Revolutions per Minute festival, an artist run festival, is dedicated to short-form poetic, personal, cinematic work in experiments, essay film, animation, documentary, video and audiovisual performance.
Revolutions Per Minute Festival is co-hosted by
Art and Art History Department and Cinema Studies at UMass-Boston, Brattle Theatre in Cambridge & Harvard FAS CAMLab.
For more info: contact@revolutionsperminutefest.org
RPM23: We are looking for any work that experiments with the formal possibilities or hybrid form of film, audiovisual, animation and video under 12 minutes (and the medium length category will accept the work from 12 mins to 30 mins) .
Submit your work (produced after July 1st, 2021)
through FilmFreeway.
Selections by Sept.1, 2023.
Short
| 2013 | 5 minutes | B&W | SILENT
Office Suite
| 2007 | 14 minutes | B&W | SOUND
Matters of Life and Death
| 2017 | 12 minutes | B&W | SILENT
Exile
| 2018 | 13 minutes | COLOR | SOUND
Shrine
| 2018 | 19 minutes | COLOR | SOUND
Program Introduction
Ethan Berry (Montserrat College of Art)
Post Screening Discussion
Ernesto Livon-Grosman (Boston College) & Brittany Gravely (Harvard Film Archive)
still: Matters of Life and Death
Robert Todd
By popular demand, RPM fest presents Boston lyrical experimental filmmaker Robert Todd's film program,
Attention Wonders, which includes 5 short films by Robert Todd. The Screening is scheduled on Sunday,
Dec.11, 2PM at the Brattle Theater.
It will be introduced by filmmaker Ethan Berry (Montserrat College of Art) and a short post screening discussion with
Filmmaker Ernesto Livon-Grosman (Boston College) and artist Brittany Gravely (Harvard Film Archive).
Robert Todd (1963-2018) was a profoundly creative and compassionate person who expressed raw emotion through the medium of film.
He was a prolific filmmaker, a dedicated mentor and educator, a painter of dark wonders, and a musical prodigy.
His cinema had a profound influence on the international experimental film community, embracing the deep complexity of the natural
world and reflecting his internal self, sometimes through multiple mirrors.
According to Robert, making films allowed him "to wonder deeply and learn, from what ends up shimmering on the screen,
about how my inner world resonates with the outer world through this transformational medium."
He would walk out of his apartment with a loaded camera while holding a feeling in his heart,
and make wonderous moving paintings - an impulse he nurtured in generations of experimental filmmakers.
Robert's greatest source of inspiration was the poetry of Tessa Day.
He is terribly missed by the many people whose lives he changed.
https://www.filmmakerroberttodd.com
Ethan Berry is an artist, film maker and frequent collaborator. He is a Founding member of the AgX Film Collective in Boston. He is coordinator of the Studio Capstone program and teaches Experimental Film at Montserrat College of Art.
His practice involves using a variety of media to transform and process images and ideas as a form of distillation and discovery. His installations and films address the notions of Place, Loss and Memory.
His films have been screened regionally and internationally, most recently in Boston, Paris, Barcelona and Bueno Aires. and Mumbai.
Ernesto Livon-Grosman was born and raised in Buenos Aires.
In his early twenties, he moved to Patagonia, where he developed an interest in the history and the politics of that region. He later published Geografias imaginarias, a study about travel writers who created a mythical iconography of the Patagonian landscape, one in which the region is viewed as an uninhabited space despite the indigenous groups that have been living in the area for centuries.
During the last military dictatorship, Livon-Grosman emigrated to Costa Rica. He went back to Argentina in 1983 after the return of the democratic government. He now lives in the Boston area where he teaches literature and film at Boston College.
Brittany Gravely is a multi-talented artist. She is a designer and a publicist for Harvard Film Archive, an artist organizer (AGX Film Collective), and a film festival programmer (the Sleeping Giant Film Festival).
