shortly with filmmaker Geoffrey Smith, director of the glorious The English Surgeon and co-director of Presumed Guilty which débuted at Toronto in September and is playing the fest here before moving on to CPH:DOX in Copenhagen next week.  It's a tremendous film and it will be fascinating to see the furor it will cause in Mexico where the story is told.  I'll have a full review soon, but watch for this one.  It will be one of the most important films of 2010.

I will have much more from Sheffield in the next couple of weeks, but back to just taking it all in--seeing great nonfiction films and getting to visit and converse with new filmmakers bringing groundbreaking talent and expertise to the field.  It's so awesome to be in the company of thousands of others who are as equally rabid about nonfiction cinema as I am.  Right now, off to Digital Bootcamp with Ingrid Kopp--woo hoo!

The 33rd Annual Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival

I'm off to the Sheffield Doc/Fest tomorrow for the rest of the week, but wanted to mention that on the other side of that, here in New York at the American Museum of Natural History, the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival will host its 33rd iteration.  This is the longest-running documentary festival in the US, and their line-up is particularly stellar this year.  The fest starts on the 12th of November and goes through the 15th and the box office is now open! 

The festival presents a selection of documentaries and other non-narrative work, as well as animation, experimental films, and indigenous media.  This year, the festival will highlight a series of films in conjunction with the AMNH's exhibition, Traveling the Silk Road, opening November 14.  Look for a presentation of an exploration of the science and history behind Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, a new multimedia performance by Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, which incorporates the sounds of melting ice recorded by him in Antarctica.  Coooool. 

The Museum is located at Central Park West at 79th Street and tickets can be purchased by phone at 212 769 5200, online here, or at any of the Museum's admission desks.  The film schedule can be downloaded here.

If You've Got the Content, We've Got the Airtime (and the Audience)

As Wild West-ish as the independent film community can be about our methods of production, most New York-based media makers, particularly first-timers, will really only register a small amount of distribution and exhibition advice from the guru-of-the-moment, take it as gospel, and try a recipe that might be mildly successful for some, but is far from a panacea for how to find appropriate outlets for original content.  It's not necessary to fork over hundreds of dollars so "an expert" can tell you how to DIY yourself through a mountain of work with, oftentimes, very little in return.  We need only look a bit further and broaden our horizons just a tad to find viable distribution and marketing partnerships that reside, literally, in our backyard. 

In a quiet, but intellectually vibrant, corner of our public television world, exists a potential repository for fresh independently produced fare, especially for short-form fiction and nonfiction.  Last week, I was asked by the New York Film / Video Council (founded in 1946, so they've been around a while) to moderate a panel discussion for its program entitled "Low Cost / No Cost and The City," where we saw some creative work being made by local artists, and discussed ideas about the ever-shifting landscape of exhibition and distribution for said creative work.

The main focus of the evening, hosted at DCTV (and what a generous crew they have there), was how our public broadcasting channels, a long-standing launching place for independents, can present themselves more effectively to artists looking for a place to showcase bold and original media.  Challenged, as are we all, by miniscule budgets, small staffs and limited resources, Rich Siegmeister, WNET Channel 13's Director of Business Development and Institutional Strategy for WNET.org, and one of the creators of Thirteen's independent film series, Reel 13, and WNET Channel 13 Senior Producer, Bob Morris, spoke about new initiatives being implemented to develop several new projects for both local and national distribution of public media.

Keith Boynton and Mike Lavoie, of 12films12weeks, a multi-talented duo that managed a troupe of young actors and crew, to produce twelve narrative films in twelve weeks this past summer, joined the conversation.  Their content resides solely on the Internet, which turned out to be a good place to find a small, but loyal, audience for their short pieces, but admittedly not knowing anything about the current independent distribution landscape or how to market themselves to a wider audience, it remained a fairly circumscribed phenomenon.  How can they advance their agenda in the future (if they so desire) by expounding upon the grassroots audience building they've accomplished thus far?  Or put another way, where can they go from here?

