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Friday, September 1st, 2006
8:30 - Live Music by Sio Mosaic (click for details)
9:00 - Showtime
TRT: 1:30:05
On the lawn of Automotive High School | DIRECTIONS
50 Bedford Ave, between N. 12th and Lorimer, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.
Mammals in Peril
Modern medicine, health consciousness, and technological inventions straight out of science fiction conspire to keep people alive longer and longer, and yet more and more we seem to live in a culture of death. Wars, poisons and gruesome accidents lead the nightly news. Deranged killers, deadly diseases and doomsday scenarios fill the movie theaters. And technological inventions straight out of science fiction conspire to kill with lethal efficiency.
Yup, everybody dies. So why not have some fun with it? Why not sing a song about all the grizzly ways you might go (Los ABC's)? Why not draw a comic strip about a serial killer who went to your high school (Derf)? Why not have "that talk" with your friend the Badger (Paul and the Badger)?
These filmmakers address death because it's such a crucial part of life. This program reveals people who are dealing with their own mortality through gorgeous animation (Stars), or addressing the potential loss of family members through silent, desperate thoughtfulness (Can't Stop Breathing). Here we find filmmakers exploring the traditions surrounding bereavement (Chronicles of a Professional Eulogist) and examining exploded road-kill (Mammals in Peril). And through touching (Dead People) and hilarious (Max and Josh) filmic reminisces, long lost friends live on.
This program is filled with short walks to the edge of the abyss—to scare us, to enlighten us, to give us a glimpse of the other side and send us back smiling.
THE FILMS:
Los ABC's: !Que Vivan Los Muertos!
(John Jota Leanos | Tempe, AZ | 5:00)
Do you remember your ABCs? No? Well, you're in luck. Sing along with this group of animated mariachi social documentarians as their book of the dead provides an musical mnemonic to a lethal language.
Paul and the Badger - Episode 1
(Paul Tarrago | London, England | 11:00)
In this startlingly odd, humorous and honest film, veteran experimental filmmaker Paul Tarrago compassionately doles out some delicate answers to difficult questions posed by an innocent badger. The clever use of the children's show format allows Tarrago to address seemingly clichí issues with disarming frankness, and to use strange flights of fancy to illustrate crushingly beautiful insights into complex issues.
Can't Stop Breathing (Amy Neil | Glasgow, Scotland | 15:00)
I can't imagine anything more difficult than wishing your mother was dead because you can't stand to see her suffer. Set in the gorgeously isolated Scottish highlands, this poignantly quiet drama about a woman caring for her mother was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award.
Why The Anderson Children Didn't Come To Dinner
(Jamie Travis | Vancouver, Canada |16:30)
Exquisite production design and a delicate sense of deadly allegory permeate this charming black comedy. "The Addams Family meets the Royal Tenenbaums." -The Portland Mercury
Max and Josh (Kathryn Ann Busby | New York, NY | 7:00)
Best friends Max and Josh have inane, insane, and hilarious arguments...until fate intervenes.
Dead People (Roger Deutsch | Ellicutt City, MD |18:00)
Over 25 years ago, Roger Deutsch began hanging out with and filming the local eccentric, Frank Butler, as he went on benders and discoursed on his favorite subjects: crazy people and dead people. Slowly, Deutsch's life drifted away from Butler's, and a sense of guilt, a feeling that perhaps he was exploiting the old man, cast a pall on the footage. Years later, Deutsch returns to the material with a new critical distance and self-aware sense of nostalgia. Butler emerges like a ghost—flickering in faded black and white images, chattering through crackling audio—a portent of madness and a warning against judgment. "This is perhaps the closest film gets to the blues." -Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival
Derf (Jeremy Newman | Princeton, NJ | 3:58)
This witty documentary explores the major inspirations for underground cartoonist John Backderf—death and decay: his surprisingly sensitive reminisces of high school classmate Jeffrey Dahmer, and his startlingly straightforward approach to being a garbage man.
Stars (Eoghan Kidney | Dublin, Ireland | 10:27)
This film tells a tragic story of a young woman's descent into illness due to a fatal neuron disease. Using animation that slips back and forth from serene to scary, the film constructs a dual reality between our perceptions and the woman's hallucinations.
Chronicles of a Professional Eulogist
(Sarah Jane Lapp | Seattle, WA| 6:00)
In this award-winning animated documentary, a rabbi candidly shares the unspoken secrets of his trade as a grief-facilitator, and his own personal thoughts on life and its end. "I believe in God and trust Him," the Rabbi says, "So whatever happens will be good. But I am worried about not behaving well at the end."
Mammals In Peril (Theodore Kennedy | Ann Arbor, MI | 6:10)
A visual study, restricted to mammals, on the negative externalities of transportation in the North Central Region. (By visual we mean gory. Be forewarned.)
THE MUSIC: Sio Mosaic is Mark Hadsell, who works in audio collages of noise, field recordings and found sounds with some live instrumentation. Trained in drawing and sound installation, his current work focuses on the textures, abstractions, and depth that sound can produce. Tonight's performance will debut a new work, "Daniel Mosner—an audio portrait," which is premised on Reich's notion that an individual's voice and speech patterns are as distinct a portrait as a visual image of that person.