Short
16mm | 2013 | 5 minutes | B&W | SILENT
CAST: Phineas, Tessa Day, Thatcher
Boston and Harvard, MA
An in-camera construction within two sets of active hunting sessions in two locations: the first "hunt" as a walk,
as a search within a single location. Within these movements, I was experimenting with a different way of experiencing
the shooting process.
- RT
Office Suite
16mm | 2007 | 14 minutes | B&W | SOUND
Appearing: Light, shadow, in-between.
Image and sound by Robert Todd
Help from Tessa Day, Melanie Maez, Inigo Cabo and Patrick
This officescape reflects the rhythms of my mind from daybreak-to-break: light journeys within and without my office, in 3 movements: InnerClose with Shadow and Steam (Andante Up, Down, and Sidelong), Exterior Fantasy from Dawn to Break (Allegro in moving colors), and Hallway (the End of that World: the pyre lit, it roars to life, rages, and fades...)
- RT
Matters of Life and Death
16mm | 2017 | 12 minutes | B&W | SILENT
CAST: Living beings, Memorial Byways
Entering the envelope of life
floating within its many layers.
So I was remaining physically active throughout each shot, performing an odd sort of dance,
knowing that, when the film would be projected, we would be catching glimpses of the forms posed before the camera,
the imagery populated by extreme fields of darks and lights. I was determined to travel (a walk around my block,
a crawl around a pool deck) while shooting, not realizing that the effect in projection afterward would have something
in common with the active sifting through small moments that can characterize memory. This kinship with the fleeting quality
of memory inspired the piece's title.
- RT
Exile
16mm | 2018 | 13 minutes | COLOR | SOUND
CAST: Boston Common man
Waltham Falls
Flaherty Park
Common Spaces,
veiled through distances of varying sorts,
Living within the constraints
of our fixed positions.
- RT
Shrine
16mm to HD | 2018 | 19 minutes | COLOR | SOUND
A shrine made by many in honor and memory of Lucas Wheeler. Finding a place in our hearts that meets him in nature.
Phantom Canyon 2006 | 10:00 | 35mm | black and white | stereo sound
Totem 1999 | 11:00 | 35mm | color | stereo sound
Night Hunter 2011 | 15:30 | 35mm to HD | color | stereo sound
Edge Of Alchemy2017 | 19:00 | 35mm to 4K | color |stereo sound
As Evening Falls excerpt, 2022 | 5:00| 4K | color | temporary sound
Post screening Q&A
Stacey Steers with Shira Segal
still: Night Hunter
Curve the Night Sky (5 min, 2021)
The Blackest Sea (9.5 min, 2016)
Kansas Atlas (18 min, 2019)
Border Control (4 min, 2021)
excerpt from OR119 (15 min, 2022)
The Falling Sky (9.5 min, 2017)
Still: The Falling Sky
Post screening Q&A: Peggy Ahwesh & Sarah Keller
Images of Flying and Falling (2001, 24 mins, B/W, 16mm cinemascope, sound.)
Close The Lid, Gently: A Home Document Scan (2012, 05:46 mins, Digital/Desktop Scanner), B/W & color, sound.)
Performance For Perfection 1200 (2014, 13:30 mins, B/W. Digital/Desktop Scanner, sound.)
In Glass Houses (2017, 8:22 mins, B/W. Desktop Scanner & Digital Video, Sound.)
Traces with Elikem (2018, 7 mins, B/W, Desktop Scanner & Digital Video, Sound.)
The W.I.P. Unpublished (2022 - , 5 mins, Color, Digital, Sound.)
Post screening Q&A: Ariana Gerstein & Film Critic Jake Mulligan
Introduction to Living in a Closed System (2006, 18 mins, color, 16mm, sound.)
Blood of the Earthworm (2008, 32 mins, 16mm, color, sound.)