The third party to join the conversation was UnionDocs, a very small collaborative of documentary artists living and working together in a residency program in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, partially funded by the state of New York.  Its founder and director, Christopher Allen, and head of programming, Steve Holmgren, along with current resident artists, Robbie Wilkins and Josh Solondz, presented a taste of what they do and their general ethos in how interdisciplinary nonfiction media can express new ideas and methods of making work.

In bringing together these disparate parties, NYFVC board member and event producer, Ginger Brown, enabled us to have a really productive and exciting conversation where media makers, often without viable major distribution alternatives representing one side of a coin, and smart and experienced broadcasters wanting great content to fill generous slots of airtime and able to provide an audience in the tens of thousands representing the other, could engage in a useful and pertinent discourse about how these two sides could collectively mint some valuable currency so that artists, programmers, broadcasters and audiences can all benefit and keep the flame of independent film alive and well and, somewhat, profitable.

This idea of creative mentorship resides quite strongly in the structure these artists have created, but the consensus seemed to be that there was a desire to broaden their community base and, again, there's Reel 13, there's WNET.org, and the creative producers and programmers there scouring the planet for interesting work.  There is a very small contingent able to find funds to get to festivals far and wide.  Siegmeister says he, distinctly, does not fall into that category of being one of those able to shuttle himself around to festivals.  But by getting out directly into the community the channel serves and engaging in more discussions like this within that community, all parties can only be better served in reaching a common ultimate goal:  bringing hard-to-find strong film and video work to a large audience hungry for discovery and innovative media.

Rich Siegmeister welcomes inquiries from independent artists about submitting content to the channel.  They are looking for short films, 30-minute programs and independent feature films.  You can reach him at [email protected].

Union Docs Rocks This Weekend: Deborah Stratman, Mamadou Niang, and More

This weekend, UnionDocs in W'burg, Brooklyn, will present two great programs.  On Saturday the 17th, guest curator, Rachael Rakes of Doctruck, will bring three wonderful pieces on contemporary China: the marginalized Turkic-Muslim community of Ughyurs in Deborah Stratman's Kings of the Sky from 2004, Sam Green's haunting short film, Utopia: Part 3, The World's Largest Shopping Mall (2009), and Yin-Ju Chen and James T. Hong's 11-minute, Dogs of Straw (still from film, pictured), a profile of the streets of Taiwan right before the 2008 elections.  Great filmmakers, great films!  Special guests will be on hand; the screening will begin at 7:30 p.m. 

On Sunday the 18th also at 7:30, UnionDocs is partnering with the African Film Festival New York to bring in documentary filmmaker, Mamadou Niang to present a short work-in-progress cut of his new piece on Ousmane Sembene, the father of African cinema.  Following this, the multiple award-winning Pray the Devil Back to Hell will play.  Devil presents the story of the powerful struggle of a group of Liberian women who band together to end a violent and long-standing civil war in their country.  Their methods of peacemaking are a sight to behold.  After the screening, I will moderate a conversation with the film's producer, Johanna Hamilton, and its cinematographer, Kirsten Johnson. 

It's supposed to rain for the next several days, so it's the perfect weekend to get your ass to a movie.  Come join us!

Oscilloscope Laboratories Distributes Milestone

This past weekend, Oscilloscope Laboratories announced that it's inked an exclusive three-year DVD distribution agreement with Milestone Films.  The partnership gives Oscilloscope sole distribution rights to all of Milestone Cinematheque's past, current and future DVD releases, an absolutely exquisite catalog.  Milestone's remarkable and vast film library ranges from the earliest days of cinema to the golden-age of silent movies, to the post-war foreign film renaissance to American independent narratives and nonfiction features of the 20th century.

Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles (1961) will be Milestone's first release under the new agreement, available in stores in November.  Newly restored, I got to see a print of this at last year's Flaherty Film Seminar and the IFC Center in New York had a short run this past year.  It has drawn strong comparisons to Charles Burnett's 1977 masterpiece, Killer of Sheep, another Milestone release.  You will want copies of both of these gorgeous pieces of cinema for your library. 

