http://store.wexnercenterstore.com/tiwekidvd.html
As the description says, this is a limited edition. (Not to say it's like a gallery limited edition that'll break your bank.)
Hope some of you enjoy!
Friday, February 5, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Time We Killed DVD for sale soon
I'm shipping today... finally! So, soon my film 2004 The Time We Killed will be available on DVD. Hopefully by next week they will be available.
For private home use, you'll be able to purchase it in store and online at the Wexner Center Store.
And also at the PS1 museum bookstore in New York.
For educational or institutional sales, contact The Film-Makers' Cooperative in NY.
Here's some writing on The Time We Killed, for those interested.
"Homeland Insecurity" Interview by Brent Kite, Cinema Scope, Fall 2004.
"The Insider: Facing Homeland Insecurity in a Blue State" Ed Halter, Village Voice, Oct 18th, 2005:
"Some Women" by Amy Taubin, Film Comment online, 2004
Hopefully in another 6 months there'll be a compilation DVD available with my various short films.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Best Films of the decade
I've been asked to write something, somehow listing my top 10 films of last decade, and it's just making me crazy. I'm maybe a third of the way done with the article, and it's already past the 700 word limit. I haven't even gotten past the 90s yet! After it's in print (if it makes it there- I have a few days left) I can at least post the whole thing here. Along with all the films I thought worthy of a best-films list, which number more than 10. That gives me some consolation with regards to cutting it all down.
But this writing has been a great diversion from other responsibilities! A memory lane of sorts. And it is an honor to be asked. Hopefully I know a thing or two about how to appreciate a film.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Happy New Decade ramblings
Happy New Year!
I just realized yesterday that it would be 2010, a new decade. I live much more in the present than I ever have, so the coming year barely touched my mind. Last night I was looking back at 2009 and I felt rather elated and peaceful. It was a great year, with maybe a few bumps and worries.
The main attraction of my 2009 was Teo, who is now a 1 year old, zipping around on his own two feet. He likes to stomp them now in the James Brown Mash Potato dance style (either when he's frustrated, or happy and looking for a laugh). I managed to be a mother and do my work this year; so my main fear of a year ago is dispelled a bit, the fear of being an experimental filmmaker mom who would ultimately be unable to keep up the experimental filmmaker part. I couldn't have done it without Bill, Bill's mom, and the incomparable and extraordinary Brigette Blood. Child-raising should be a joint endeavor anyway, and we've got a happy, beautiful boy. I'm aware how lucky I am. It has been amazing to see him grow so fast.
I thought a lot about Stan Brakhage's writing in Metaphors on Vision this year spending time with Teo. I want to re-read it now. Teo's delight and wonder in seeing things and discovering new things is so vast and insatiable and exciting to experience. I caught myself correcting him when he'd turn the pages backwards when reading him a story, back and forth, upside down. What nonsense to correct him! And when I start teaching him words like "green" and "red" and "dog" and so forth, I am aware at how limited the language is, but at the same time it is wonderful to see him begin to learn language and to express himself. What is orange? round or a description of a color? How many different kinds of water there are. Etc. Etc. Teo discovered lobsters yesterday. He was so fascinated as these poor things suffered in the sink (before my mother in law cooked them). I've always found zoos distasteful and cruel, but now I can see how I'd want to introduce my boy to all those wondrous creatures, and how else but at a zoo. (Movies are pretty good, but I don't want everything he learns to be on a damn screen!)
But back to my fear of failing in my filmmaking after motherhood, which is worth coming clean about. To be honest with myself and whoever reads this thing, filmmaking was less pleasurable this year. That was something I didn't expect. I had less time and focus to build up momentum. I was stuck much of the time with my writing. I wasn't as good a teacher this year either. It was harder to focus on it, even though it took up so much energy and time. (And I was envious of my students whose main purpose was to make their own work, and those who squandered their time and didn't understand that gift made me so annoyed. ) I think my maternal instincts used to get channeled into my teaching, and now that I have a kid I'm going to have to find some other energy to direct my teaching. But with all the things I didn't do quite as well this past year as before, or with less enthusiasm and success, I did well enough that I know I can do better again this upcoming year. Let's be positive.