Story of the Dreaming Water - Chapter One (2012, 1:50 mins, B/W. 16mm, Silent)
Story of the Dreaming Water - Chapter Two (2014, 2:30 mins, B/W. 16mm, Silent)
Prologue to the Tarot: Glenna (2017, 6:43 mins, Color, 16mm, Sound, Magical Approach)
Telekinesis Lesson 6 (2018, 6:40 mins, Color, 16mm, Sound, Magical Approach)
Post screening Q&A: Brittany Gravely, Ken Linehan & Film Critic Jake Mulligan
Unsubscribe #2:
All Eyes on the Silver Screen (2010, 2m45s, 16mm, color, silent)
Blanket Statement #1: Home is Where the Heart is (2012, 3m, 16mm, col., sound.)
Blanket Statement #2:All or Nothing (2013, 4m, 16mm, col., sound.)
Unsubscribe #1:Special Offer Inside (2010, 4m30s, 16mm, color, sound)
Unsubscribe #3:Glitch Envy (2010, 16mm, 5m45s, color, sound)
All Stars (2006, 24s, 16mm, color, sound)
Razzle Dazzle
(2014, 5m, 16mm, color, silent)
Point de Gaze
(2012, 5m, 16mm, col., silent.)
Hoarders Without Borders 1.0
(2018, 4m45s, 16mm, color, silent)
Wasteland No. 1:
Ardent, Verdant (2017, 4m30s, 16mm, color, silent)
Wasteland No. 2:
Hardy, Hearty (2019, 6m40s, 16mm, color, silent)
Wasteland No. 3:
Moons, Sons (2021, 5m, 16mm, color, silent)
Post screening Q&A: Jodie Mack & Sarah Keller
LIMEN, 12 minutes, 16mm, b/w sound. 2019
Razed by Wolves, 8 mins, 16mm, color/sound, 1998
The Passenger, 17 mins, 16mm, col/sd. 2007
WEST: What I know about her, 20 mins, 16mm, col/bw, optical sound, 2012
SAYOR, 10 mins,16mm, 2022
Fall, 2006, 5 mins, 35mm, col/sd, 2006
Post screening Q&A: Kathryn Ramey & Sarah Keller
Georges Sifianos - The Blind Writer
(10 mins, Color & BW, Greece, 2021)
Emilia Izquierdo - Insomnia
(4 mins, Color, UK, 2021)
Katarina Lillqvist - The Last Matador
(8 mins, Color, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain , 2021)
Christian Wittmoser & Zuniel Kim - The Train Driver
(6 mins, Color, Germany, 2021)
Hannah Hamalian - The Golden Age
(11 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Emmanuel Lefrant - Per Una Selva Oscura
(6 mins, Color, France, 2021)
Kate Lain - Five Miles Another (For Diana)
(6 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Ruth Hayes - Amulet
(2 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Curry Tan - It Is Not Spring, Until All Flower Blossom
(6 mins, Color, China, 2020)
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
still: Hannah Hamalian - The Golden Age
Charlotte Clermont - Lucina Annulata
(4 mins, Color, Canada, 2021)
Margaret Rorison- BALTIMORE
(22 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Sarah Seené - Disappearing silence
(2 mins, Color & B/W, Canada, 2021)
James Hollenbaugh - The Sticklet Weaver
(8 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Susan DeLeo - Island
(4 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Kathleen Rugh - Light’s Return
(3 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Sofia Theodore-Pierce - Other Tidal Effects
(7 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Liujiyi Zuo - Winter, Late Afternoon
(7 mins, Color, China/USA, 2021)
Charlotte Pryce - Of this Beguiling Membrane
(5 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Post screening Q&A with the filmakers
Still: Margaret Rorison- BALTIMORE
Curve the Night Sky (5 min, 2021)
The Blackest Sea (9.5 min, 2016)
Kansas Atlas (18 min, 2019)
Border Control (4 min, 2021)
excerpt from OR119 (5 min, 2022)
The Falling Sky (9.5 min, 2017)
Post screening Q&A: Peggy Ahwesh & Sarah Keller
Aptly described as a bricoleur, Peggy Ahwesh's work combines a variety of experimental, narrative and documentary genres, often with improvisation in performance, found footage, noise, the arcane, and a variety of obsolete, low-end technologies. Ahwesh's work is primarily an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the female subject. Ahwesh's practice insists on political and social topicality, handled with theoretical rigor, while at the same time using humor and the absurd in an open embrace of the inexplicable. The discourses of feminism and film theory are applied to traditionally female-gendered themes, home movies, family drama, relationships and confessions while turning the conventions of realism on end. Ahwesh came of age in the 1970s with S8 filmmaking, feminism, and the punk underground in Pittsburgh.
