FILM/VIDEO - Titles
Keep Warm, Burn Britain!
experimental documentary. with music by Thoth.35mm, color. feature. London/ Los Angeles. (in progress)
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.
The Perfect Heart of Flux
experimental documentary compilation.
DV, color. 36 minutes. Los Angeles, 2007 - 2010.
A wordless testimony to the chaos of urbanity: portraits of ruins and construction mingle with landscapes, skyscapes, and ghosts of the distant city. Shards, glimmers, fragments, and visions arise, coalesce and dissolve in the crucible of time. These short video works elide demarcations of cinema, creating a unique visual language that integrates poetic and essay forms in brief meditations on the nature of organic change.
DV, color. 36 minutes. Los Angeles, 2007 - 2010.
A wordless testimony to the chaos of urbanity: portraits of ruins and construction mingle with landscapes, skyscapes, and ghosts of the distant city. Shards, glimmers, fragments, and visions arise, coalesce and dissolve in the crucible of time. These short video works elide demarcations of cinema, creating a unique visual language that integrates poetic and essay forms in brief meditations on the nature of organic change.
Ocean Beach / Point Lobos I, II, III.
10 minutes. San Francisco/Los Angeles.A short sketch in tide, wind, and spraypaint. Afternoon in Bottle Village
3 minutes. Simi Valley/Los Angeles.
A requiem for a cathedral of light, built entirely of glass bottles, pencils, and industrial detritus by legendary California outsider artist Grandma Prisbrey from 1956 to1981. The Village has long since fallen into decay, and is accessible by hopping a small fence. The spirit of Grandma Prisbrey is conjured from the ruins with an improv on broken piano by Jodie Baltazar (aka Monotrona).
Clean MRF / Dirty MRF
6 minutes. Los Angeles.“Clean mrfing” is the recovery of refuse under controlled and sanitary working conditions. “Dirty mrfing” refers to the same process in an uncontrolled environment. This video documents events of the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Los Angeles subCacophony Society.
Casa Loma (Dignity and Impudence)
10 minutes. Toronto/Los Angeles.
“The oneirically definitive house must retain its shadows.” -- Gaston Bachelard"
Casa Loma was the unfinished dream mansion of Canadian industrial magnate Henry Pellatt. A self-made millionaire, Pellatt was derided by fellow aristocrats for nouveau-riche pretentions: the house and its décor considered by many an ornate fake. Its original contents were sold at Pellatt’s bankruptcy auction in 1924. Today the building is a museum; its current curators filling its halls with furniture and trappings of the general era. In one corridor, carefully lit, is a folk-art portrait of two dogs with the sentimental epithet, “Dignity and impudence.” The movie has three sections—the first in a cellar tunnel, the next in a first-story workroom near the stables, the third in the tower’s summit.
“The oneirically definitive house must retain its shadows.” -- Gaston Bachelard"
Casa Loma was the unfinished dream mansion of Canadian industrial magnate Henry Pellatt. A self-made millionaire, Pellatt was derided by fellow aristocrats for nouveau-riche pretentions: the house and its décor considered by many an ornate fake. Its original contents were sold at Pellatt’s bankruptcy auction in 1924. Today the building is a museum; its current curators filling its halls with furniture and trappings of the general era. In one corridor, carefully lit, is a folk-art portrait of two dogs with the sentimental epithet, “Dignity and impudence.” The movie has three sections—the first in a cellar tunnel, the next in a first-story workroom near the stables, the third in the tower’s summit.
Tracy, California
3 minutes. Tracy/ Los Angeles.
A flyby off California’s Interstate 580, Tracy, California is at once seen and unseen by thousands every day on the route from Los Angeles to San Francisco. A literal and existential road movie.
A flyby off California’s Interstate 580, Tracy, California is at once seen and unseen by thousands every day on the route from Los Angeles to San Francisco. A literal and existential road movie.
Cheonggye Stream Renovation
2 minutes. Seoul/Los Angeles.2005 marked the completion of a nine hundred million dollar project to revert the Cheonggye Stream from a covered sewage passage back to its original state. To do so, it was newly paved and water pumped in from Jayang. Towards the park’s northern end stand the remains of Dongdaemun Stadium and one of Seoul’s oldest traditional street markets. In 2008 a portion of the market, which had been relocated to the stadium as part of the Cheonggyecheon renovation project, was being shut down. Cheonggye means ”clear valley water” in Korean.
In The Treeless Forest
10 minutes. Olympic Peninsula/Los Angeles,The hand that feeds yet wields the sword:
Pt. I - tree graveyard. A walk through an area of patch clearcut near the Quinault Rainforest.
Pt. II - logging tavern. The charred remains of industry, scorched by fire and immaculately cleaned. A diptych on death and regeneration.
Self-portrait in Mausoleum
1 minute. Los Angeles. Refractions and reflections shot in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery: the half-life of death’s advance. Stained glass invokes the sublime in its filtering of light energy, a pre-cinematic cipher announcing a crack between worlds. “All the stars in heaven” radiate before expiring; the passing moment of a moment’s passing is the most elusive and hence the most beautiful.
Found Sand Mandala
2 minutes. San Francisco/Los Angeles.(from the microflux series)
Rhythm 06
experimental. with performer Carolyn Roy, music by Michael Whitmore. 35mm, color/so (1.37; Dolby SR), 9 minutes. London/Los Angeles, 2008.
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.
The Interview
narrative. (Writer/Director/Editor) with Julie Queen, Lisa Black. in association with Film Arts Foundation.35mm, color/so (1.37; Dolby SR), 30 minutes. San Francisco/Los Angeles. 2004.
Two women meet at a crossroads… My one fiction film to date comes from a genre even more rare in the US than experimental work—adult drama. Printed in muted tones that conjure silent film handpainting, and merging theater-based naturalism with an elliptical psychological encounter, The Interview at once utilizes and destroys mainstream narrative expectations. Featuring Lisa Black and Julie Queen. Cinematography by Babette Mangolte. (San Francisco/Los Angeles). Official selection, Oberhausen International Film Festival Touring Program, 2004, Sammlung Goetz collection Munich.
Michael Barrish Screen Test
experimental documentary. with MB.
Super-8mm, color. 3 minutes. San Francisco, 1997.
Super-8mm, color. 3 minutes. San Francisco, 1997.
Rhythm 93
experimental. with performer Carolyn Roy.16mm, color. 9 minutes. London/San Francisco, 1993-94.
Distributed through Canyon Cinema.
A Pre-Raphaelite portrait of the visionary state as arising from nervous breakdown. Filmed in bitter winter in England’s bleak post-Thatcher years, using only natural light, the camera’s focus and exposure shift continually in a subversive riff on classical cinematic match-cutting. Perhaps something occurs, but what?
With performer Carolyn Roy. (London)
Winner, Director’s Choice, Black Maria Film Festival 1994.
Rhythm 92
experimental. 16mm, color. 2 minutes. London, 1992-93.
Distributed through Canyon Cinema.
"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. (San Francisco)
Distributed through Canyon Cinema.
"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. (San Francisco)
10-17-88
experimental. Audio collage by John Shaw. 16mm, color. 11 minutes. Chicago, 1989.
Distributed through Canyon Cinema.
Optically printed collage of found and archival footage, with audio collage by John Shaw. (Chicago)
"You are never alone, because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday; your mind is never clear of all the rubbish it has accumulated. To be alone you must die to the past. When you are alone, totally alone, not belonging to any family, any nation, any culture, any particular continent, there is that sense of being an outsider. The man who is completely alone in this way is innocent, and it is this innocence that frees the mind from sorrow." -- Krishnamurti