April 5, Thursday, 6:00PM, 2007
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston

This year's Black Maria selection spans from poetic visual lyricism (Leighton Pierce, Robert Todd, John Warren) to animated mythical stories (Stacey Stears, Eric Patrick, Karen Aqua/Ken Field) to at times controversial first person accounts from different parts of the world (Sergey Litovetz - Russia, Diego Quemada-Diez - East Africa, Dan Monceaux - Australia, Jay Rosenblatt - USA). Local filmmakers John Warren. Karen Aqua and Ken Field, Robert Todd are expected to be in person.

Startle Pattern 12min, 16mm, 2006 (USA) - Black Maria - First Prize
Dir. Eric Patrick (Greensboro, NC)

Startle Pattern is a farewell card to the film medium. In this late age of emulsion, this essay is a call of the cinematic gaze to a state of crisis. The film functions as a deconstruction of spectatorship and authorship in the moving image... a puppet's form tattered and decayed, hinting at the Protagonist's delicate relationship with reality, voyeurism, the director and the apparatus.

Afraid So 3min, video, 2006 - Black Maria - Second Prize
Dir. Jay Rosenblatt (San Francisco, CA)

This work features a narration by the radio legend Garrison Keillor, host of “Prairie Home Companion” and star of the recent feature film by Robert Altman. “Afraid So” is about fear and anxiety and is based on a poem where each line forms a question with the implied response being “Afraid so”. Keillor’s dulcet voice wafts through an assemblage of vintage film clips which capture a dream like sense of universal angst and impending doom.

 

 

Interplay, 6min, 16mm, 2007 - Black Maria - First Prize
Director: Robert Todd (Boston, MA) (in person)

Robert Todd has an eye for subtle beauty in this ode to the summer: a play in three acts, a dance in three forms, three versions of paradise. A meadow, a child and mother, color, nature, air, the ethos of the season are all felt in this lyrical cinematic work.

Eaten 6.5min, video, 2006 - Black Maria - First Prize
Dir. Anna Haydock (Iowa City)

A game of dress-up: windows and wallpaper, hawks and moths, olive loaf and tinfoil. The sounds and gestures of the everyday gather to become the pre-articulated vocabulary of desire, anxiety, and basic human needs. Meaning is illusive yet somehow weighty in the prosaic scenes depicted in this intimate and personal work.

 

Elegy 6min, 16mm, 2006 - Black Maria - Second Prize
Dir. John Warren (Cambridge, MA) (in person)

This poignant and unassuming color film interprets the dreams and memories of an elderly woman as she looks back on her life, The film searches for a deeper image of death. A sense of loss weighs heavily in this work as what appears to be a home movie of a grandmother alone at the grave of her husband plays unaltered. Hope is symbolized in images of cherry trees in bloom and stained glass church windows, perhaps implying the promise of an afterlife.

Kazan under microscope 20min, 16mm on video, 2005 - Black Maria - Second Prize
Dir. Sergey Litovetz (Russia)

The city space is full of secrets and wonderful opportunities. Love for the city is a key. This love, if it is very strong, turns to magic. Opportunities turn to abilities. Filmmaker Sergei Litovets, lovingly conveys atmospheric images of his home city where few things work right and where the heroes are quirky characters. The piece takes place primarily in a building in the heart of Kazan’s decaying old district, where a headstrong woman knows how to look back into the past, helped by a broken microscope and a little magic.

 

 

Sensorium, 5min, 2006 - Black Maria - Third Prize
Dir.Karen Aqua and Ken Field (Cambridge, MA)

A hand-drawn experimental animation exploring the relationship between music and visual forms inspired by gestures and movements found in nature (such as tidal pools). This vibrant film achieves a sound/motion synthesis. An alphabet of abstract animated and musical gestures combine in various configurations to create a lush imagistic rhythm.

I want to be a pilot 11min, 35mm, 2006
Dir. Diego Quemada-Diez (Los Angeles)

The heart-wrenching work is the story of 12 year old orphan who wanders the muddy back lanes of a ramshackle East Africa slum in search of food and a sliver of human warmth. Made in the tradition of Italian Neo-Realist filmmakers who portrayed real life hardships in counterpoint to the saccharin plots of “white telephone films”, “I Want to be a Pilot” employs a street kid to represent the true life experiences and testimonies of 50 orphans in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

 

My person in the water 5.5min, video, 2006 - Black Maria - Second Prize
Dir. Leighton Pierce (Iowa City)

The latest in a series of “precipitated narratives,” this video is a sensually photographed visual study of the human physique in water. Pierce does away with individual shots, instead creating a continuous interwoven stream of cascading images that make it impossible for the viewer to find where a shot begins or ends.

Phantom Canyon , 10min, 35mm, 2006 - Black Maria - First Prize
Director: Stacey Steers (Boulder, CO)

This is truly an extraordinary collage animation in which phantasmagoric Victorian era cutouts of cherubs, gargoyles, and women in petticoats, trip across the screen in a symphony of mythological images. This is a masterful, symbolic depiction of the travails and triumphs in the life of a woman, who is freed by the spirit of a star child.

 

 

 

Shift in perception 16min, 16mm on video, 2006 - Black Maria - First Prize
Dir. Dan Monceaux (Australia)

There is unpretentious charm in this tender, humanistic documentary. The lives of three South Australian women who gracefully compensate for their vision impairments are honored in this work. Leanda, Edna and Rhonda lead the filmmaker through their daily routines as they cook, make music and sew. The women's dreams, fears and observations are revealed in spontaneous conversations. Shot on Super 8 film predominantly in black and white, a broad range of camera techniques (including stop-motion animation) play off of the special perceptions of the three extraordinary women.