Also, Oscilloscope and Milliarium Zero, Milestone's sister company, will release Mariposa Film Group's documentary Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives on DVD later this year.  Originally released in 1978, it was the first feature-length doc about gay and lesbian identity made by gay filmmakers and became a strong cultural touchstone for the emerging gay rights movement in the late 70s and early 80s.

This will prove to be a very exciting partnership.  You can become a fan of Oscilloscope on Facebook by clicking here.

UnionDocs Collaborative Calls for Residency Applications

UnionDocs Collaborative in Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn is offering a new program for nonfiction media research and group production.  There are three resident and three non-resident openings for '09 - '10 (September to September).  Six participants live at 322 Union Avenue in the apartments above the gallery and screening room and six will set up housing for themselves independently.

The Collaborative is a one-year program for twelve emerging media producers, theorists and curators to explore contemporary approaches to the documentary arts and a process for developing an innovative group project throughout the year.  Residents will have access to direct contact and structured exchanges with visiting artists; exposure to a variety of practices and models; the opportunity to network and collaborate; one-on-one mentorships; and, an opportunity to showcase group work in a toured exhibition and/or publication.

This year, there will be several masterclasses and other special events with over thirty visiting artists, all of whom represent a broad range of work in film, video, radio, photography and interactive documentary.  The application deadline for residents is Thursday, August 13; the application deadline for non-residents is Monday, August 31.  Click here for info and the online application form.

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.

A Letter from Bahman Ghobadi About Roxana Saberi

Executive director of the Flaherty Film Seminars, Mary Kerr, just sent the following letter from filmmaker, Bahman Ghobadi, regarding the arrest, trial and conviction of his fiancée, journalist Roxana Saberi. Saberi was charged by Iranian authorities with espionage on behalf of the United States. 

At last year's Flaherty, which I attended as a Fellow, we participants were privileged to have two conversations via Skype with Ghobadi who was one of the featured artists that year.  Saberi sat beside him as his translator (pictured).  Ghobadi did not appear in person only because he had not been given permission to travel to the United States.  All of us agreed that it was one of the most extraordinary experiences we had there, one among many.

A website has been set up to campaign for her release and includes up-to-date information on the situation.  I would like to also share the open letter from Ghobadi which he wrote following Roxana's conviction:

"To Roxana Saberi, Iranian with an American passport"

If I kept quiet until now, it was for her sake. If today I speak, it is for her sake.

She is my friend, my fiancée, and my companion. An intelligent and talented young woman, whom I have always admired.

It was the 31st of January. The day of my birthday. That morning, she called to say she would pick me up so we would go out together. She never came. I called on her mobile, but it was off, and for two-three days I had no idea what had happened to her. I went to her apartment, and since we had each other's keys, I went in, but she wasn't there. Two days later, she called and said: "Forgive me my dear; I had to go to Zahedan." I got angry: why hadn't she said anything to me? I told her I didn't believe her, and again she said: "Forgive me my dear, I had to go." And the line was cut. I waited for her to call back. But she didn't call back. She didn't call back.

I left for Zahedan. I looked for her in every hotel, but nobody had ever heard her name. For ten days, thousands of wild thoughts came to my mind. Until I learned, through her father, she had been arrested. I thought it was a joke.

I thought it was a misunderstanding and that she would be released after two or three days. But days went by and I had no news from her. I started to worry and knocked on every door for help, until I understood what had happened.

It is with tears in my eyes that I say she is innocent and guiltless. It is me, who has known her for years, and shared every moment with her, who declares it. She was always busy reading and doing her research. Nothing else. During all these years I've known her, she wouldn't go anywhere without letting me know, nor would do anything without asking my advice. To her friends, her family, everyone that surrounded her, she had given no signs of unreasonable behavior. How come someone who would spend days without going out of her apartment, except to see me; someone who, like a Japanese lady, would carefully spend her money, and had sometimes trouble making a living; someone who was looking for a sponsor to get in contact with a local publisher so her book would be printed here (in Iran); could now be charged with a spying accusation?! We all know - no, we have all seen in movies - that spies are malicious and sneaky, that they peep around for information, and that they are very well paid. And now my heart is full of sorrow. Because it is me who incited her to stay here. And now I can't do anything for her. Roxana wanted to leave Iran. I kept her from it.