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Still: The Falling Sky
This Visiting Artist Lecture Series is presented by the Art & Art History Department and RPM Fest.
This is a rare opportunity to dive into Peggy Ahwesh's groundbreaking career in Moving Image Art and the Feminist Art Movement.
More info: The Visiting Artist Lecture Series invites several nationally and internationally renowned artists a semester to
visit the campus for a day.
These presentations give students a window into the complexity of arguments and approaches in the contemporary art world,
as well as giving them first-hand access to artists who have successfully made a life out of their creative practice.
Each artist comes to a studio art or art history class in the department to participate in a visual art critique and
conversation about art with the students, allowing for discourse from other viewpoints and perspectives.
These lectures are announced throughout the College of Liberal Arts and the wider university and are open
to the public.
The Visiting Artists Lecture Series generates aesthetic and cultural conversations,
both among the students and the faculty, that continually replenish and nourish the community of the department
and the wider university.
Still:The Deadman (1989, 16mm)
Curve the Night Sky (5 min, 2021)
The third body (8 min, 2008)
The Deadman (35 min, 16mm, 1989)
The Color of Love (10 min, 16mm, 1994 )
Bethlehem (8 min, 2008)
Post screening Q&A: Sarah Keller with Peggy Ahwesh
Still: The Color of Love
An instructional video essay by Peggy Ahwesh and Jackie Goss in collaboration with an ensemble of our friends.
The work is based in “quotation”- both quotations by Reich set to song (by composer Zach Layton)
and in conversation between Reich and a number of contemporary feminist thinkers including Butler,
Barad, Cixious and others.
We playfully examine the unsettled legacy of Reich and his surprisingly relevant dynamic with feminist thought.
Orgone was the life energy based on sex and positive expression that Reich claims to have discovered,
and here we grant him the honor of the next number on the periodic chart (OR119) for his discovery.
Post screening Q&A: Sarah Keller with Peggy Ahwesh
Meganelizabeth Diamond - Roses in Full Colour (2 mins, BW, Canada, 2021)
Erica Sheu - off (I don’t know when to stop) (2 mins, Color, Taiwan, 2021)
Kalpana Subramanian - Incantation (9 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Marko Tadic - Events Meant to Be Forgotten
(6 mins, Color, Croatia, 2021)
Zachary Finkelstein - Port Lands (12 mins, Color, Canada, 2021)
Anna Kipervaser - in ocula oculorum (12 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Eric Souther - Frequencies of Deep Time (7 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Youjin Moon - Telesto (13 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
Still: Youjin Moon - Telesto
Jodie Mack - Wasteland No. 3: Moons, Sons (5 mins, Color, 16mm, Silent, USA, 2021)
Kathryn Ramey - SAYOR (10 mins, Color, 16mm, USA, 2022)
Brittany Gravely & Ken Linehan - First Hypnotic Suggestion (10 mins, Double-Projection 16mm, Color & BW, USA, 2020)
Sara Sowell - Dada’s Daughter: Expanded Cinema Performance (30 mins, Color & BW, USA, 2021)
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
still: Sara Sowell - Dada’s Daughter: Expanded Cinema Performance
Bettina Hoffmann - Mechanics of Touch
(8 mins, Color, Canada, 2021)
Carl Elsaesser - Home When You Return
(30 mins, Color, USA, 2020)
Mathieu Samaille - Madame Jarrar
(4 mins, Color, Canada, 2021)
Raffaella Rosset - Room Film
(15 mins, Color, Brazil, 2021)
Alex Ingersoll - Asunder
(8 mins, Color, USA, 2020)
Yuula Benivolski - Tulips
(3 mins, BW, Canada, 2021)
