Tags: MassArt Film Society

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MassArt Film Society: Martha Colburn

By Marcos Ortega on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 14:47
MassArt Film Society: Martha Colburn
Wednesday, November 10th, 20h, 4$
Massachusetts College of Art, Film Department
Screening room 1. 621 Huntington Ave. Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

In my work I utilize the language and materials of filmmaking to comment on popular culture, consumerism, politics and sexuality. My work addresses contemporary topics to express my personal anxieties and passions. Through a collage of live action (paint-on-glass) animations, found footage and documentary filmmaking techniques, my films are a disturbing and at times humorous take on ...popular and political culture.

In recent years I have expanded my technique to include the use of multi-plane glass animation, whereby you have three to five layers of artwork animated between sheets of glass.

With each new film, I construct a new ‘animating stand’ to use for the actual filming; rigging layers of glass for depth, a network of wires in the air, odd boxes made from shelving and mirrors and so on. I work completely analog on 16mm and 35mm film and my special effects are not a computer-determined program. I hand paint the film after it is filmed , frame-by-frame or use special materials to create the desired effect.

Complimenting my films, I create elaborately layered collages, paintings, and installations that incorporate transparencies, recordings, and live performances. As my conceptual process grows, so follows advances in my already detailed and labor-intensive animating process. Technically, I am expanding my technique into working with multi-plane glass animation which represents a physical manifestation of my conceptually layered ideas.

Currently I am working on films that combine art historical representations and current depictions of politics to challenge our notions of truth and fantasy. As a descendent of some of America’s earliest settlers (ministers, farmers and wagon train members), I have an awareness of the repository of the guilt-haunted twisted history of the American soul. My current work draws from this perspective and personal experience to address issues such as Methamphetamine use, environmental catastrophes, and man’s relationship to nature.
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Events
MassArt Film Society: Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley

By Marcos Ortega on Tue, 12/10/2010 - 11:57
MassArt Film Society: Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley
Wednesday, October 13th, 20h, 4$
Massachusetts College of Art, Film Department
Screening room 1. 621 Huntington Ave. Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

- Schmeerguntz
By Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley.

"Schmeerguntz is one long raucous belch in the face of the American Home. A society which hides its animal functions beneath a shiny public surface deserves to have such films as Schmeerguntz shown everywhere - in every PTA, every Rotary Club, every club in the land. For it is brash enough, brazen enough and funny enough to purge the soul of every harried American married woman." - Ernest Callenbach, Film Quarterly

- Red Shift
Starring: Carin Grundel, Oona Nelson, Gunvor Nelson, Regine Grundel, Ulla Moberg, Gunnar Grundel. Assistant: Diane Kitchen
Red Shift is a film in black and white about relationships, generations and time. The subtitle is ALL EXPECTION. The movement of a luminous body toward and away from us can be found in its spectral lines. A shift toward red occurs with anybody that is self-luminous and receding. There is uncertainty about how much observable material exists.
"It involves Gunvor Nelson, her mother and her daughter. Carefully and with great tenderness, it focuses on these three women, trying to show us their relationship, succeeding with an emotional impact that is hardly ever found in such a subject. It is not the social context which is exploited but the little gestures, everyday events. Red Shift is a radical film; it sets new measures for avant-garde filmmaking dealing with personal problems." - Alf Bold, The Arsenal, Berlin

- Time Being
An animated film blending media (painting, stills, cut-outs and collected objects) that evokes images from the filmmaker's hometown of Kristinehamn, Sweden.
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Events
MassArt Film Society: Bradley Eros

By Marcos Ortega on Sun, 26/09/2010 - 04:07
MassArt Film Society: Bradley Eros
Wednesday, September 29th, 20h, 4$
Massachusetts College of Art, Film Department
Screening room 1. 621 Huntington Ave. Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

An artist working in myriad media: experimental film & video, collage, photography, performance, sound, text, expanded cinema & installation. Also a maverick curator, designer, researcher & investigator. Concepts include: ephemeral cinema, mediamystics, subterranean science, erotic psyche, poetic accidents, cinema povera & musique plastique.

Exhibited at 2004 Whitney Biennial & The American Century, The New York Film Festival, London Film Festival, MoMA, The Kitchen, Pacific Film Archives, The Warhol Museum, Arsenal in Berlin, Lightcone in Paris; he also works with the New York Filmmakers' Cooperative, Anthology Film Archives, Issue Project Room, Spectacle, & co-directed the late Roberta Beck Mercurial Cinema.

