We would like to thank Filmmakers Collaborative for inviting us to participate in the 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.htm

We also thank Boston Connections (http://www.cutfilm.com/) and personally Dwight Cody for co-sponsoring this event.

From 2-5PM at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Screening Room, Balagan will be hosting screenings and discussions by four talented local artists. All of the artists will be in person.

• 2:00 Sabrina Zanella-Foresi will present her experiments on film & digital video.

Sabrina Zanella-Foresi is a time-based media artist and cineaste living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has taught film/video production and film history at Massachusetts College of Art, Emerson College, Boston University, and University of Massachusetts-Boston. She is a member of Videospace and Final Cut Pro nonlinear editor. Her short films and videos have been screened internationally.

• 2:45 Antony Flackett will present his video music explorations.

Antony Flackett is a local video, performance, sound and multimedia artist. He received an MFA from Mass College of Art where he now works managing a computer/video lab for the Computer Art Center. He curates shows for VideoSpace as well as for his own show on Cambridge Community Television called "Tony's Choice." His video work has been show locally and abroad at places such as; the Decordova Museum, The Knitting Factory and the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm Sweden. Visit Antony's web site - www.djflack.com to check out his music, videos and interactive musical animation.

• 3:30 Devon Damonte, guru of cameraless filmmaking, will present his film works and talk about "Direct Animation".
  

Devon Damonte is an independent experimental animator who has been making films by hand without cameras for the past 15 years. He also frequently teaches workshops and lectures on direct animation. In other incarnations, Damonte is the former program director for Boston Film Video Foundation and has worked as an arts administrator and programmer on both coasts. His work is currently on exhibit in the "Animations" show at PS 1 Contemporary Arts Center in New York through January 2002, and recently screened at the Telluride International Experimental Cinema Exposition. Direct Animation is the technique of creating cinematic images by working directly onto motion picture film stock by hand, without using cameras. Various graphics are set in motion by using the film material as a vehicle for a moving "canvas." Techniques may include (but aren't limited to) painting, scratching, adhering thin semi-transparent materials to the film with tape or glue, ironing to transfer inks from plastic, and various other strange and obsessive methods not recommended by the manufacture.

• 4:15 Robert Todd, filmmaker and Emerson College Professor, will present his short works on 16mm and video.
  

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.

Speak: When There are No Words 7min, 16mm, 1997

A friend's highly intelligent seven-year-old son can utter sounds, but they are not intelligible as words. As a visual artist, I am aware of my own world as primarily reveling in an internal space of "not- words". In fact I have trouble generating words that match the richness and strangeness of thought. I made this short film in sympathy with his state of affairs: as an audio-visual portrayal of the mind floating in a world without linguistic characterization or speech. It is about the birth, the formation of language in a world of other, loving, caring, different human beings that we find as a family.

CLAM UP 3.5min, 16mm, 2001

"One man's search to discover the secret inner life of a clam leads to an astonishing conclusion."