At the beginning of our relationship, she wanted to go back to the United States. She would have liked us to go together. But I insisted for her to stay until my new film was over. She really wanted to leave Iran. And I kept her from it. And now I am devastated, for it is because of me she has been subject to these events. These past years, I have been subject to a serious depression. Why? Because my movie had been banned, and released on the black market. My next movie was not given an authorization, and I was forced to stay at home. If I've been able to stand it until today, it is thanks to the presence and help that she provided me.

Since I had no authorization for my last movie, I was nervous and ill-tempered. And she was always there to calm me down.

Roxana wanted to leave Iran. I kept her from it. She is the one who took care of me while I was depressed. Then I convinced her to stay, I wanted her to write the book she had started in her head. I accompanied her, and thanks to my friends and contacts, I knocked on every door and was able to set up meetings with filmmakers, artists, sociologists, politicians, and others. I would go with her myself. She was absorbed by her book, to the point that she could stay and bear it all, until my film would be finished, and we would leave together.

Roxana's book was a praise to Iran. The manuscripts exist, and it will certainly be published one day, and all will see it. But why have they said nothing? All those who have talked, worked and sat with her, and who know how guiltless she is.

I am writing this letter for I am worried about her. I am worried about her health. I heard she was depressed and cried all the time. She is very sensitive. To the point she refuses to touch her food. My letter is a desperate call to all statesmen and politicians, and to all those who can do something to help. From the other side of the ocean, the Americans have protested against her imprisonment, because she is an American citizen. But I say no, she is Iranian, and she loves Iran. I beg you, let her go! I beg you not to throw her in the midst of your political games! She is too weak and too pure to take part in your games. Let me be present at her trial, sit next to her wise father and gentle mother, and testify she is without guilt or reproach.

However, I am optimistic about her release, and I firmly hope the verdict will be cancelled in the next stage of the trial.

My Iranian girl with Japanese eyes and an American ID is in jail. Shame on me! Shame on us!

DOX BOX '09 Damascus, Syria

The 2nd Annual DOX BOX documentary film festival in Syria is now touring Tartous and Homs (through tomorrow), small cities north of Damascus.  Jackie Reem Salloum, the Brooklyn-based director, producer and editor of the rabidly popular, Slingshot Hip Hop, is touring with them (her film won the Audience Award at the fest), as is Holland-based Moroccan filmmaker, Fatima Jebli-Ouazzani, with her beautiful film from 1997, In My Father's House.  Both films played at the festival in Damascus this past week and I had the distinct privilege of participating in this nascent film event, an astounding feat of organization and perseverance on the part of festival organizers, Diana El-Jeiroudi, Orwa Nyrabia and Samer Khwaiss and their incredible team--friendliness and efficiency in equal measure.  (A special personal thanks to Bethany Randell.)

The eight-day event was jam-packed with activity and there was an excited buzz in the air as there always is when you bring artists from disparate cultures together in a place in which most never expected to be.  With two sidebar film programs, Voices of Women and Screenpeace: Notes on War; twenty-two official international feature film selections (all screenings were free to the public); three Best of Fest selections (Pavel Kostomarov and Antoine Cattin's gorgeous film from Russia, The Mother; Geoffrey Smith's transcendent, The English Surgeon; and Helena Trestiková's tour-de-force, René); guest master class artist, Nicolas Philibert; a "Writing the Documentary Workshop" (including 1-2-1 Consultations with international industry) led by Tue Steen Müller and EDN Chairman, Mikeal Opstrup, for filmmakers from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt (more on this in a bit); an Open Day with industry guests presenting information on funds and festivals from all over the world (I represented the Tribeca Film Institute in the US); and a Producers' Meeting, a roundtable forum discussing producing an independent documentary from conception, funding, completion and distribution within a contemporary Arab world context--well, it was an exhausting week.  I also don't want to forget to mention that a daily bulletin also managed to get published called "Point of View," prepared by the Gender and Cinema Journalism Workshop.  The hands, minds and spirits of women were imprinted everywhere (again, more on this in a bit).

