February
2, Thursday, 7:30PM, 2006
Director's Eye: Deborah Stratman
Balgan
welcomes Deborah Stratman, primarily
a film/videomaker who works in other media including
photography, drawing, sound and architectural
intervention. She is currently soliciting public
responses about fear and evacuation routes for
a calendar project in Texas. Her recently acclaimed
film "In Order Not To Be Here" examines
anxiety, surveillance and suburban environment.
Her latest film, Kings of the Sky, documents the
travels of a tightrope troupe in East Turkestan.
She was recently in Laos as photographer and facilitator
for the Photo Archive Group’s Living Photographers
of Laos project and is presently working on some
short films about falling. She teaches at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University
of Illinois-Chicago and is currently a visiting
instructor at Cal Arts
How
Among The Frozen Words She Found Some Odd Ones
32sec., video, 2005
Inspired
by a chapter in Francois Rabelais’ 1653
epic novel “Gargantua & Pantagruel”*
wherein Pantagruel finds that the explosions,
cries and other sounds generated from a battle
that had occurred the year before have been
frozen into discernable shapes – and that
the sounds can be released upon the breaking
or melting of the frozen forms. - DS
On
the Various Nature of Things 16mm, 25min, 1995
A
24-figure exploration of the natural forces
at work in the world, based on Scottish physicist
Michael Faraday's 1859 Christmas lectures to
the public. The film literally, metaphorically
and whimsically reinterprets scientific convention
to illustrate physical concepts.Faraday felt
people needed to be more aware of the everyday
reality of physics and how its laws affected
their simplest actions. So in the late 1850s,
he addressed the English public on the subject.
He arranged for a series of lectures to be held,
as a tradition, on Christmas day.
As Faraday put it, "We come into this world,
we live, and depart from it, without our thoughts
being called specifically to consider how all
this takes place.” The filmmaker takes
up his challenge and considers the world around
her with an infectiously playful, yet sometimes
dark, curiosity.
The film is an homage to Faraday's enthusiasm
and his tactile approach to science. He was
also a filmic forefather, having invented and
experimented with one of the first kinematascopic
devices. The film challenges the viewer to see
beauty in the small details which surround us
but go unnoticed or are taken for granted. "I
say apparently," says the physicist, "for
you must not imagine that, because you cannot
perceive any action, none has taken place".
The
BLVD 64min, video, 2005
An
experimental documentary about the street drag
racing scene on Chicago’s near West Side.This
is a rambling, textured film about obsession.
It is about the mythos of speed for its own
sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting,
The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes
and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats
storytelling as a living medium for determining
history. And it commands respect for those who
transform cars, or anything else, through passion.
- DS
“With
a painter’s eye and a storyteller’s
love of the great yarn, Stratman gives us a
portrait of a sub-culture inside Chicago’s
Black community that really puts us in that
place at that time. ...Stratman brings her own
personality to the work and interaction with
the filmmaker becomes an important part of her
telling of the tale. Stratman’s love of
detail and of her subjects, not to mention their
respect for her in return, give The BLVD an
immediacy that transcends any technology.”
- Mark Rance, Film Forum LA
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