September 9, Thursday, 7:30PM, 2004
New England Beat

Swing 17 min, video, 2004
Director: Robert Todd

A DV profile of "the Tuxedo Junction Jazz Band" : a 17-piece Swing Era Big Band led by Pat Todd, and featuring Ken Todd on sax,etc. Every Monday night they play to a packed house of would-be hoofers at a seafood restaurant on Connecticut's shoreline. How about that?

Robert Todd has been working in and teaching film production since 1989, producing over twenty short pieces in various formats. Since 1985 he has been working as a painter, musician, and editor/sound designer on experimental, narrative and documentary films and videos. Robert's films have been screened at the festivals around the world and received a number of awards including Ann Arbor Film Festival Old Peculiar Award, New England Film Festival Director's Choice Award, Utah Film Festival Best Documentary Award and others. He holds a Masters Degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

History of the Sea 14min, video, 2004
Director: Alfred Guzzetti

A series of excursions and dream journal entries frame a dialectical meditation that moves between the overwhelming presence of the physical world and the linguistic perambulations of the unconscious mind.

Guzzetti has made both documentary and experimental films and tapes. With the feature-length Family Portrait Sittings (1975) he began an autobiographical cycle that continued with Scenes from Childhood (1979) and Beginning Pieces (1986). He collaborated with Susan Meiselas and Richard Rogers on Living at Risk: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family (1985) and the feature-length Pictures from a Revolution (1991) and with Ákos Östör and Lina Fruzzetti on two anthropological projects, Seed and Earth (1994) and Khalfan and Zanzibar (2000). Since 1993 he has been at work on a cycle of small-format videotapes, including The Tower of Industrial Life (2000) and Down from the Mountains (2002). He is the author of the book Two or Three Things I Know about Her: Analysis of a Film by Godard (Harvard University Press, 1981).

Sigh 12min, video, 2004
Director: Ann Steuernagel

"Consciously he did not hear, but the messages through to his brain." Sigh is an audio vision created from original and found footage.

Ann Steuernagel Since 1986, Ann Steuernagel has been making experimental films. In addition, she has created various soundscores as part of an on going collaboration with choreographer Caitlin Corbett. Ann’s work has been shown throughout the U.S. and in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. In 1999, Ann won grand prize at the XX VideoArt Festival in Locarno, Switzerland. She is the recipient of a Somerville Arts Lottery grant, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Media Fellowship, and a LEF grant. She has taught film and video production at Massachusetts College of Art and Mount Holyoke, Amherst, and Hampshire Colleges. She is currently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.

Untitled 3min, video, 2004
Director: Robert Harris

Robert Harris, a Film/Videomaker and Professor of Communications/Media (Fitchburg State College). He has screened his works at museums and festivals nationally and internationally, including the Whitney Museum of American Art; Museo Laboratorio Di Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy; Exit Art; Palais de Beaux Arts, Brussels and others. Prior to teaching, Bob played a significant role in the foundation and establishment of the Video Departments of Anthology Film Archives and P.S. #1, in New York City.

Monkeys and Lumps 38min, 16mm, 2003
Director: Nancy Andrews

Nancy Andrews presents Monkeys and Lumps from her trilogy. Wryly old-fashioned in style, her black-and-white puppet animations mix invented characters with historical personages as they poke around in dim corners of science and natural history. In MONKEYS AND LUMPS, Andrews introduces Ima Plume, Public Illustrator, whose animated chalk-talk encompasses chimps in space, the facial expressions of monkeys and people, and mysterious "globsters" on the beach.

"Monkeys and Lumps" is a hybrid of drawn animation, live action and puppetry. The central theme is the unknown or the "other" and our efforts as individual humans to understand our place and relationship with the unknowable. Several subjects are woven into the film: facial expressions of human and non-human primates; space training and missions of chimpanzees; human study of monkeys (symbolized by the image of Jane Goodall); interactions between humans and animals (taken from news reports); lumps-- organisms that wash up on beaches that fit no known life forms (also called globsters); and, extra-terrestrials.

Melts Into Air 3min, S8mm, 2000
Director: Saul Levine

"Melts Into Air is a film shot at an exhibition of the urban landscape artist Tyree Suyton in Cambridge at Harvard. I was struck by the redemptive critical and visionary character of his work which struck me as similar to G.M. Hopkins or Clarence Smith. Coincidentally as I was shooting these films I went to screenings of Charles Burnett and asked him what film he would like to make but couldn't get the money for. He replied a feature narrative about Tyree Suyton. So I put together 4 of the films from Spring 2000 into a 4 film work called 4 FOR CHARLES BURNETT." - Saul Levine

"Working at the margins of an already marginal culture, Levine makes movies that are unpredictable, visceral, immediate, and mind-expanding." - J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

Long an under-celebrated influence on American avant-garde film, Saul Levine has been making films since 1964. His recent retrospective of films and art at Anthology film archives and Participant Inc in New York City summer 2004, along with a fantastic DVD compilation have finally given Saul some of the praise he deserves. Saul works in Regular 8, Super 8. 16MM, and DV. His works have been shown on every continent except Antarctica. Saul has been a film professor since 1968 and teaching at Mass College of Arts for the last 25 years.

Ana's Chronotope 6.5min, 16mm on video, 2003
Director: Alice Cox

Alice Cox was born in Southern California, raised in Ovilla, Texas and came to Boston/Cambridge in 1991 to attend MIT. She has written and directed several films which have screened at the MFA, Boston, Anthology Film Archives, NYC, and various independent venues in the area. Her films largely deal with issues of time, place, identity, and memory. "Virtual Percept" (about a live cyber-entity) and "Metal" (about an Allston musician who discovers she is a clone) have screened at various independent film venues in Boston and New York. A recently completed short, "Ana's Chronotope" introduces the story and themes of her current feature project, "Ana's Time". In the feature, an Asian-American woman reclaims her identity by directing a film based on a script written by her abusive stepfather. In addition to her film work, Alice studies and performs with the KITSUNEbutoh troupe of Boston.