Filmmakers reinterpret media to create humorous, touching, politically relevant works.
Program:
Woman Without a Past Lisa Barcy
2004 5 min Color mini-DV US Bay Area Premiere
Using stop-motion animation, the filmmaker deconstructs the romance novelliterally. Text comes alive to create an enigmatic portrait of a mysterious woman, exposing everything, yet revealing nothing.
Ice/Sea Vivian Ostrovsky
2004 32 min Color 16mm France West Coast Premiere
Ostrovskys latest tour-de-force combines her signature style of montage cinemamixing found footage with her own shot footage. Ice/Sea offers a hyperactive and hilarious seaside romp from Patagonia to Odessa, Rio to Viet Nam, and elsewhere. The rollicking at a channel-surfing pace proves experimental cinema can have a joyous edge and a sense of humor. The soundtrack has an ingenious tidal flow of found and created sound that propels this rambling document of sheer, sandy fun. Ostrovsky, who grew up in Rio de Janeiro, has captured the essence of how life is a beachthe commingling of families, couples and playmates, the languorous sun-worshiping repose, the irresistible compulsion for leering, the cavalcade of characters, and the surprises beyond the inevitable sand-in-your-suit. The celebrated avant-gardist has wryly advised, Wear your flip flops. Watch for a cameo appearance by fellow filmmaker Ulriche Ottinger.
Birdlings Two Davina Pardo
2004 6 min Color Beta SP US SF Premiere
This personal essay explores the legacy of Birdlings, a film made by Pardos father decades ago. Using his film along with archival footage and photographs, Birdlings Two is a meditation on the relationships between art and invention, hopes and disappointment, fathers and daughters.
Periodical Sarah Christman
2004 3:55 min Color mini-DV US
West Coast Premiere
Its June 2004 and the cicadas are ascending after their 17-year hibernation. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan dies, Smarty Jones loses his big race, and the war plods on. Using various animation techniques, this is one womans frame-by-frame account of a very hot week.
In Whose Name? Nandini Sikand
2004 10:50 min Color mini-DV US West Coast Premiere
This filmic essay, which follows the co-opting of icons by political agendas and parties, is told through personal narrative, Super-8mm movies, Bollywood films and comic book art.
boop-oop-a-doop Sachiko Hayashi
2004 5 min Color mini-DV US/ Sweden West Coast Premiere
In her observation of daily life, Hayashi plays with three elements: the creation of identity, media culture, and our own desire to be somebody else. By focusing on two prominent figures in mass media culture, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop, the video demonstrates how these three elements intermingle.
Perhaps the Singer Is Dead Mary Billyou
2004 6:30 min Color mini-DV US
Waves of television roll-bars lull the viewer into a false demi-sleep while subtitled text accuses the audience: Youd make a terrible witness.
Big Shtick Courtney Egan
2003 3 min Color mini-DV US West Coast Premiere
How did that fluke of evolution, the opposable thumb, influence entertainment? This video makes the case that the shtick is the stick.
Pounds Per Square Inch Heather Posner
2004 5:50 min Color 16mm US World Premiere
A young woman recalls a dream involving a make-out session in a bathroom. She attempts to solve the riddle of heterosexual feminist fantasy.
Wheres My Boyfriend? Gretchen Hogue
2005 2 min Color mini-DV US CA Premiere
A biological clock explosion of penises and fetuses. This ones for the ladies. Can you hear the ticking?
http://www.madcatfilmfestival.org
About the curator:
Ariella J. Ben-Dov is the co-founder, director and curator of the MadCat Womens International Film Festival. MadCat promotes cutting-edge films and videos by women directors from around the globe. The festival celebrates its annual event each September in the Bay Area and tours each spring to more than 20 museums, art houses and universities around the country. Ben-Dov also writes about documentary and avant-garde film for publications such as The Independent Film and Video Monthly and Release Print. She wrote a review of Barbara Hammers seminal film, Dyketactics, to be published in a chronicling the history of experimental film. Ben-Dov was recently invited to curate the Flaherty Film Seminar, a week long seminar which will take place in June 2006.
Ben-Dov was the program coordinator for the House of Docs at the Sundance Film Festival. The House of Docs is a ten-day conference exploring all aspects of documentary filmmaking. In addition, Ben-Dov is the founding director for the PlanetOut Short Movie Awards, which promotes excellence in filmmaking by giving out
$15,000 in cash awards to filmmakers.
Ben-Dov has participated in and moderated panels on alternative exhibition, documentary film and experimental filmmaking at: Sundance Film Festival, San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and Bay Area LadyFest. She has been a juror and panel chairwoman at the San Francisco International Film Festival. In addition, she has acted as a juror for the New York Underground Film Festival, San Francisco Arts Commission, Horizons Foundation, Marin Arts Council, San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and the Milan Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Ben-Dov has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Academy Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Fleishhacker Foundation, Gerbode Foundation, and the Zellerbach Family Fund among others.
Also a filmmaker, Ben-Dov produced THATS A FAMILY! for the Academy-Award winning documentary film company Womens Educational Media. THATS A FAMILY! is an educational documentary for children about family diversity and was recently awarded a Cine Golden Eagle. Ben-Dov also produced PUMP, an award-winning film that screened at festivals internationally and received many awards, including Best Experimental Short at the Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and a special award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