Various quotes about Eros’ solo & collaborative works:

“Eros’ richly layered tapestries of hallucinatory images are riddled with provocative rituals, from sex to science to surgery, that are guaranteed to produce frissions of pleasure” -Village Voice

“Technologist of the flesh, he creates hypnotic and voluptuous montages, reminiscent of Kenneth Anger’s mystic incantations.” -Dargis, Village Voice

“Eros and Liotta (as Mediamystics) have worked for years in an area somewhere between cinema and ritual, finding alchemy in the chemistry of body and film. Their beautiful ‘fungus eroticus’ is sensual and disturbing, raw and lysergic.” -Owen O’Toole, Spool

“The films and performances of Bradley Eros are dark, mysterious, biomorphic, psychedelic and subterranean. Investigating cycles of decay and regeneration, the poetic nature of his work is substantiated by equally haunting soundtracks.” -Film Threat
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Events
MassArt Film Society: Urban Forest / Human Jungle

By Marcos Ortega on Sat, 18/09/2010 - 11:38
MassArt Film Society: Urban Forest / Human Jungle
Experimental Short Films from Germany
Wednesday, September 22th, 20h, 4$
Massachusetts College of Art, Film Department
Screening room 1. 621 Huntington Ave. Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

When I started making films in the 1980s I was part of a thriving artist community in Frankfurt/Main. There was a lot of controversy about Peter Kubelka, the influential and eccentric teacher of film and cooking at the “Städel”, Frankfurt’s art academy. We had excellent programmers at the Filmmuseum and a regular “Avantgarde & Experiment” series. Our discussions reached beyond Kluge and Adorno and for many the American avantgarde was existential.

This program collects some highlights from that period and later years. The first part spins around urban topics, extended into outer space and rooted back to the woods. The second part diversifies the use of found footage, respectively found clothes and sounds.

All films (originally 16mm/35mm) are shown on DVD and have never been presented in the US (very few exceptions), despite awards and glory at the homebase.

Dagmar Kamlah / Curator
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Events
MassArt Film Society: Anabel Vázquez

By Marcos Ortega on Mon, 23/08/2010 - 19:00
MassArt Film Society: Anabel Vázquez
Recent raw and in-camera edited Super 8 films.
Wednesday, August 25th, 20h, 4$
Massachusetts College of Art, Film Department
Screening room 1. 621 Huntington Ave. Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

Recent raw and in-camera edited Super 8 films.
Including a 2007-2008 collaboration film with Barcelona artist Montse Morcate, plus a selection of 1999-2005 films.

http://anabelvazquez.com/
Category:
Events
MassArt Film Society: Saul Levine

By Marcos Ortega on Sun, 15/08/2010 - 15:45
MassArt Film Society: Saul Levine
Breaking Time - A Portrayal In 4 Parts And Three Reels
Wednesday, August 18th, 20h, 4$
Massachusetts College of Art, Film Department
Screening room 1. 621 Huntington Ave. Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

In the fall of 1977, I returned to the New Haven area to live with my parents and aunts after being unemployed for a year. I resumed working in my father's gas station and small used-car lot as both a service attendant and driver of cars between New York and New Haven. BREAKING TIME is a four-part work made up of four separate films on three reels. Each film is a complete work itself and may be shown separately. I feel that together they make a different work.

The return to my home allowed me to look back on the working people and places of my childhood with the eyes of an adult. It was a continual struggle to make a past present and I was only able to complete [the series] after I left the area. The work also reflects my experiences in the past working as a traffic surveyor and the automotive and petroleum base of the culture I grew up in. - Saul Levine

Programme:

- Part 1: Mortgage on My Body (1978-1983)
Stations throughout Connecticut and even New York City. Riding around with my father and back to the gas station.

- Part 2: Arrested (1977-1983)
Mainly a portrayal of my father, the blizzard of 1978 and the summer and spring.

- Parts 3 and 4: Lien on My Soul and Portrait Not a Dream
Lien on My Soul is a cityscape of New Haven shot from an East Rock park. Includes the 4th of July, a wedding, lovers, bikers, kids - an ecological meditation.
Portrait Not a Dream: My mother's cry of rage.

- Whole Note
A portrait of my father in the last days of his life. "Nothing is as whole as a broken heart" - Hassidic saying.

- August Moon And See
A portrait of Nancy Golden, a summer evening and Nancy photographing rocks at Singing Bea

- Light Lick Daily Camera 2010
Light lick shot mainly in Boulder Colorado mountain high
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Events

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