We would like to thank Filmmakers Collaborative for inviting us to participate in Boston's annual Filmmakers Open Studios, an annual citywide cultural event, free of charge that showcases the work, processes, art, and technology of film/video/digital professionals and artists working in the Greater Boston area. For the full calendar of the Filmmakers Open Studios events, vistit http://www.filmmakerscollab.org/openstudios/2003/index2003.htm

From 1-3:30PM at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Screening Room, Balagan will be hosting screenings and discussions by some of the talented local artists that have been presented in our programs.

Program:

The Tower of Industrial Life 15min, video, 2000
Director: Alfred Guzzetti

Still from the Tower of Industrial Life, videotape, 2000

A Tropical Story: "Fleetly edited images and sounds of ! stunning clarity suggest the push and pull of a vivid present and inner recollection, 'a lesson on thinking of something and being far away from it and seeing other things entirely.'" (NYVF)

The Tower of Industrial Life: "An exquisite montage of ephemeral images and sounds gathered from near and far are juxtaposed with the intangible implications of dreams and the implacable facts of a war-torn planet to lull us into a sublime sense-memory reverie." (NEFVF)

"In recent works like A Tropical Story and The Tower of Industrial Life, Guzzetti captures the multivoiced and multilayered nature of experience, the distinctive way in which the "things that we see and hear daily mix with the conscious and unconscious stream of our thoughts, fears, and memories." His tapes haven screened at the New York Video Festival and featured in the recent Digital Room program in Copenhagen". - Harvard Film Archive Calendar

GROUND ZERO / SACRED GROUND 9min, 16mm, 1997
Director: Karen Aqua

Aqua's most recent film, "GROUND ZERO / SACRED GROUND," was inspired by travels and research in New Mexico (in the Southwestern United States), where she spent a number of months as an Artist-in-Residence. The film explores the juxtaposition between a Native American rock art site and the nearby Trinity Site (where the first atomic bomb was tested).

Karen Aqua has been making animated films since her graduation from Rhode Island School of Design in 1976. Her award-winning films have been screened nationally and internationally, including at the New York Film Festival, and at international animation festivals in Zagreb, Hiroshima, Ottawa, and Annecy (France). She has received film production grants from the American Film Institute, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, New England Film/Video Fellowship Program, New Forms Regional Initiative, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Puffin Foundation. Aqua was a Lecturer in Animation at Boston College from 1984-1991, and Animation Instructor at Emerson College in 1987. She has served as a juror for major animation and film festivals in the US and Canada, and has presented one-person screenings of her work at museums and universities around the US, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), California Institute of the Arts, University of Oregon, and Harvard University. Since 1990 she has produced, directed, and animated over a dozen segments for the acclaimed "Sesame Street" television program.

License to Kill, 2min, video, 2001
Director: Sarina Khan Reddy

This single channel video questions how Pop culture perpetuates colonialists values of created notions of "civilized" through the glorification of violence. This piece uses a James Bond theme song and couples it with graphic footage of a constructed colonialist scene of a massacre of unarmed civilians who are non-white and wearing turbans. In a historical context it starts to question how these past events have contributed to events of today.

Sarina Khan Reddy's video work explores the differences within her cultural identity as an Islamic-American woman. Through the lens of her Indian heritage, she explores the new colonization embodied in globalization. Specifically she focuses on how the economic system is reflected in all social formations and how war and militarization are fueled by corporate globalization. In her latest work she is exploring the blurred boundaries between news and entertainment. She uses appropriated footage from advertising, news, and Hollywood movies. She juxtaposes these sources to subvert the original meaning to create new and alternative histories. She has worked for many years with technology and today strives towards the strategic use of technology and media for social change through volunteer work with local organizations. She has exhibited locally and nationally.

White people 4 min, video, 2001
Director: Dana Moser

Dana Moser's films and videotapes have been seen in numerous venues including the ICA (Boston), the Brattle Theater, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Collective for Living Cinema in NYC. He has also created performances and live events using digital imagery and telecommunications for the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa; The Kitchen, NYC; The International Gartenbauaustellung, Munich; The Visible Language Workshop at M.I.T.; and the 42nd International Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Dana was also a co-founder of the trashy political cabaret rock band "Adult Children of Heterosexuals" and teaches as an associate professor in the department of Media and Performing Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art.

Introduction to Living in a Closed System 16min, 16mm, 2001
Director: Brittany Gravely

"What each of them [Lewis Mumford and R. Buckminster Fuller] has done, really, has been to write philosophical poems celebrating a world that does not truly exist, and perhaps can never exist, even though the poems are true."
Allan Temko

Introduction to Living in a Closed System is a fractured educational film based upon the idea of a biospheric utopia: a contained, self-sustaining, controlled environment which survives through dynamic systems (here, involving machines, plants, animals, and humans), each of which effects the development of the others. This hope of human-made technology and the natural world in harmony manifests itself in the collage of imagery, sounds, and text. The disparate elements variously unite or fall apart as all of the visions, fears, and dreams of this retrospective/future place attempt to operate within the ideal of a unified, efficient system. The film serves as an introduction to the complexity of the poetry and the problems created by pastoral dreams of synthetic futures. Brittany Gravely is currently a graduate student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Introduction To Living In A Closed System was part of her thesis project. She is the director, editor, and sound designer. In addition to 16mm, Brittany also works in a variety of areas including sound, video, and installation.

Self-Portrait 6min, s8mm on video, 2002
Director: Asma Kazmi

In the contemporary western society Islam is associated with force and aggression. Muslim women are viewed as suppressed people with a subconscious desire to shed their veils. Yet in most Arab, Muslim countries the veil is a cultural norm, accepted and embraced. There is a feeling of attachment to the idea of concealment of the body. Muslim women believe that the veil gives them distinction and power in situations dominated by men. In this work I am trying to explore ways to humanize Muslim women by placing myself as an example of one.

The London Virus 3.5min, video, 2002
Director: Shiller Diny

The London Virus is a response to the jargon, rather than the help, pharmaceutical companies offer patients too poor to afford medicine.

Axis of Evil 1.5min, video, 2002
Director: Mike Piso

Axis of Evil reads between the lines and decrypts the subtleties of the Presidents State of the Union Address.

Food Safety and You video, 4 min, 2000
Director: Jeff Smith

Chicken can be a delicious meal, but raw chicken can be a breeding ground for deadly bacteria.

Written and directed by A.E.S. president Jeff Smith, this infomercial illustrates the demise of a typical American family through food-borne diseases. But once the A.E.S. kitchen-safe system is installed, the family can carry on in their kitchen happily and safely. At American Emergency Safety Company, your safety is our business.

More info to come!