So one of my new year's resolutions is that I'll write a blog entry once a month. Pretty lame I know, but I can't do those quick ones very easily- as if that's not already obvious. And when people ask why I don't do Facebook, I just can't imagine why I would want to add that to my life when I can't update my website but every 6 months, I can only write a blog every once in a while, I can't catch up with my emails, I actually put up a myspace page finally to discover it was no longer relevant (was it a year ago or two? I don't remember). I haven't updated it since.
I actually managed to see some good films this year after all. Though mostly at home after Teo was asleep, very few outside the home. (It's hard to go out to see anything because we have to go to bed so damn early to wake up with Teo at 5:30 am. The few times I've gone to interesting screenings, that rarely begin before 8pm, I have been entirely wrecked the next day having gotten not enough sleep). Anyway, I managed to see some good ones. Things I read about in CinemaScope much of the time. I wonder if I'll be able to do a list of favorite viewings of the year, and the worst ones, as I did last year? Doubtful. It was fun to do, but ...
But the one movie fresh in my mind....... We are in the rural midwest now, and when here we only have options of mainstream movies. So what did we see last night? Avatar. wow. It really inspired me. Just imagine what I could do with that technology and budget! I could either make 16mm or 35mm experimental films for my lifetime, and put food on the table, and maybe even help fund other artist filmmakers. Or I could redo When it was Blue in 3D IMAX! It'll be phenomenal! Or I could do Firelight Song in 3D. Now that would be good. A historical lesbian love story in 3D! It'll be amazing, a truly avant-garde use of 3D. (that's my pitch for Hollywood) I could even borrow a line from Avatar like "Duh... I may only be talking to a tree, but if you hear me tree of souls, could you help us..." If you can laugh about such financial imbalance, where such a massive amount of resources to go to these blockbusters, while there is such a tremendous resistance to some miniscule amount of tax dollars going to the arts, then you don't get so blind with anger. What a plot ! ... the childish marine becoming a tree hugger running around naked, bonding with animals and saving the forest people from the military capitalist machine he was a part of! It was pretty awesome. If a plot like that was done with a small budget they'd call the filmmaker a communist. But in glitzy 3D, it is green chic. Besides this sarcasm, there's actually a lot you could say about the film. I didn't mind watching it. I didn't feel totally empty after watching it as I do after most big budget films I see. But the filmmaking allowed no intimacy with the characters. I truly felt nothing for them. That wasn't the point I suppose. There was a pornography element to the special effects.
And that's all for now.
Oh... by the way. I finally got a DVD done. I made a 100-copy edition of The Time We Killed right before I left New York last week for the holidays. They should be waiting for me when I get back. Just have to package them up & figure out the distribution. They'll be in a few stores in NY, and I think my distributor Filmmakers' Cooperative will have them for educational sale. Don't know what else. I also have had new high-quality telecines of some even older films, so I should be doing the same for those too. I'll do a post when they are ready.
So a happy, healthy new year to you. Let's hope this new health care thing goes well for all of us here in the US.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
A teaching mom tries to make creative work
I just read my last post and it's the perfect example of my current problem of not having enough time. I had to run off so it was incomplete. It bothers me now that it paints a false picture... But alas, I'm stealing time again during my baby's nap, and I'll probably have to run off again before this post is complete. So I write in short hand.