As is the privilege of traveling to foreign lands as someone's guest, we all also experienced the beauty and hospitality of the inhabitants of the city of Damascus, were wined and dined with the freshest, most exquisite food and drink, got to visit a Hamman (Turkish bath), and were hosted at plenty of parties where there were opportunities to chat about mutual passions, make new friends and give our hips a shake or two on the dance floor to the latest regional hits.  (Photo, above, from Haifaa Al-Mansour's Women Without Shadows; Mansour is the first native female Saudi Arabian film director.  To say she made her film "on the sly" is a gross understatement.)

This was the first time that an industry platform was launched in order to facilitate the development of creative relationships between international and Arab documentary filmmaking communities.  We here in the States have our challenges, to be sure.  However, the obstacles and challenges that face an independent artist in these regions is a whole other ball of wax.  As for the festival itself: while it was under the auspices of the Syrian Ministry of Culture (thus our rock-star treatment at the airport, both coming and going), there were compromises aplenty.  There was no actual funding that came from inside the country.  DOX BOX is totally dependent right now on financial and in-kind support from the international community, entities ranging from the KVINFO in Denmark to the British Film Council (UK) to the IDFA (Holland) to Hot Docs (Canada) to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, FIDMarseille (France), the Arab Cinema Directory (the Re:frame project of the Arab world), ARTEEAST, DocPoint (Finland) and Cultures of Resistance, among others.  Because of this generosity, visiting filmmakers received screening fees, as well as a daily stipend during their stay.

Because the theaters were provided by a governmental entity for free to exhibit the films, no Q&A sessions between visiting filmmakers and audiences were permitted, nor was there much of an opportunity to exhibit films by Syrian filmmakers, which is mighty odd since the event takes place in Syria.  But, alas, most of the independent feature docs being made fall prey to the censorship boards and so cannot be exhibited within the country in which they were made.  (This is a problem filmmakers in Iran face, as well.)  One hand giveth, the other taketh away, and this permeates the modern culture in ways that a visitor isn't even aware of unless they're curious enough to ask how things work there.  And I'm a curious person.  (Taxi window decal of President Bashar al-Assad, his image ubiquitous everywhere you turn in Damascus.  Photo courtesy of Emma Piper-Burket.)

Syria is bordered by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Lebanon with a small stretch of coastline along the Mediterranean Sea.  Like most ancient Middle-Eastern cultures, there is an amalgam of religions, languages, peoples, histories and terrains that makes for a place that is impenetrable to a foreigner that is visiting for just a handful of days.  But, as is our wont in our tiny little world of making creative nonfiction cinema, the main focus of discussion at formal events and casual get-togethers alike centered on Art vs. Commerce and the ways and means, both clandestine and overt, we must run the gauntlet of finding funding and support for our artistic endeavors and what compromises and choices present themselves along the way. This is why nurturing and collaboration with developing artists from wherever they happen to be living and working is an imperative for the international industry, for it is at this time and place in our civilization where that is becoming more and more possible.  We have the ability to help one another not only usurp and trump governmental, religious, and other fundamental, roadblocks like the aforementioned, but to continue to educate one another and use our access to information and technology in ways that go beyond "friend-ing" one another on Facebook (although that's nice, too--except when you hear from your ex).

Since this post is getting a bit unwieldy (and I'm in Rome and it's a gorgeous day), I will end here for now.  In my next couple of DOX BOX posts, I will continue this discussion by talking more about the A vs. C debacle, Voices of Women and "the dreams of making the films that we dream of making" (thank you, Mr. Omar Amiralay).

