April 13, Thursday, 8:00PM, 2006
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival
(in collaboration with Faith Quilts Project)
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston

Balagan collaborates with Faith Quilts Project and Museum of Fine Arts to present the annual selection of the shorts from Black Maria Film Festival. This particular selection of shorts from the Black Maria Film Festival conveys different approaches to exploring subject of faith on film. Diversity of genres, film forms. and content are fascinating. Filmmakers include: Sam Green (San Fransisco), Ivan Golovnev (Moscow, Russia), Sara Jane Lapp (Virginia) and others.

The Faith Quilts Project (http://faithquilts.org/) is a three-year initiative which brings together quilt artists and faith groups to create collaborative quilts which delve into their faiths and explain them to the wider world. Thirty-five quilters are working with Muslims, Baha'is, Mormons, Catholics, Wiccans, Seventh Day Adventists, Evangelical Christians, Jews on over fifty quilts which will be shown at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts from April 7 through April 9. The quilts will then be divided into small groups and shown for the rest of April at the Boston Public Library, Cloud Foundation, the Great Hall at Codman Square (Dorchester), and the Museum of the National Center for Afro-American Artists. After April the quilts may be seen in churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques in Greater Boston.

Chronicles of a Professional Eulogist - 8 min, 35mm film /video - Black Maria - First Prize
Director: Sarah Jan Lapp, Seattle, WA

Through quivery hand-drawn animation and an unexpectedly candid voice-over by a rabbi of “unrevealed name,” Sarah Jane Lapp presents a surprising and often amusing portrait of the inner thoughts of a professional eulogist.

Sarah Jane Lapp works in film and visual art. Her first compilation of seven 16mm & 35mm films explored the interface of comic impulse and religious imagination among displaced persons in the Czech Republic. These films screened internationally at venues ranging from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to Kino Arsenal in Berlin. Sarah Jane currently lives in Seattle where she produces op-art for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She is represented by Robin Atlas Fine Art in Seattle and also has works available at the Matzo Files in New York City.

Lot 63, Grave C - 10 min. video - Black Maria - First Prize
Director: Sam Green, San Francisco, CA

This haunting video deals with the tragic events found in the classic 1970 film Gimme Shelter by the Maysles brothers. Sam Green gradually reveals the story of a young black man who was murdered by Hell’s Angels because he was with a white girl at the infamous Rolling Stones Altamont concert. Using images from the Maysles film, Green focuses on frames showing the riot that resulted in the stabbing of Meredith Hunter as the Stones continued to perform Under My Thumb.

Sam Green is a documentary filmmaker from San Francisco, California.He received his Master's Degree in Journalism from University of California at Berkeley, where he studied documentary with acclaimed filmmaker Marlon Riggs. His most recent feature-length documentary film "The Weather Underground" tells the story of a group of radical young women and men who tried to violently overthrow the United States government during the late 1960s and 70s. The film premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and has screened widely around the world. Among other works by Sam Green are "The Rainbow Man/John 3:16" premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, Pie Fight ’69 (directed with Christian Bruno), N-Judah 5:30, The Fabulous Stains: Behind the Movie (directed with Sarah Jacobson). Sam currently teaches at the University of San Francisco. He was recently an artist in residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito.

Tiny Katerina - 24 min., video. 2004 - Black Maria - First Prize
Director: Ivan Golovnev, Moscow, Russia, c/o CEC ArtsLink, New York.

Katerina, a resilient little Khanty girl from northwestern Siberia, observes and tries to make sense of the world around her in this beautifully photographed documentary. She observes and tries to participate in the hard scrabble chores in and around her family’s camp and teepee-like Yert. This gripping video provides a richly detailed and poignant study of a child from a traditional culture which is being invaded by forces beyond its control as an oil derrick appears on the horizon close to her home.

Ivan Golovnev (filmmaker) was born in 1978 in Omsk, a city in Siberia. His father is a scholar of history, ethnography, and anthropology who teaches at universities around the world, including the United States. His mother is a history teacher. As a child, he took part in ethnographic and anthropological expeditions in North-Western Siberia. He graduated from music school with a degree in piano performance. In 2000, Golovnev graduated from the History Department of the Omsk State University, where he majored in Ethnography. In 2002, Golovnev entered a Graduate Program for Screenwriters and Directors in Moscow. He directed a documentary television series “The Time of Myths” about the traditional culture of two indigenous peoples of Russia’s North-West Siberia– the Khanty and Mansi. Ivan is currently working on a documentary on the lives of representatives of different denominations in Siberia.

Cabin Field - 39 min, video, 2005 - Black Maria - Jury's Citation
Director: Laura Kissel (Columbia, SC)

A subtle work which explores the heritage of a quilt-like plot of land in rural South Carolina where a descendants of a slave family, a tenant farmer and a former land owner all toiled. The filmmaker conducts on-site interviews and observations as she explores the faint archeological traces of the abandoned fields and their boundries in this conceptual film that tells a story of the Old South.

Laura Kissel is a media artist who works in film and the electronic and digital arts. She is also co-founder of the Orphan Film Symposium at the University of South Carolina, where she is Associate Professor of Media Arts. Kissel’s documentary work explores issues surrounding landscape use and meaning, the representation of history, and the use of orphan films. She is also an activist and advocate for people with disabilities, and is in preproduction on a documentary about the representation of disability, eugenics and the civil rights struggle. Kissel received her MFA in Radio-TV-Film from Northwestern University in 1999.

A Time to Die - 8min, video, 2005 - Director's Choice
Director: Joe Gibbons

Among first person video diarists, iconoclast Joe Gibbons has no equal. In this new work, he examines his microcosm of the pecking order within the natural world of flowers mapping on his own psychological manifestations of value, weakness, and fears.

Joe Gibbons has been working in film and video, making features and shorts since mid-70s. His work has been shown at numerous museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, and included twice in the Whitney Biennial, and is regularly included in the NY Video Festival and the Rotterdam Film Festival. His last feature The Genius, starring Karen Finley and himself, had a month-long run in NYC at Anthology Film Archives and was included in such festivals as New Directors/New Films, AFI and Rotterdam. He lives in Boston and teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tribe - 18min, video, 2005 - Director's Choice
Director: Tiffany Shlain

The Tribe (also official Selection of Sundance Film Festival) takes the audience on an electric ride through the complex history of both the Barbie doll and the Jewish woman who created the pre-teen icon of the ideal female (exaggerated) body. Using archival footage, graphics, animation, Barbie dioramas, and slam poetry, “The Tribe” sheds light on what it means to be an American Jew in the 21st Century.

Honored as one of Newsweek's "Women Shaping the 21st Century," Tiffany Shlain, is an award winning filmmaker and founder and ambassador of The Webby Awards. Tiffany is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley (1992) where she was selected as a valedictorian speaker and received the highest award in art, The Eisner Award for her filmmaking. She studied film theory at UC Berkeley and film production at NYU. http://www.tiffanyshlain.com/