Teaching ... it has really been a great counterpoint to making films for me, and I know it will continue to be. It seems to be the default day-job-with-paycheck for many of us experimental filmmakers (and poets, artists, etc.) And I see a lot of disenchantment stemming from filmmakers or artists who "have to teach" - primarily ones with full time teaching gigs. But I enjoy it and care about my students working hard, learning, becoming inspired, making their films the best they can, and am happy if I can help them in this process. I do my best. I'm not just trying to sound good here. After all the many thousands of hours alone, teaching myself how to make film, and then making them, it is wonderful to share what I've learned and what excites me. And to in turn be excited about younger maker's work, discoveries and relative freedom in their imaginations, aspirations and ideas. I even like the structure to my life, teaching a couple days a week. The "however" factor, as indicated in my last post, has to do with my situation now, not my students. All these years I have chosen to continue to teach as an adjunct teacher, as opposed to a full time teacher, because I think it leaves me with exponentially more energy and time than if I had a full-time / tenure track job. It comes at a serious price (low pay and no benefits or security). But the trade off has probably allowed me to make some films I never could have made otherwise, since mine are so time-intensive. But back to teaching: I most like one-on-one meetings with students and classroom time and my preparation (looking at films, reading, and so forth) the morning of a class. However, I hate my almost-zero free time being eaten up with too much of the out-of-class stuff, the non-face-to-face time: the scheduling, the emailing, the administrative stuff, blah blah blah. The amount of which you'd expect to do when you have a full time job. The reason you get paid decently for a full time job. I have just used every single bit of my free time today - a Sunday when I should be relaxing ! - on these teaching job related emails and scheduling and blah blah blah (and writing this post).
I miss the pre-email days of teaching. Office hours! I suppose if I had a full time job, I'd get an office, and then I could insist on office hours over email. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I still haven't figured out the balance. But I would just like to get some momentum on my film. I did have a chance to write for my film yesterday. 3.5 hours! That's all I could get... but it was something. And I keep plugging along.
But if one more fucking person asks me "are you able to make work?", after asking me about my baby and whether I enjoy being a mother, I am going to slap them (in my mind). Even though I go on like this, complaining and stressed out about how little time I have to do my creative work, I AM doing it. And I love my little boy more than I could have ever imagined possible. But I feel like when people ask me "are you able to do your work?" they are really saying, "you poor thing. soon enough you're not going to be able to do shit." or "another female/mother artist bites the dust"! But maybe some of you are really saying, "Please tell me you're managing to make your work. Because I'm thinking about having a kid and I really need to know that it's possible to continue to make my non-paying creative work that I care about immensely". Let's keep trying.
Teaching ... it has really been a great counterpoint to making films for me, and I know it will continue to be. It seems to be the default day-job-with-paycheck for many of us experimental filmmakers (and poets, artists, etc.) And I see a lot of disenchantment stemming from filmmakers or artists who "have to teach" - primarily ones with full time teaching gigs. But I enjoy it and care about my students working hard, learning, becoming inspired, making their films the best they can, and am happy if I can help them in this process. I do my best. I'm not just trying to sound good here. After all the many thousands of hours alone, teaching myself how to make film, and then making them, it is wonderful to share what I've learned and what excites me. And to in turn be excited about younger maker's work, discoveries and relative freedom in their imaginations, aspirations and ideas. I even like the structure to my life, teaching a couple days a week. The "however" factor, as indicated in my last post, has to do with my situation now, not my students. All these years I have chosen to continue to teach as an adjunct teacher, as opposed to a full time teacher, because I think it leaves me with exponentially more energy and time than if I had a full-time / tenure track job. It comes at a serious price (low pay and no benefits or security). But the trade off has probably allowed me to make some films I never could have made otherwise, since mine are so time-intensive. But back to teaching: I most like one-on-one meetings with students and classroom time and my preparation (looking at films, reading, and so forth) the morning of a class. However, I hate my almost-zero free time being eaten up with too much of the out-of-class stuff, the non-face-to-face time: the scheduling, the emailing, the administrative stuff, blah blah blah. The amount of which you'd expect to do when you have a full time job. The reason you get paid decently for a full time job. I have just used every single bit of my free time today - a Sunday when I should be relaxing ! - on these teaching job related emails and scheduling and blah blah blah (and writing this post).
I miss the pre-email days of teaching. Office hours! I suppose if I had a full time job, I'd get an office, and then I could insist on office hours over email. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I still haven't figured out the balance. But I would just like to get some momentum on my film. I did have a chance to write for my film yesterday. 3.5 hours! That's all I could get... but it was something. And I keep plugging along.