Flaherty Film Seminar '09

The Flaherty is currently accepting fellowship grant applications for its June film seminar.  I attended last year on a Professional Development grant and it was one of the richest professional and personal experiences I had last year.  I highly recommend attending if you've never experienced the Seminar, whether you're an industry professional, filmmaker, media maker, producer, student, academician, curator, programmer, archivist.  The Flaherty actually offers three types of Fellowships which provide a bit of financial support to attend, a professional development grant, a student grant and a Philadelphia Foundation grant.  Preference is given to first-time applicants (you can attend the Seminar twice as a Fellow in nonconsecutive years).  The deadline is March 13.  For more info, click here.  [A shot of last year's '08 Fellows on the Colgate University campus quad.]

Also, employees of any New York State nonprofit organization focusing on the media arts can apply for a grant through the Experimental Television Center.  On the site, go to the application for the Media Arts Technical Assistance Fund grant.  That deadline is the 27th of March. 

As it did last year, this year's Seminar, the 55th, will take place June 20 - 26 at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.  It's a new home for the Flaherty and it's an ideal spot--beautiful little town, beautiful campus, quiet, serene, green and lovely; attendees can even use the gym, track and swimming pool.  Another huge draw this year is sure to be the amazing program Seminar curator, Irina Leimbacher (last year's Fellows coordinator), will be programming called "Witnesses, Monuments, Ruins."  The accommodations in the dorms are a bit rustic, but trust me, you're rarely in your room.  Fees include accommodations, meals, screenings, discussions and receptions.  Again,  go to the site to get more details on deadlines for registration.

This  Monday, the 9th at 7:30 at the Anthology Film Archives, the Flaherty continues its Flaherty NYC screening series with Jim Finn.  He's bringing his 2008 feature called The Juche Idea.  Translated as "self-reliance," Juche is a mixture of Confucian and Stalinist pseudosocialism, a school of philosophy North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, adapted from his father to apply to propaganda, film and art.  Inspired by the true story of the South Korean director being kidnapped in the 70s to invigorate the North Korean film industry, the film follows Yoon Jung Lee, a young video artist invited to work at a Juche art residency on a North Korean collective farm.  In Variety, Robert Koehler said of the film, "The evidence that current filmmaking is brimming with original, standard-breaking creations has to include the work of Jim Finn, whose brilliant The Juche Idea is the latest in a growing filmography without precedent or category."

artdaily.org Has the Skinny on MoMA's 2nd Annual Doc Month

Just flew in from Helsinki, Finland a few hours ago.  I had an absolutely amazing time--what a beautiful place.  I will be blogging over the next few days about my experiences there and review the many wonderful films I saw at the '09 Docpoint festival.  I'll also share what might be on tap for next year's iteration. 

So, I'm horribly jet lagged and trying to calm down so I can go to sleep since it's now about five in the morning for me (argh!), but wanted to link my site to artdaily.org's article about the upcoming Doc Fortnight doings at MoMA for their 2nd Annual Doc Month (Feb.).  Click here to read their comprehensive article and to link through to the MoMA site for more info on the schedule and ticket purchasing.

Also, just a quick mention before I nod off since the week promises to begin with a bang:  this Wednesday, the 28th, I will be moderating this month's DocuClub run by Arts Engine.  We'll be showing a work-in-progress on a really wonderful project, Augusta Palmer's The Hand of Fatima.  Click here to view all the details.  I hope you can come out and view the film and participate in the post-screening confab with the director at The Tank at 7:00.

A big kiitos to all my Docpoint friends!

2008 Leo Awards

In the film and media awards firmament, the Leos go largely unregarded by the mainstream media.  Actually that includes most independent media outlets, as well.  The Leo Awards are named in honor of Leo Dratfield, (1918 - 1986), a pioneer of independent and non-theatrical film distribution, an individual who sought out the most outstanding and innovative international film and video work, encouraging their use in libraries, cultural centers and universities, providing artists doing groundbreaking noncommercial projects significant outlets for their stellar work.  The awards are presented annually in the categories of "Filmmaker or Producer" and "Exhibitor, Distributor, or Programmer," celebrating those who exemplify the commitment and spirit it takes to sustain a career of innovative approaches in the media arts.

