Roger Beebe, Artistic Director of the Florida Experimental Film Festival visits Microscope Gallery with films & video selections from this year’s festival. Beebe’s international mini-tour most recently included a program presented in May in Berlin. The impressive line-up of emerging and established artists includes: Steve Cossman, Sam Green, Christopher Harris, Zach Iannazzi, Georg Koszulinski, Penny Lane, Katherine McInnis, Jesse McLean, Steve Reinke, Vanessa Renwick, and Richard Tuohy.
FLEX: the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival presents a program of highlights from their 2011 biennial competitive festival. FLEX is interested in an expansive notion of experimental media. “Work may draw on documentary, animation, avant-garde, underground, or other traditions—-or no traditions at all.“ As such the programming comprises a variety of mediums from 16mm direct animation to found video and from laconic place studies to experimental love poems.
Reservations are encouraged. To RSVP or find more information visit Microscope.
Hadley Grass by Zach Iannazzi
USA, 2009, 3 minutes, 16mm
Tumbled syllables are bolts and bullets from the blue.
Utopia, Part 3:The World’s Biggest Shopping Mall by Sam Green
USA, 2009, 13 minutes, digital projection
Built in 2005, more than twice the size of the Mall of America, the South China Mall outside of Guangzhou in southern China was designed as a celebration of middle-class consumption and spectacle. Often evoked as a symbol of China’s economic emergence as a superpower, the reality is much more complex. Four years after it closeded, the South China Mall sits almost empty, a foreboding metaphor for the future of global capitalism.
Iron-Wood by Richard Tuohy
Australia, 2009, 7 minutes, 16mm
Iron-Wood is an abstract visual exploration of the deeply fissured ‘cog-like’ bark of the Australian tree Eucalyptus Sideroxylon.
The Voyagers by Penny Lane
USA, 2010, 16 minutes, digital projection
In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Together and alone, they will travel until the end of the universe. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler.
Horizon Line by Katherin McInnis
USA, 2009, 1 minute, digital projection
Horizon Line excavates the relationship between social and natural geography of Eastern State Penitentiary, one of the first prisons in the United States. The walls were painted to reflect the horizon line outside the walls; the prison’s decay has turned this two dimensional land and sky into intricate textures and layers: a physical incarnation of the passage of time.
Somewhere Only We Know by Jesse McLean
USA, 2009, 5 minutes, digital projection
Standing on the brink of elimination, the suspense threatening to fracture their composure, contestants wait and see if they will be going home. The audience at home is also waiting…Part two of the Bearing Witness Trilogy. Bearing Witness is a trilogy concerned with how we, as a culture, watch ourselves, especially in moments of great emotional significance. With footage culled from mainstream media and television, the single-channel videos (The Eternal Quarter Inch, Somewhere Only We Know, The Burning Blue) distill moments of sincerity from perhaps insincere sources (televangelists, reality show contestants, screensavers, B-movies). This trilogy puts pressure on the infrastructure of disturbing images, particularly those that represent what might have normally been private experiences made public for the sake of entertainment. Located in interstitial spaces, these videos continually shift the role of the viewer between voyeur and participant.
Beaver Skull Magick by Steve Reinke
Canada/Netherlands/USA, 2010, 5 minutes, digital projeciton
The relation between man and nature. A bear in an infamous Internet clipping and an ‘Indian’ in an old Canadian television series. Where two worlds collide.
Tusslemuscle by Steve Cossman
USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm
The work presented is a reflection on humanity’s ecological relationship and the ritual of restoration. The violent pulse speaks with a sense of urgency and chaotic struggle while the hypnotic arrangement keeps us in blinding awe to its condition. TUSSLEMUSCLE is composed of 7,000 single frames, which were appropriated from view-master reel cells. Each frame was hand-spliced to create a linear film-strip. Jacob Long created the score.
Portrait #2: Trojan by Vanessa Renwick
USA, 2006, 5 minutes, digital projection
Trojan Nuclear Facility, Oregon’s powerful iconic landmark, goes adios.
White House by Georg Koszulinski
USA, 2009, 8 minutes, digital projection
Three compositions in a single shot investigate the people, politics, and space in front of the White House.
28.IV.81(Bedouin Sparks) by Christopher Harris
USA, 2009, 2 minutes, 16mm
Approximates a small child’s fantasy world in the dark. In a series of close-ups, the nightlight is transformed into a meditative star-spangled sky. An improvisation, edited inside the camera and shot on a single reel. The stars swirl in silence.
COLLIDE-O-SCOPE by Naren Wilks
England, 2010, 3 minutes, digital projection
Using four Super-8 cameras, a man in a white room replicates himself. He and his clones have until the cartridges in the cameras run out before they disappear. Collide-O- Scope is an experimental video piece that exploits the aesthetic and technology of the silent film era and combines it with a latest digital manipulation technique. The work was created using one person, one take, and one shot.