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
Still: Carl Elsaesser - Home When You Return
Christopher Harris - Dreams Under Confinement
(3 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Hope Tucker - What Travelers Are Saying About Jornada del Muerto
(14 mins, Color, USA, 2020)
Kelly Sears - Phase II
(7 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
M. Farrell
- 3/4” U-Matic Remains
(16 mins, Color, USA, 2020)
Yanbin Zhao
- Train Song
(4 mins, BW, China/USA, 2021)
Silvia Turchin - Summer Light for Tula
(10 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Penny McCann
- Events in the Tunnel
(10 mins, Color, Canada, 2021)
Still: Yanbin Zhao
- Train Song
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
Starting from October 19th,
Harvard FAS CAMLab
will provide Open Studio tours of the interdisciplinary projects at the lab that integrate historical research, digital technologies, and multisensory media art.
The Open Studio tour will highlight Cave Dance, a project that harnesses the power of machine learning to recover lost Buddhist dances depicted in ancient Dunhuang Buddhist caves.
The visitors will have a rare opportunity to experience an immersive storytelling theater that transports modern audiences into different time-spaces of human civilizations.
Patricia R. Zimmermann is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Screen Studies in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, USA.
She is also Director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, a major international festival housed at Ithaca College.
She has held endowed chair appointments as the Shaw Foundation Professor of New Media in the School of Communication and
Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the Ida Beam Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature
at the University of Iowa.
She is the author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (Indiana, 1995), States of Emergency: Documentaries,
Wars, Democracies (Minnesota, 2000), Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places
(Palgrave, 2015, with Dale Hudson), and Open Spaces: Openings, Closings, and Thresholds of Independent Public Media
(U of St. Andrews Press, 2016). She is also coeditor of Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories
(California, 2008). She was coeditor with Erik Barnouw of The Flaherty: Four Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema
(Wide Angle, 1996). With Scott MacDonald, she wrote The Flaherty: Sixty Years in the Cause of Independent Film
(Indiana University Press, 2017). Her book with Helen De Michiel, Open Space New Media Documentary: A Toolkit for
Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2018) explores collaborative and participatory place-based international new media
projects. Her book Documentary Across Platforms : Reverse Engineering Media, Politics, and Place (Indiana, 2019)
explores the relationship between historiography, political engagements and digital art practices across platforms and modes.
Her new volume with Scott MacDonald is a companion book to The Flaherty entitled Flash Flaherty: Tales from a Film Seminar
(Indiana, 2021). With Dale Hudson, she is writing a new book on transnational new media projects as a follow up to Thinking
through Digital Media entitled Digital Habitats: Transnational New Media and the Environment (Indiana, forthcoming).
A Film by Pan Lu and Yu Araki
Editing: Bo Wang and Yu Araki
Built on home videos made between the 1960s and 1990s from ordinary families around East Asia, ANACHRONIC CHRONICLES shows the “anti-spectacle” power of the folk images that are full of anthropological and sociological messages.
This project was supported by ACC Cinema Fund 2020.
