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February
22, Thursday, 7:30PM, 2007
BIG
BALAGAN: LOCAL
FILMMAKERS SERIES
New Films From Emerson College Faculty
Balagan is very excited to present an evening of new works from 4 of the many talented faculty from Emerson College. These new works exemplify the Balaganian spirit of creative innovation, risk-taking and personal expression through film and video. Please come celebrate their achievements and to be part of the thriving Boston filmmaking community.
Fall
(5min, 35mm, 2006),
The Passenger (16min, 16mm,
2006)
Director: Kathryn Ramey (in
person)
From
the tale of Icarus to Plato's cave analogy
and through the fragile materiality of hand
processed 35mm film, 'Fall' relates the pain
of knowledge acquisition as a girl becomes
a woman and one turns into two. 'Fall'
was shot with a hand crank Parvo
(35mm camera) a few months after my son's
birth. The final edit was completed during
a residency at Yaddo Corporation.
With
whispered voice-over, text on screen, singing
and kinesic anthropologists Jacques Van Flack
and Ray Birdwhistell intoning analysis, the
passenger is a hand-processed multi-vocal
film meditation on madness, motherhood, psychoanalysis
and the possibility of escaping one’s
fate.
"The
Passenger" is a personal, experimental,
16mm film that addresses my tenuous relationship
with my mentally ill mother and my reservations
about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood. On
August, 27th, 2004 my mother succumbed to
complications brought about by severe hypertension
and her psychotropic medication. It was an
abrupt, though not unexpected, ending to her
struggle. At the funeral I was the only one
of her children to speak. I said she had perfect
penmanship and that she loved to dance and
sing. The later were her gifts to me.
Satchmo:
the arrival of Gabriel on a Wing and a Half-note
(17min, 16mm, 2006)
Director: Pierre Desir (in
person)
The
film follows the timeline of dreams borrowed
from the pillows of cheap motels. Syncopated
images flow together in the rushing currents
of early springtime, dancing on ice cool edges
of consciousness, conducting momentary juxtapositions
evocative of balancing baskets of balloons
between worry and joy, fear and laughter.
Ravens, rapt in a slow jitterbug, perch on
a sacred wooden sculpture left to rot in the
foothills. Time passes without a word. It
always does, but not without leaving its mark.
Decay achieves a gentle meditative hieroglyphic
scarring. The ravens wait patiently, ready
to pluck out any eyes that stop keeping the
beat. Interrupted only by the wretched reverie
of a response from the dark corners of the
mind where language has yet to find a chair.
The lyrical pace of the piece is essential
to forming a spatial receptivity. It is all
about putting the audience to “sleep”.
Dangerous, yes, but, perchance to dream, to
drift off into their own reveries of who knows
what or why. The sleep of those lost in thought
as they drive in their cars. The sleep of
the dancer that no longer follows the steps.
The sleep of the musician that no longer looks
for the notes. The way-out sleep that Duke
Ellington and Louis Armstrong called “swingin’”.
There
(9:35, 16mm, 2006), Bliss (4:30,
video, 2006),
Director:
Robert Todd (in
person)
"There":
It encourages a rediscovery
of emotional colors found in seeds of light
planted in fields of darkness.
"Bliss":
This short video keeps intact the
dividing line between our civilized view of
'nature' as serving our aesthetic interests
and the danger it poses as an unbridleable
power.
Profit
Motive and the Whispering Wind (52min,
16mm on video, 2007)
Director: John Gianvito (in
person)
A
visual poem about the progressive history
of the United States as seen through its cemeteries.
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