So often behind the camera, filmmakers can shy away from exposing themselves on-screen or discussing the artist’s process. Through lenses and glass, distorted in mirrors, in retrospect and in spectacle, fragmented, pieced together and embedded in their surrounding environments, the artists in this program render reflections of themselves or paint a portrait of other artists. Diverse approaches to portraiture make for a mosaic of artists-turned-characters. They are disobedient, othered, fragile, self-mocking, honest, nonconformist and sensitive. They are dreamers, aliens, family-members, failures, lovers, past-selves. These familiar contradictions make for reflections we can each see a glimpse of ourselves in.
Curated by the Festival Programming Committee. TRT: 52 min.
November 21, 2009
6 PM
el abuelo
Dino Dinco
2008, USA, video, color, sound, English, 4 min.
Delicate, light-saturated shots of San Antonio poet and educator Jimenez ironing pair beautifully with a reading of his poem “El Abuelo.” Meditating on the act of pressing a perfect crease into a tee-shirt conjures the memory of Jimenez’s “first vato” – his first love of another man. The act of ironing becomes a metaphor for precision in queer seduction—balancing perfected performances of masculinity with the intimacy of the male gaze.
kaJiTu (some days ago)
Takehiro Nakamura
2008, Japan, 8mm and video, color, sound, 6 min.
525,600 minutes or 365 days. The artist is a fleeting figure in Kajitu (Some Days Ago). Examining his body and surrounding environments through thick glass or glimpsing himself in mirror-like surfaces, Nakamura creates a self-image constantly distorted and partly obscured. Kajitu is a lush, tactile film that contemplates time, transience and form with simple, beautiful observance.
The arT of auTobiography: redux ii
Dana C. Inkster
2008, CANADA, video, color, sound, 4 min.
Chopped clips from Inkster’s documentary The Art of Autobiography bleed into a television-induced reverie. Abandoning traditional non-fiction formats, Inkster reinvents and reconfigures memory, envisioning the path of discovery of one’s origins. The Art of Autobiography: Redux II questions the sturdiness of “truth” and invites instead a glimpse of self-made storytelling.
bruce lee in The land of balzac
Maria Thereza Alves
2007, France, video, color, sound, 3 min.
The breathtaking French landscape of Sache is subverted by bizarre sounds of Bruce Lee yelping and bellowing mid-battle. Alves explores her otherness as a Brazilian artist in European territory by inserting the unusual into a portrait of natural terrain glorified in the writings of Honoré de Balzac. Sache’s untouchable, fog-enveloped beauty is rendered utterly alien, and alterity becomes inescapable in this exploration of clashes.
dredger
Earl Moloney
2007, Canada, video, color, sound, English, 9 min.
Dredger (n): An apparatus for bringing up objects or mud from a river or seabed by scooping or dragging. Weaving together seven years of footage with rhythmic ruminations on being, becoming and straddling the unclean lines of identity, Earl Moloney unearths the harmony of his disparate, mixed up parts. Picking up the fragments of all that falls apart so easily, Dredger calls for ally-ship, alliance and community against the odds of disillusion, disconnection and division.
failure
Nelson Henricks
2007, Canada, video, color, sound, 7 min.
Henricks comes in and out of camera view, performs gendered beauty rituals in intimate close-ups and plays text off of image in this video about video-making. Set to the melodramatic tones of Nina Simone, Failure reveals the constant, sometimes unavoidable, self-awareness of the artist. In revealing shots, he explores artists’ golden hopes and underlying doubts about being able to translate inner intentions into provocative, communicative art.
Tranny TripTych
Morty Diamond
2008, USA, video, color, sound, 9 min.
Two trans artists turn towards one another to look inwards at themselves. Performer Glenn Marla and filmmaker Morty Diamond place their bodies in parallel formation, sprinkle candy all over themselves and conjure childhood memories and reflect on outside expectations placed on their bodies. Images of the two in tryptich split screens border their conversation, portraying childhood companionship, affinity and brotherly affection.
family liVing
Kate Huh
2009, USA, video, color & B&W, sound, 4 min.
A self-portrait of the artist is constructed through a video collage of her different families. Huh first traces the past roots of her birth family and later imagery reveals the life she has shared with her found queer family. Pairing visual collage with a recording of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans, Family Living brings personal family representations to a broader queered context of American family life.
i & i. we.
J. Bob Alotta
2008, USA, video, B&W, sound, 3 min.
A fictionalized encounter drawn from real-life desire. On an elevated NYC subway train, a young queer named Bob cruises a beautiful older butch. Filmmaker Alotta brings hirself invisibly into the mix, rhythmically narrating inner thoughts on desire and the familiar—recognition and mirroring—as the heated passing-by ensues.
realiTy recycling
Kori Klima
2009, Germany, video, color, sound, German w/English subtitles, 2 min.
In a photobooth in Germany, a striking genderqueer switches between the possible expressions of genders and identities only to find each image too confining. Complimented by an upbeat soundtrack, Reality Recycling joyfully rejects gender-mainstreaming.