Total runtime: 62 mins
Post screening Q&A: Pan Lu, Yu Araki & Patty Zimmermann
Ethan Berry - A Small Lie
(4 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Luis Arnias - Terror Has No Shape
(10 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Francesca Svampa - Water and more water
(6 mins, BW, Spain, 2021)
Bretta C. Walker & Jean-Jacques Martinod
- Datura’s Aubade
(15 mins, Color & BW, USA, 2021)
Federica Foglia
- Autoritratto all’Inferno / Self-portrait in Hell
(4 mins, Color, Canada, 2021)
Sasha Waters
- Fragile
(9 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Lara Scherpinski
- Homecoming of the Asparagus Cutters
(15 mins, Color, Germany, 2021)
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
Still: Sasha Waters - Fragile
Guillaume Vallée
- ULTRADREAM
(2 mins, Color, Canada, 2021)
Paul Echeverria
- Selfie
(4 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Lei Lei
- A Bright Summer Diary
(30 mins, Color, China, 2021)
Jen Proctor
- One Door Closed
(4 mins, Color & BW, USA, 2021)
Ben Balcom - Looking Backward
(10 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Paul Razlaf - A ROADSIDE WITH A VIEW
(4 mins, Color, Germany, 2020)
Lucrecia Luz Passos
- Memory fragments on stereo sound and 24FPS
(15 mins, Color & BW, Brazil, 2021)
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
Still: Lei Lei
- A Bright Summer Diary
Ellen Mueller
- Leisure Tests
(13 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Yannick Mosimann - Sunspots
(9 mins, Color, Switzerland, 2021)
Dominic Angerame - Prometheus
(4 mins, BW, USA, 2021)
Karel Doing - A Perfect Storm
(3 mins, Color, UK, 2021)
Mike Rollo - P L U M E
(7 mins, Color, USA, 2021)
Emma Roufs
- Four seasons bouquet
(3 mins, BW, Canada, 2021)
Giuseppe Boccassini
- Lunar Studies
(15 mins, Color, Germany, 2021)
Post screening Q&A with the filmmakers
Still: Karel Doing - A Perfect Storm
When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, he had a spiritual companion with him. A Chinese painter named Liu Guosong (b. 1932) collaged Armstrong into his abstract moonscape. The astronaut became the painter’s lunar avatar. The painter thus vicariously landed on the moon, gazing at the mother earth on the horizon. What did he see?
Produced by Harvard CAMLab, the art film To the Moon reinterprets the artistic and cognitive journey of a contemporary ink painter Liu Kuo-sung (b. 1932). The painter had grown up in wartime China, lost his father on the battlefield in 1938, spent his childhood in poverty and migration. He enrolled in a school for military orphans and relocated to Taiwan where he became an art student. In the 1960s, he found his stride in his abstract experiments and reinvented the medium of traditional ink painting. Apollo’s moonlanding marked the moment of his artistic leap of faith. Moonscape became his painterly universe where he was at once forlorn and at home, deprived yet transcendent. His ultimate dream was to fill the cold and dark cosmos with the warmth and brightness of a home. Having been deprived of household comfort since childhood, and separated from his mother for decades, he now sought universal warmth for all mankind.
Post screening Q&A with CAMLab
RPM Fest screening series returns to Brattle Theatre on November 2nd at 8PM and presents
Stacey Steers - Night Reels.
Stacey Steers’ films are created from thousands of handmade works on paper, whether collages or individually-painted drawings.
Her process is both labor-intensive and intuitive. She spends several years creating artwork for each film, typically eight distinct,
unique images for every second of animation. Over time, these images become a formal record of an ongoing and obsessive engagement with
an original idea, through all its transformations.
Steers’ animated short films have screened widely throughout the U.S. and abroad, and have received numerous awards. Her films have been included in the Sundance FF, Telluride FF, New Directors New Films (New York), Rotterdam IFF, Locarno IFF and screened at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), and MoMA.
Stacey Steers is known for her process-driven, labor-intensive animated films composed of thousands of handmade works on paper. Her recent work employs images appropriated from early cinematic sources, from which she constructs original, experimental narratives.
Recently Steers has expanded her work to include collaborative installations that join invented, three-dimensional production elements with film loops, creating a new context for experiencing her films. Steers’ installation work has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, (Washington, D.C.), the Denver Art Museum, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, among other venues and has been collected widely.