But if one more fucking person asks me "are you able to make work?", after asking me about my baby and whether I enjoy being a mother, I am going to slap them (in my mind). Even though I go on like this, complaining and stressed out about how little time I have to do my creative work, I AM doing it. And I love my little boy more than I could have ever imagined possible. But I feel like when people ask me "are you able to do your work?" they are really saying, "you poor thing. soon enough you're not going to be able to do shit." or "another female/mother artist bites the dust"! But maybe some of you are really saying, "Please tell me you're managing to make your work. Because I'm thinking about having a kid and I really need to know that it's possible to continue to make my non-paying creative work that I care about immensely". Let's keep trying.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Some progress with the DVD on thanksgiving
"Happy Thanksgiving Day" (I never liked this holiday, "thanks [native Americans] for letting us kill you and steal your land, after we do this symbolic gesture of sharing food with you once, so we can carry forth this myth and holiday after you're almost gone forever". - that's basically what I used to say in high school after reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn).
On to my privileged American life:
I have just finished my hit-list for my The Time We Killed color-correction for a future DVD and new digital master. A hit-list is when you watch a film print or video, or listen to a soundmix, that you are working on from beginning to end. You take note of all moments or shots you must fix (whether it be editing, color-correcting, or audio sweetening), so the whole piece has the quality, pacing, progression or continuity that you want. It is best to watch the piece in full at this stage, so you don't lose the overall progression. It is so easy to get in the habit of stopping and fixing things along the way, since its so damn easy with digital editing. Not a good idea. Happens the most, and most destructively, with long films.
Given I started this round of color correction 6-8 weeks ago, in my limited spare time, who knows how long it'll take me to actually implement the changes, and be ready to compress, encode, duplicate. But I have many requests over the years to make this film available, and so I'm trying.
The problem is, the compression and encoding isn't looking as good as I would like. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE know of a good professional or semi-professional in compressing/encoding DVDs in New York who isn't too expensive? Someone who works with experimental works, and can deal with a more tricky compression/encoding process they require? I can make pretty good DVDs, I've been doing this a while, I have a decent computer & programs. But I want this DVD to look great if I'm going to duplicate it. If you know such a person, please leave me a comment or email me. Some would say mine looks just fine, but my eyes are so sharp to any bit of occasional video weirdness/mysterious artifacts that I would like some help.
I wonder if I should do an audio commentary? It might add 3 months to the project.
I'm happy to say I will be teaching half as much as now in the winter/spring. So, soon I can focus on my work. A huge amount of my "spare time" has been spent with teaching duties, more than usual, and more than I can do my own work. Irony of all ironies (that I'd meant to write about sooner) is that I am leading the Master Critique class in the Photo, Video and Related Media MFA program at SVA. Notice the absence of the word "film". There is no film equipment. The students make videos and video installations for their thesis projects. It's a good job, with a handful of very talented young artists. The dept hesitated to give it to me because of my film background, and I hesitated to take it mainly for loss of free time reasons), but I started working there this fall. The job takes far more time than I was lead to believe (adjunct jobs in my experience don't have you spending so much additional time beyond class prep and class time). And quite frankly, MFA students seem to need more attention than undergrads. I was the opposite, so I didn't realize this was the norm (Bard MFA where I taught two summers is such an unusual program, that no other MFA program in the US compares). By the very nature of the program, students are given more criticism and attention than they probably want.)
ok, signing off. Teo, my just-today-11-month old(!), is awake from his morning nap (my work time) and is hungry and wants to play and learn! no time to edit this.
On to my privileged American life:
I have just finished my hit-list for my The Time We Killed color-correction for a future DVD and new digital master. A hit-list is when you watch a film print or video, or listen to a soundmix, that you are working on from beginning to end. You take note of all moments or shots you must fix (whether it be editing, color-correcting, or audio sweetening), so the whole piece has the quality, pacing, progression or continuity that you want. It is best to watch the piece in full at this stage, so you don't lose the overall progression. It is so easy to get in the habit of stopping and fixing things along the way, since its so damn easy with digital editing. Not a good idea. Happens the most, and most destructively, with long films.
