Boston and it's outskirts, has long been a hotbed for Experimental and Documentary Filmmaking and filmmakers. This phenomenon is in part due to the high concentration of Schools that offer some of the most progressive film/video programs in the country such as Mass College of Art, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Emerson College, Harvard University and Boston University to name a few.

A longstanding tradition of bringing together some of the best contemporary experimental filmmakers to teach in the Universities has influenced countless artists over the years. These filmmakers not only share a passion for expression through film and video, they also share in a desire to reach and educate people seeking to learn about alternative cinema techniques and theories. Their commitment to filmmaking and film teaching is a testament to their creative spirits and we are fortunate and honored to be able to bring their works to you.

Special thanks to Louise Bourque for her help in coming up with the grouping of this Local Masters show.

Program

Zeger's Note 17min, 16mm, 1984
Director: Abraham Ravett

A note from a friend in Holland invokes a series of memories and dreams from the past and reminds the maker of the fragility of his own existence.

Abraham Ravett was born in Poland in 1947, raised in Israel and emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1955. He holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Filmmaking and Photography and has been an independent filmmaker for the past twenty years. Mr. Ravett received grants for his work from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Artists Foundation Inc, Boston, MA., The Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, The Japan Foundation, The Hoso Bunka Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. His films have been screened internationally including the Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, The Collective For Living Cinema, N.Y.C., Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, CA., S.F. Cinematheque, L.A. Forum, Innis Film Society, Toronto, Canada, and Image Forum, Tokyo, Japan. http://hampshire.edu/~arPF/

Mayhem 18min, 16mm, 1987
Director: Abigail Child

A homage to film noir, soap opera, thrillers and Mexican comic books generates the action. Perversely and equally inspired by de Sade's Justine and Vertov's sentences about the satiric detective advertisement. MAYHEM is an attempt to create a film in which sound is the character and to do so focusing on sexuality and the erotic. Not so much to undo the entrapment (we fear desire; we desire what we fear), but to frame fate, show up the rotation, upset the common, and incline our contradictions towards satisfaction, albeit unconscious. (Source: Cinenova)

'Abigail Child's series IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR? is one of the most assured and important projects to have emerged over the last decade. Constructing from and subverting a wide galaxy of source materials, these films are archeological digs into the very stuff, the conceptions, we are born into. Child decomposes the materials and gestures that would compose us. The films are charged with a startling and playful musicality and poetic and rigorous compression. Each image and sound cuts deep and works over time containing hidden and unhidden detonations working against the manufactured ambush that images have in store. Agile dances through treacherous debris, they negotiate an obstacle course of polar anatomies zig-zagging with corkscrew twists and nuclear splits -- a gambol against the hazards.' (Mark McElhatten Curator NY Film Festival )

'Child's films are kinetic dramas of extraordinary craftsmanship and sensitivity. Violent juxtapositions, discontinuities in sound/image, create fascinating polyrhythms. What results is an impressive musique concrete composition....Child plays with memory, not only her own and the world's, but also cinema's: its conventions, polarizations and hierarchization of images." (Robert Hilferty, New York Native)

Abigail Child is a film and video maker whose montage pushes the envelope of form and content with smarts and passion. Her work in the 80s explores gender while focusing on strategies for rewriting narrative, while her recent 90s productions recuperate documentary to poetically explore public space, whether the homeless of Lower Manhattan or Petersburg, Russia after Perestroika. * She has exhibited her award-winning art extensively in both solo and group shows, including most recently:The American Century, 1950-2000, the Whitney Biennial (1989 + 97), the New York Film Festival & Video Side Bar (1989 + 1993), and in Europe- (London , Rotterdam, Torino, Vienna, Pesaro..). She is author of five books of poetry (A Motive for Mayhem, Mob and Scatter Matrix ). and her films and videos have received many honors including: an ITVS Screenwriting Grant, Guggenheim Foundation and Fulbright Fellowships, NYFA, NYSCA, & NEA Interarts Grants, Jerome and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grants, Massachusetts Arts Council New Works and Creative Artists Public Service Awards. Her films are in the permanent collection of MOMA, New York and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among others. * Child was an undergraduate at Harvard and is senior Faculty in Film at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston.

The Glass System 20min, 16mm, 2000
Director: Mark LaPore