Stacey Steers is a recipient of major grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital and the American Film Institute. She was the focus of a major retrospective at the 2015 Annecy Festival of Animation in Annecy, France and received the Brakhage Vision Award at the 2012 Denver IFF. Steers is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.
Phantom Canyon
10:00 B&W, stereo sound, 35mm, 2006
Meticulous handmade collages explore a woman’s fantastical journey through
memories. Elements from 18th and 19th century engravings are combined with figures
from Edward Muybridge’s Human and Animal locomotion, published in 1887.
Music and
sound by Bruce Odland.
RPM Fest screening series returns to Brattle Theatre on November 2nd at 8PM and presents
Stacey Steers - Night Reels.
Stacey Steers’ films are created from thousands of handmade works on paper, whether collages or individually-painted drawings.
Her process is both labor-intensive and intuitive. She spends several years creating artwork for each film, typically eight distinct,
unique images for every second of animation. Over time, these images become a formal record of an ongoing and obsessive engagement with
an original idea, through all its transformations.
Steers’ animated short films have screened widely throughout the U.S. and abroad, and have received numerous awards. Her films have been included in the Sundance FF, Telluride FF, New Directors New Films (New York), Rotterdam IFF, Locarno IFF and screened at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), and MoMA.
Stacey Steers is known for her process-driven, labor-intensive animated films composed of thousands of handmade works on paper. Her recent work employs images appropriated from early cinematic sources, from which she constructs original, experimental narratives.
Recently Steers has expanded her work to include collaborative installations that join invented, three-dimensional production elements with film loops, creating a new context for experiencing her films. Steers’ installation work has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, (Washington, D.C.), the Denver Art Museum, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, among other venues and has been collected widely.
Stacey Steers is a recipient of major grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital and the American Film Institute. She was the focus of a major retrospective at the 2015 Annecy Festival of Animation in Annecy, France and received the Brakhage Vision Award at the 2012 Denver IFF. Steers is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.
Phantom Canyon
10:00 B&W, stereo sound, 35mm, 2006
Meticulous handmade collages explore a woman’s fantastical journey through
memories. Elements from 18th and 19th century engravings are combined with figures
from Edward Muybridge’s Human and Animal locomotion, published in 1887.
Music and
sound by Bruce Odland.
Totem
11:00, color, stereo sound, 35mm to HD, 1999
A stream of consciousness exploration of our evolving relationship to the animal
world. Hand drawn on paper.
Music and sound by Bruce Odland.
Night Hunter:
16:00 color, stereo sound, 35mm to HD, 2011
Carefully crafted from handmade collages and incorporating images of Lillian Gish
taken from silent-era live-action cinema, Night Hunter summons a disquieting
dreamscape drawn from allegory, myth, and archetype to create an evocation of the
uncanny and an exploration of the creative process.
Music and sound by Larry
Polansky.
Edge of Alchemy
19:00 color, stereo sound, 35mm to 4K, 2017
In this handmade film, Mary Pickford and Janet Gaynor are seamlessly lifted from their
early silent features and cast into a surreal epic with an upending of the Frankenstein
story and an undercurrent of hive collapse. Edge of Alchemy is the third film in a trilogy
examining women’s inner worlds.
Music: Lech Jankowski (Brothers Quay).
As Evening Falls
excerpt, 5:00 color, temporary sound, 2022
Lillian Gish is adrift in the cosmos in this work-in-progress excerpt from a new film.
.
Post screening Q&A
Stacey Steers & Shira Segal
Shira Segal is a documentary, avant-garde, and experimental film scholar who holds a Ph.D.
in Film and Media Studies and a minor in American Studies from Indiana University and a Master's
in Cultural Memory from the University of London. Her interdisciplinary approach intersects film history,
theory, and practice with contemporary image-making practices, gender studies, and memory studies across her
research and teaching.