Given I started this round of color correction 6-8 weeks ago, in my limited spare time, who knows how long it'll take me to actually implement the changes, and be ready to compress, encode, duplicate. But I have many requests over the years to make this film available, and so I'm trying.
The problem is, the compression and encoding isn't looking as good as I would like. DOES ANYONE OUT THERE know of a good professional or semi-professional in compressing/encoding DVDs in New York who isn't too expensive? Someone who works with experimental works, and can deal with a more tricky compression/encoding process they require? I can make pretty good DVDs, I've been doing this a while, I have a decent computer & programs. But I want this DVD to look great if I'm going to duplicate it. If you know such a person, please leave me a comment or email me. Some would say mine looks just fine, but my eyes are so sharp to any bit of occasional video weirdness/mysterious artifacts that I would like some help.
I wonder if I should do an audio commentary? It might add 3 months to the project.
I'm happy to say I will be teaching half as much as now in the winter/spring. So, soon I can focus on my work. A huge amount of my "spare time" has been spent with teaching duties, more than usual, and more than I can do my own work. Irony of all ironies (that I'd meant to write about sooner) is that I am leading the Master Critique class in the Photo, Video and Related Media MFA program at SVA. Notice the absence of the word "film". There is no film equipment. The students make videos and video installations for their thesis projects. It's a good job, with a handful of very talented young artists. The dept hesitated to give it to me because of my film background, and I hesitated to take it mainly for loss of free time reasons), but I started working there this fall. The job takes far more time than I was lead to believe (adjunct jobs in my experience don't have you spending so much additional time beyond class prep and class time). And quite frankly, MFA students seem to need more attention than undergrads. I was the opposite, so I didn't realize this was the norm (Bard MFA where I taught two summers is such an unusual program, that no other MFA program in the US compares). By the very nature of the program, students are given more criticism and attention than they probably want.)
ok, signing off. Teo, my just-today-11-month old(!), is awake from his morning nap (my work time) and is hungry and wants to play and learn! no time to edit this.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
artfem.tv and INCITE!
I forgot to put an easy link to that great site:
http://artfem.tv/short_film_movie/
And on another note, I'm reading this newish journal INCITE! which is encouraging with regards to the state of avant-garde, or if you prefer "experimental", film. And I mean moving image work on celluloid. Some of the articles are really great and say more than I can say on this here "not dead yet" website these days. The writers seem to be more optimistic than I am sometimes these days. And they are reminding me of an old energy I used to have, that is lagging right now. (I think since working in longer form, I've gotten more focused and bummed out on the money hurdles than when I was only making short modest films). Anyway, it's been good to be reading such things, because indeed there is a dearth of writing on the current state of experimental film. INCITE! is online, but I like having my hard copy for trips on the subway (my best time for reading anything these days).
http://www.incite-online.net/
The reason I was clued into this journal, besides knowing some of the people involved, is that there's a video posted on their site of films made at the wonderful Phil Hoffman film farm, where I shot my We are going Home in 1997 (and an excerpt of that is in the video). Check that video out:
http://www.incite-online.net/filmfarm.html
http://artfem.tv/short_film_movie/
And on another note, I'm reading this newish journal INCITE! which is encouraging with regards to the state of avant-garde, or if you prefer "experimental", film. And I mean moving image work on celluloid. Some of the articles are really great and say more than I can say on this here "not dead yet" website these days. The writers seem to be more optimistic than I am sometimes these days. And they are reminding me of an old energy I used to have, that is lagging right now. (I think since working in longer form, I've gotten more focused and bummed out on the money hurdles than when I was only making short modest films). Anyway, it's been good to be reading such things, because indeed there is a dearth of writing on the current state of experimental film. INCITE! is online, but I like having my hard copy for trips on the subway (my best time for reading anything these days).
http://www.incite-online.net/
The reason I was clued into this journal, besides knowing some of the people involved, is that there's a video posted on their site of films made at the wonderful Phil Hoffman film farm, where I shot my We are going Home in 1997 (and an excerpt of that is in the video). Check that video out:
http://www.incite-online.net/filmfarm.html
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