The honorees of this year's awards, presented in a ceremony at Symphony Space on the upper west side of Manhattan last night, were filmmaker Barbara Hammer (pictured above with her longtime partner, Florrie Burke, from her piece, Tender Fictions);  distributors Sue Oscar and Linda Gottesman of Filmakers Library; and (deceased) filmmaker Helen Hill (pictured right with her husband and son).

Flaherty Seminar executive director, Mary Kerr, opened the ceremony with Leo's son Jim Dratfield, a widely-published animal photographer.  It was a warm and intimate evening filled with personal storytelling and anecdotes of these incredible talents who have  quietly been going about the business of creating an amazing legacy of creative, and deeply personal, work.

The Samu Award was presented to the late animator and teacher, Helen Hill, by Dan Streible, organizer of the Orphan Film Symposium.  We saw her 8 minute film from 1999, Mouseholes, where she pays tribute to her grandfather, Pop.  "Since I could not stop my grandfather's death, I tried to understand through recordings of his voice, home movies and animated scenes of heaven."  Hill's own funeral (she was murdered in her home in New Orleans in 2007) was modeled on Pop's, whom she is now buried next to.

The first Leo was presented to the incredible Barbara Hammer, an enchanting and exhilarating presence, a prolific artist who has produced an astounding body of work, over 80 pieces in a career that spans four decades.  (She shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.)  Her experimental films from the 70s dealt with subjects like menstruation, female orgasm and lesbian sexuality; in the 80s, she used optical printing to explore perception and the fragility of human life, juxtaposed with explorations of the fragility of 16mm film.  Her documentaries tell stories of marginalized people, hidden from history, giving them a voice and encouraging them to make social change in their communities.  She is currently writing a memoir called HAMMER to be published by the Feminist Press, CUNY in 2010.  We saw her 9 minute Vital Signs from 1991 and Sanctus, a 20-minute piece from 1990, an astonishing, deeply moving (and quite humorous) re-composition of found footage, a series of X-ray films shot in the 50s by doctor and film director, James Sibley Watson.

Sue Oscar and Linda Gottesman received a Leo, as well, for their creation of the Filmakers Library, a documentary distribution company begun in Gottesman's kitchen in 1969. The contributions these women have made, modestly and quietly over the course of several decades, cannot be overestimated.  Starting with the cinema vérité documentary, Birth and Death, they soon added more life cycle films, eventually growing their library to include a wide array of issue-oriented fare.  Dratfield was their mentor, guiding and encouraging them to become a significant resource for the educational and non-theatrical markets.  Their catalog is now 200 pages long and their web site has over a thousand documentaries of social significance.

Congratulations to these extraordinary women and their vital and invaluable contributions to the modern nonfiction and experimental canon.  It was a privilege to be in their company.

THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON) Comes to New York City

There will be many opportunities to see this film in New York in the coming weeks.  Please do yourself the favor of attending a screening of this gorgeous and moving film:

P.O.V. is hosting a sneak preview of The Betrayal which will air as part of the stellar PBS series' 2009 season.  The screening is on November 13 (this Thursday) at 7:00 p.m. in Arnhold Hall at The New School (55 West 13th Street in Manhattan).  The great Ellen Kuras and her subject, co-director and editor, Thavisouk Phrasavath, will be there to talk to Michelle Materre and the audience about their extraordinary relationship and collaboration in making this piece which they've been working on together for close to 25 years.  I saw this film at the Robert Flaherty Seminar in June and that's a tough crowd, believe me.  To a person, we were all incredibly moved, blown away by the visual beauty of the film and tragic/triumphant story of this young Lao refugee and his torn-apart family.  And Kuras and Phrasavath are both extraordinary speakers.  You will walk away profoundly changed and inspired.

The film recounts Phrasavath's journey from war-torn Laos to an urban America that tests both his past beliefs and future hopes. As part of the Vietnam War, our Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used Laos and its citizens for secret war operations, leading to mass bombings and destruction. When the U.S. abandoned the country and the Royal Army it had backed, of which Phrasavath's father, a respected officer, was a member, the young man's life descended into turmoil. Later reunited with his family in Brooklyn, he and his mother (pictured) were left to deal with the fallout of multiple betrayals--between countries, between husband and wife, between father and son--as they struggled to survive in exile.  This is a Diverse Voices Project co-production, in conjunction with American Documentary | P.O.V.  Admission is free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served. 

