Noise in my back yard 22min, video, 2000
Director: Geoff Adams

Noise In My Back Yard is a personal documentary charged with a dilemma: how can this video maker manage the ecology of his backyard? In a series of diverse video vignettes, Geoff Adams confronts the history, philosophy, business and practice of personal land management.

Geoff Adams is a film, video, and music maker living in Providence, RI. For 20 years he has made work for both art and commerce. Geoff has directed TV spots for ad agencies, and made programs for corporations, non-profits and institutions. Nowadays, to make time for art-making, Geoff limits his commercial activity to the creation of the live-action segments for the PBS animated show ARTHUR produced by WGBH. Geoff's newest video, Noise In My Back Yard, explores the dilemmas of backyard ecology. NIMBY was screened at many festivals in 2001 and won top awards at the Athens International Film & Video Festival, and The New England Film & Video Festival. Geoff has also received two National Daytime Emmy Awards, a George W. Peabody Award, and a R. I. State Council on the Arts Fellowship. He is an active saxophone player and scores all of his video and television work. Geoff is currently an adjunct instructor in the Film, Animation and Video Department at Rhode Island School of Design. Go to http://www.geoffadams.com to see things like a CV, a few clips, some syllabi and more.

Middle Street 4.5min, video
Director: Henry Ferrini

There is a "Middle Street" in the center of many cities and towns in America. This one is in America's oldest fishing port, Gloucester, Massachusetts. The street is the main artery through which city life flows. It's crowded with churches, government buildings, apartment houses and funeral homes. Traveling down "Middle Street" we hit the wharves, the harbor, St. Peter's Festival even a "Gloucester movie vision" of 1950s Gloucester. This video written by Boston's own Willie "Loco" Alexander who grew up in Gloucester and moved back in the 90s has been called a chowder of caterwauls and fleeting moments, a nature walk through Gloucester, Massachusetts with Willie Alexander and Henry Ferrini

Henry Ferrini has been making films from his home in Cape Ann, Massachusetts for over 20 years. His first film The Light, the Quality, the Time, the Place is a meditation on environmental responsibility in Gloucester. It was produced with a CETA grant from the Carter administration. Thoughout the years his work has "crossed the cut" from his hometown to focus on the place Jack Kerouac calls "the great continent of New England." His films have won numerous awards, played in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts and been broadcast on PBS. Among works completed are Witch City, a cautionary tale about Salem, MA; Poem In Action, "a heartfelt glimpse into the life of a poet; Radio Fishtown, called by the Boston Globe "a piece of poetic silver"; and Letters, a series of short films made in the former Yugoslavia. http://www.artsgloucester.com/ferriniproductions

May to December 10min, video, 2000
Director: Chris Gaines

A quiet exploration of identity and environment.

Hi, I'm Chris. I moved to boston a little over a year and a half ago, from the dry desert land of Tucson, Arizona. By day, I work in Lynn, MA teaching
Highschool students how to be Filmmakers, and I also work in Cambridge as an Editor; by night I try to make films, and take pictures.

Sabotaging Spring 11min, pixelvision
Director: Joe Gibbons

“It’s spring, it’s spring, and I feel I’m giving birth myself, to something monstrous, something ugly.” Gibbons enters the woods to begin his destructive campaign against spring, snapping the buds off trees while babbling maniacally. This tape is an impressionistic peek at Gibbons’ paranoiac fancy, as he explains to his dog Woody the facts of life, evolution and whistling.-Video Data Bank

"Joe Gibbons is the bon-vivant rebel of the avant-garde, cinematically 'researching' life on the fringe. His super-8 films are chronicles of daily life, humorous acts of transgression in which Gibbons skirts both social and art world conventions .... He successfully achieves his goal of erasing the boundaries between domestic reality and movie entertainment." - David Schwartz, American Museum of the Moving Image

Joe Gibbons works in film and video, making features and shorts. 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.

how to sleep (winds) 9min, 16mm, 2000
Director: Rebecca Myers

An open, dormant landscape, waiting. Stasis in the form of telephone wires and the crawl of jet trails. how to sleep (winds) presents images shaken with wind and anticipation, swept into darkness and back again.

Rebecca Meyers received her MFA in Film and Video Production in 2001 from the University of Iowa, where she was the recipient of an Iowa Arts Fellowship. There she founded and directed a monthly experimental film series called Light Reading and worked on the screening committee, and in various other capacities, for the Thaw Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media. She is now living in Chicago, where she continues to make films, and co-programs the Onion City Film and Video Festival for Chicago Filmmakers.

and others...