Fall 2007 Film & Video Artists Series
Fridays at 7:30 and Sundays at 7:30 pm in Lecture Hall 6
LECTURE HALL 6 AT 7:30 (Unless otherwise noted)
Series sponsored by Broome County Arts Council
All artists will be on hand to present their works.
Tuesday Oct. 9th 2007
Martha Colburn
Still from Mextuality (2003)
"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."
Based between Holland and New York City, Colburn presents her films in galleries, museums and festivals worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (NY). She has recently relocated to New York City. A self-taught filmmaker, she has completed over 40 films since 1994. She has made films with musicians Jad Fair, Eye Yamatsuka, and Jacque Berrocal. Her films have screened successive years in Sundance, Rotterdam International and New York Film Festival. She has taught and exhibited in China, New Zealand, Europe and the USA. Recently she contributed animation to Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnson", a music video for the band Deer Hoof on Killrockstars music label, and titles for Cam Archers first feature film "Tigers Like Us". More info on her work can be found at www.marthacolburn.com. Born (1971) and raised in the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania (USA). (10/05)
Martha will screen and discuss the following films:
2007 - Don't Kill the Weatherman!
2006 - Destiny Manifesto,Meet Me in Wichita
2005 - Wrong Time Capsule (music video for 'Deerhoof'), Cosmetic Emergency
2004 - XXX Amsterdam, A Little Dutch Thrill
2003 - Secrets of Mexuality
2000-2002 - Skelehellavision
1999 - Spiders in Love: an Arachnogasmic Musical
1998 - There's a Pervert in Our Pool
1997 - Evil of Dracula , What's On
Thursday Oct 25 2007
Phil Hoffman
Still from Opening Series
Since his arrival on the Canadian experimental film scene in the late 1970s, Toronto based filmmaker Philip Hoffman has long been recognized as Canada's pre-eminent diary filmmaker. He has been using aspects of his own life to deconstruct the Griersonian legacy of documentary practice in Canada. Working directly upon the material of film, Hoffman pays careful attention to the way one perceives by foregrounding the image and its creation. Poetic, personal, provocative, and perceptive, the films of Philip Hoffman constitute one of the most important bodies of work in Canadian independent cinema.
?O,Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film), 16mm, 23 min., 1986
?O, Zoo! is a labyrinth fiction constructed out of documentary materials. Shot around
the production of Peter Greenaway's A Zed &Two Naughts, the story centers around an
unseen death. Brilliantly photographed, ?O Zoo! was nominated for a Genie Award in
1987.
passing through / torn formations, 16mm, 43 min., 1988
through/torn formations, considered to be Hoffman's masterpiece, wends its way through
the often painful and contradictory relations of one side of his family. Shifting
between Canada and Hoffman's mother's home in Czechoslovakia, the film uncovers the
lingering effects of war and epidemic, displacement and migration.
Kokoro is for Heart, 16mm, 7 min., 1999
"Communication takes a poetic turn in Kokora is for Heart. Originating as a performance
piece, the director, Phil Hoffman, screened segments of this film in a random order
selected by the audience (Opening Series 3). Accompanying this was the sound poetry
of Gerry Shikatani. From this process the film has found its organic and final structure."
(Liz Czach, Toronto International Film Festival 1999)
Award: Best Experimental at Athens International Film & Video Festival.
Chimera, 16mm, 15 min., 1996
I took my old super-8 camera out of the closet, and began collecting images, using
the single-frame-zoom. Cubist in its visual delivery, the single-frame-zoom builds
a splayed reality that brings together disparate vantage points simultaneously, and
serves as the glue that blends and bonds peoples, places and spaces in Chimera." (PH)
Wednesday Oct. 31 2007
Leslie Thornton
Peggy with Guns. From Dung Smoke Enters the Palace
Leslie Thornton has long been considered a pioneer of contemporary media aesthetics, working at the borders and limits of cinema, video and digital media. Such seminal works as her ongoing series Peggy and Fred in Hell (1985- ) operate in the interstices between various media-forms, often using simultaneous, interacting projections of film and video to address both the architectural spaces of media, and the imaginary spaces of the spectator's involvement. Thornton uses the process of production as an explorative process, a collective endeavor "position(ing) the viewer as an active reader, not a consumer."- Thomas Zummer
Peggy and Fred in Hell
Leslie Thornton, 21 min.
The first installment of Leslie Thornton's ongoing epic follows two children, Peggy
and Fred, through a densely cluttered, technological-consumer jumble.
Peggy and Fred in Kansas
Leslie Thornton, 11 min.
A few years older now, our boy and girl heroes mumble and chant their way through
mid- America's wasteland.
These artists screenings are funded in part by Presentation Funds from the Experimental Television Center which is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. Series is co-sponsored by Harpur College Dean's Office.