There will also be a gala premiere (by invitation only) at The Paley Center on Tuesday the 18th, close upon the heels of the film's theatrical run at the IFC Center.  Opening night will be Friday the 21st for a one-week run ending Thursday, November 27th. 

Kuras has also chosen to collaborate with New York-based distributor Cinema Guild.  They are in the midst of launching a major educational and social outreach program to various institutions, governmental organizations, schools, churches, refugee organizations and other groups tied to the various Laotian refugee communities scattered around the country.

Flaherty NYC and STF: Upcoming Screenings

On Monday, November 10, Flaherty NYC will be presenting the second installment of its new screening series at 7:30 at Anthology Film Archives (32 2nd Avenue in the East Village).  Alison Kobayashi and Sylvia Schedelbauer were two of the guest artists at the Flaherty in June.  Schedelbauer, half-Japanese, half-German, has been making short films that explore historical narratives in the context of very personal, psychological treatments using found and archival footage to create haunting and lyrical pieces.  Her work is aesthetically quite beautiful and emotionally riveting.  We're showing two works of hers, Remote Intimacy (a still from this piece, pictured), an eight-minute meditation on dreams, nightmares and desire; and Memories, a 19-minute film that creates a complicated family lineage and heritage that she has shaped into a very personal construction of identity, memory and history between her Japanese self and her German self, again gorgeous, haunting and emotionally subversive. 

In a very, very different vein, half-Japanese, half-Canadian video maker, Alison Kobayashi, explores some of the same terrain.  However, instead of using found footage, this very young, Tracey Ullman-esque performance artist uses her own face and body to transform herself into a myriad of personalities to tell her stories.  We're showing a piece called Alex to Alex, an hilarious and quite moving six-minute video where she plays the roles of two teenage boys.  She explores their relationship, as she imagines it, based on a love letter she found on a highway overpass, a missive from a "mostly gay" fourteen year old who's fallen for another person in his class.  The second piece is called Dan Carter (still from the video, pictured), a 15-minute project she created based on an answering machine tape she found in a thrift store.  Dan Carter is structured around the messages left to Dan by his lover, his social worker, and his neglected children.  Kobayashi plays all the characters and lip-syncs their words into the camera; it's an amazing performance.  She is a true chameleon and is able to slip in and out of other people's skins effortlessly--men, women, children, young, old, fat, thin, etc.  She also does everything by herself--makeup, wardrobe, shooting, editing--incredible stuff and a delight to watch.  (Seriously, somebody should swoop this one up and give her her own series.)  Kobayashi will be in the house and I will be moderating a conversation with her post-screening.  Hope you'll come out to discover the work of these two very talented artists.  General admission tickets are $10, $8 for Anthology members, IFP members and students.  You can order tickets by clicking here.

On Tuesday, Thom Powers continues his fall season of Stranger Than Fiction at the IFC Center with a documentary called The Dungeon Masters by Keven McAlester, fresh from its world premiere at Toronto.  The film tells the stories of three devoted Dungeons & Dragons gamers living in those "nowhere" places in the US, all struggling to translate their rich imaginative worlds into real-life aspirations.  McAlester and DP, Lee Daniel (who also shot McAlester's You're Gonna Miss Me), follow them for one year as they traverse the boundaries of their make-believe selves with their "real" lives.  The screening starts at 8:00 and McAlester will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A, followed by drinks and more conversation at 99 Below on MacDougal Street.  (I'm not sorry that the Big Black Pussycat has bitten the dust as the "after-party" spot for STF, even though it's fun to say "Big Black Pussycat."  Huge, distracting TV screens all over, nowhere comfortable to sit en masse and one surly bartender to serve drinks to about a hundred thirsty people--ugh.)