FILM/VIDEO WORKS
The Case of the Vanishing Gods
2021. Distributed by corpusfluxus.
An eclectic fiction / essay hybrid on the history of ventriloquism from the prophetic tradition to the present day, as seen in clips from classic and not-so-classic works of cinema.
World Premiere: Locarno Film Festival.
Between Two Cinemas
comprised of short works and a clip essay.
2018. Distributed by corpusfluxus.
Part biography, part clip essay, part abstract painting, Between Two Cinemas integrates 4K restorations of filmmaker/archivist Ross Lipman's old films inside a new documentary/essay linking them. It uncovers previously unseen archival material on Stan Brakhage and Andrei Tarkovsky, and adds new collaborations with artists including visionary experimentalist Bruce Baillie, Jeanne Dielman cinematographer Babette Mangolte, Bela Tarr composer Mihaly Vig and synthesizer pioneer Patrick Gleeson.
Premiered at London Film Festival, 2018.
Notfilm
documentary essay, with music by Mihaly Vig.
2015. Distributed by Milestone.
In 1964 author Samuel Beckett set out on one of the strangest ventures in cinematic history: his embattled collaboration with silent era genius Buster Keaton on the production of a short, titleless avant-garde film. Beckett was nearing the peak of his fame, which would culminate in his receiving a Nobel Prize five years later. Keaton, in his waning years, never lived to see Beckett's canonization. The film they made along with director Alan Schneider, renegade publisher Barney Rosset, and Academy Award-winning cinematographer Boris Kaufman, has been the subject of praise, condemnation, and controversy for decades. Yet the eclectic participants are just one part of a story that stretches to the very birth of cinema, and spreads out to our understanding of human consciousness itself.
See official website here. See trailer here.
Personal Ethnographies
experimental documentary cycle.
DV, color. Los Angeles, 2007 - 2013.
Distributed through CFMDC.
A series of informal video portraits of colleagues and friends, from the world of independent cinema and the Los Angeles underground.
A visit with filmmaker Bruce Baillie at his home on Camano Island in Washington State.
The spirit of outsider artist Grandma Prisbrey is conjured from the ruins of her Bottle Village with an improv on broken piano by Jodie Baltazar (aka Monotrona).
This video documents events of the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Los Angeles subCacophony Society.
Drummer Denardo Coleman discusses his father, Ornette Coleman, via Skype at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater.
A reunion of the cast of Killer of Sheep at the Dolores diner before the Los Angeles restoration premiere. Featuring Charles Bracy, Kaycee Moore, and Henry Sanders.
Nora Keyes, minus Fancy Space People, performs at Report from the Ghost City, an event of the Disembodied Theater Corporation.
A chronicle of editor Claire Didier's dream of her sister, Materials and Applications curator Jenna Beautiful; interwoven with scenes from Jenna's wedding.
Refractions and reflections shot in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery...
Filmmaker/archivist Tenzin Phuntsog relates a near-death experience.
Short Films
in 35mm, 16mm, and Super-8
1988 - 2006.
Distributed through CFMDC.
A number of these films, along with a later short work, CASA LOMA (in collaboration with composer Patrick Gleeson) were anthologized in the 2018 feature, BETWEEN TWO CINEMAS.
Remastered in 2018 with Fandor/Sammlung Goetz (Munich).
Filmed in a decaying housing estate in east London, Rhythm 06 renders the outer trappings of internal collapse, a choreography of layers of the real. This new reworking of Rhythm 93 transposes Michael Whitmore’s ethereal score for 10-string guitar and overtones on Carolyn Roy’s original riveting hypernaturalist performance.
Fiction. (Writer/Director/Editor) with Julie Queen, Lisa Black.
Produced in association with Film Arts Foundation. Remastered in 2018 with Fandor/Sammlung Goetz (Munich).
Official selection, Oberhausen International Film Festival, Archive, and Touring Program, 2004.
Two women meet at a crossroads…
More info and movie excerpt here
Documentary. A screen test for an unmade film. This brief fragment is all that survives of that project, but stands in for the whole.
With performer Carolyn Roy. (London). Winner, Director’s Choice, Black Maria Film Festival 1994.
"The square is the sign of a new humanity. It is something like the cross of the early Christians." -- Theo van Doesburg, upon greeting Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling in Klein Kolzig, 1920.
Today's visual imagery is split body from soul, images employed expressly for their representational value in a linguistic manner; form an afterthought. RHYTHM 92 reverses this, intermingling camera images with light, flare and color in an orchestration of pure form, foregoing meaning.
"Know that the complete secret of prophecy for the prophet is that he suddenly sees the form of his self standing before him, and his self forgets and becomes transported from him, and he sees the form of himself before him speaking with him and proclaiming the future.” – Rabbi Nathan, as related by Moses ben Jacob of Kiev in the Shushan Sodot, 1509
Optically printed archival collage, with audio collage by John Shaw.
7 minute re-edit, 2018.
Keep Warm, Burn Britain!
documentary essay. with music by Thoth.
35mm/digital. feature. London / Los Angeles. (in progress/unfinished)
Keep Warm, Burn Britain! is a feature-length experimental memoir of the mid-80’s squatting movement in East London. Comprised entirely of still photographs, it chronicles the lives of the anarchists, outcasts, and punks who inhabited a network of soon-to-be demolished buildings south of the Thames, an area known in the anarchist community as Squatter’s Paradise. Keep Warm, Burn Britain! moves freely from the chaotic lives of the squatters to the broad social canvas on which their tales unfold; buildings and lives swept up in the sea of change that swallows cities and time.