Named for Thomas Edison's 1893 experimental motion picture studio, this touring festival features cutting edge films from prominent avant-garde, documentary and animation film and videomakers world-wide. more at blackmariafilmfestival.org
Titles listed alphabetically, not in screening order. Program subject to change.
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ALICE SEES THE LIGHT
Ariana Gerstein
Barton, NY
The experimental artist has created a contemplative work which delves into the fact that too much artificial light is obscuring and changing the way we perceive the night. During a blackout in Los Angeles nervous residents called the police about a strange swath of light in the sky, it was the milky way which they had never before seen. The filmmaker employs elegant night photography throughout this provocative work.
Prize level: Director's Prize
Film duration: 6.3 min -
COPENHAGEN CYCLES
Eric Dyer
Baltimore, MD
A bicyclist travels through a fantastical, collaged reconstruction of Denmark's capital city. The piece beautifully intergrates the Zoetrope (a pre-cinema children's illusionistic toy) with high-definition digital video technology in a kinetic and impressionistic portrait of Copenhagen.
Prize level: Director's Prize
Film duration: 6.5 min -
GAUDI
Gary Adlestein
Fleetwood, PA
This painterly video is an impressionistic study of Antoni Gaudi's audacious La Sagrata Familia, the Spanish Catalan architect's masterpiece which was started in the 1880s and is still a work in progress. Adlestein's visual poem captures the wonder of the famed cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. Gaudí (1852 - 1926) belonged to the "Modernisme" or Art Nouveau movement and was known for his highly individualistic designs. He was an ardent Catholic and is known to many in Spain as "God's Architect."
Prize level: Director's Prize
Film duration: 2.5 min -
GLASS CROW
Steven Subotnick
Providence, RI
This noted animation artist has created a compelling visual meditation on the spark that began the Thirty Years War. Richly layered, hand rendered images explore the worlds of nature, humanity, and heaven during this moment in history.
Prize level: Jury's Choice
Film duration: 6 min -
HACKENSACK MOTET
Gregg Biermann
Hackensack, NJ
Recorded on Main Street in Hackensack, a small New Jersey city near Manhattan, and animated with the same software used for 3D animated features such as "Shrek," this video transforms an ordinary scene into a hypnotic kaleidoscopic attraction. The original audio composition has associations with early choral music and imbues the imagery with sacred, almost cosmic qualities. The piece is inspired by a film made in San Francisco "A Trip Down Market Street" (1905). It's perhaps interesting to note that the Native American word Hackensack means "mouth of water". Reference to Hackensack is found in the lyrics of a number of popular songs including those by Billy Joel, Fountains of Wayne and Cole Porter, and in, "Rear Window" by Alfred Hitchcock.
Prize level: Director's Choice
Film duration: 5 min -
I WANT TO BE A PILOT
Diego Quemada-Diez
Los Angeles, CA
The heart-wrenching work is the story of 12 year old orphan who wanders the muddy back lanes of a ramshackle East Africa slum in search of food and a sliver of human warmth. Made in the tradition of Italian Neo-Realist filmmakers who portrayed real life hardships in counterpoint to the saccharin plots of "white telephone films", "I Want to be a Pilot" employs a street kid to represent the true life experiences and testimonies of 50 orphans in Nairobi, Kenya.
Prize level: Director's Choice
Film duration: 11.5 min -
INTERPLAY
Robert Todd
Boston, MA
Robert Todd has an eye for subtle beauty in this ode to the summer: a play in three acts, a dance in three forms, three versions of paradise. A meadow, a child and mother, color, nature, air, the ethos of the season are all felt in this lyrical cinematic work.
Prize level: Jury's Choice
Film duration: 6.5 min -
IRAQI KURDISTAN
Ed Kashi
Montclair, NJ
"Iraqi Kurdistan" is a gripping portrait of life in Kurdistan synchronized to strains of indigenous music. Pixilated still images contrast scenes of war, peace, family celebrations, weddings, farming as life under siege perseveres. The piece provides an elegant and powerful insight into the stark contrasts and vitality found in this part of the Middle East.
Prize level: Jury's Citation
Film duration: 12 min -
IT PAINS ME TO SAY THIS
George Griffin
New York, NY
"It Pains Me to Say This" is by one of America's major animation artists. The film begins with a scene at a school reunion where Celeste and Ken are having a drink together. As they converse she complains about his indiscreet language the previous year, their actions described by an invisible, ironic and unreliable narrator. Ken manages to further antagonize Celeste with a ribald act which leads to a chorus of moralizers and rationalizers, including: a professor of cultural warfare, a self proclaimed New Age goddess, a gun nut, a psychoanalyst, a commonsense dog, and Ken's aggrieved wife. Most are members of a TV program panel of so-called experts hosted by a ultra-banal M.C. Like many of Griffin's earlier films (which are reflected in occasional visual asides), "It Pains Me to Say This" uses a distilled cartooning style, now digitally finished, in a deadpan self-reflection dealing with concealed emotion, betrayal and redemption.
Prize level: Jury's Citation
Film duration: 10 min -
LIFE & TIMES OF ROBERT KENNEDY STARRING GARY COOPER
Aaron Valdez
Iowa City, IA
The videomaker compares the real-life saga of Robert Kennedy to the Hollywood hero Gary Cooper and the gunplay in his film "High Noon" Using "recycled" footage, the filmmaker creates a dramatic montage that is both imaginative, thought-provoking and acts as a commentary on a culture of violence.
Prize level: Director's Citation
Film duration: 8 min -
LOST AND FOUND
Jeff Scher
New York, NY
"Lost and Found" is a vibrant animated homage to the pioneers of American Animation. This lively piece looks back at iconic cartoon characters in vintage snippets colliding with each other in reverberating "psychedelichrome" color.
Prize level: Jury's Citation
Film duration: 3 min -
MY PERSON IN THE WATER
Leighton Pierce
Iowa City, IA
The latest in a series of "precipitated narratives," this video is a sensually photographed visual study of the human physique in water. Pierce does away with individual shots, instead creating a continuous interwoven stream of cascading images that make it impossible for the viewer to find where a shot begins or ends.
Prize level: Jury's Citation
Film duration: 6 min -
A PAINFUL GLIMPSE INTO MY WRITING PROCESS
Chel White
Portland, OR
This playful portrait of a filmmaker's creative process smartly plays off of Raymond Chandler detective novels. The piece is accelerated by a crazed, stream of consciousness voice-over that nearly overtakes the rush of images. Prize level: Director's Prize
Film duration: 1.5 min -
PHANTOM CANYON
Stacey Steers
Boulder, CO
This is truly an extraordinary collage animation in which phantasmagoric Victorian era cutouts of cherubs, gargoyles, and women in petticoats, trip across the screen in a symphony of mythological images. This is a masterful, symbolic depiction of the travails and triumphs in the life of a woman, who is freed by the spirit of a star child
Prize level: Jury's Choice
Film duration: 10 min -
THIS, AND THIS
Vincent Grenier
Ithaca, NY
A digital/visual contemplation of place, where images of nature, the shore of a lake or pond with water lapping, and where youth make ripples by jumping on a floating dock, form an elegant visual portrait. This piece allows time itself to assert a presence, a weight, as the cinematic poem may remind some viewers of Walden Pond.
Prize level: Director's Prize
Film duration: 10.5 min