Images of Flying and Falling- (2001, 24 mins, B/W, 16mm cinemascope, sound.)
Close The Lid, Gently: A Home Document Scan (2012, 05:46 mins, Digital/Desktop Scanner), B/W & color, sound.)
Performance For Perfection 1200 (2014, 13:30 mins, B/W. Digital/Desktop Scanner, sound.)
In Glass Houses (2017, 8:22 mins, B/W. Desktop Scanner & Digital Video, Sound.)
Traces with Elikem (2018, 7 mins, B/W, Desktop Scanner & Digital Video, Sound.)
The W.I.P. Unpublished (2022 - , 5 mins, Color, Digital, Sound.)
Post screening Q&A: Ariana Gerstein & Film Critic Jake Mulligan
RPM Fest screening series returns to Brattle Theatre on September 25th at 2PM and presents Ariana Gerstein - Still/Distill, a collection of six short films, including a 16mm cinemascope piece Images of Flying and Falling, four shorts from the scanner series, and an excerpt of her most recent unpublished work.
Ariana Gerstein works in experimental and experimental documentary forms. This program offers an opportunity to see her work together and highlights her scanner series, which used an old document scanner to capture images. The scanning motions are precise, unlike popular computerized motion capture methods. The performance in front of/on top of the scanner manifests in-between pauses, frozen gestures, and traces that were left behind. This series strikes an exquisite chiaroscuro experience.
Reflecting on the program Ariana Gerstein notes, "All of these projects involve working with "the still", its use in the construction of cinematic time, the tension between this artificial creation and lived experience. People vanish, but they sometimes leave collectable traces. When those meager traces are used to redraw what is lost, a new understanding emerges. About them or about us? The effort to make and consume, and the technology used, is all we have."
Her films have been screened and awarded prizes at festivals worldwide including International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, European Media Arts Festival in Germany, Media City in Canada, New York Film Festival, SXSW in Texas. She has presented at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, San Francisco Cinematheque, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Pacific Film Archives in Berkley, and other locations. Her work has been awarded grants by New York Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship.
Tickets for Still/Distill, with Ariana Gerstein in-person for post screening Q & A, can be purchased through the Brattle Theatre website and at the box office.
For more information: Ariana Gerstein
Images of Flying and Falling
(Sound, B/W, Combination 16mm cinemascope, 24 minutes, 2001) Memory and its reconstruction, fleeting and misleading. A film about loss.
Close The Lid, Gently: A Home Document Scan
Sound, B/W and Color, digital (desktop scanner), 05:46, 2012
This is a piece about home and a particular image making process using equipment once common in a home office.
Soundtrack is cut up from instructional accompaniment - for "proper use" of scanner.
Performance For Perfection 1200
Sound, B/W, (desktop scanner), 13:30, 2014
The Perfection 1200 is a 14 + year old photo document scanner. It renders an image over time, from right to left, not like the camera’s instant frame. As the scanner arm moves beneath the glass surface, it emits it’s own light which bounces off of the subject and returns information onto it’s CCDs.
One scan, depending on resolution used, can take 10 to 20 seconds or more. As the actor performs for the scanner,
he does so in near silence, struggling with each isolated pose and breath for the duration.
Fixed are the traces of the movements of life. The animation process rebuilds and unfixes the construction during play,
recombined with breath and sound. Through this artificial deconstruction and reconstruction process,
there is a reflection of life and art, deeply felt. Don Boros’s double speaks with his voice, about Beckett, acting, of “living truthfully, under imaginary circumstances '.
In Glass Houses
Sound, B/W, (desktop scanner and digital video), 08:22, 2017
An interview is conducted exploring methods used to facilitate a real research project whose aim it is to capture and analyze human micro-expressions for use by a variety of industries (including lie detection and entertainment/animation).
But the particular research or the use of human subjects is really just a point of departure. This film takes a moment to touch on our use of technology and vice versa.
The images in the film are created in three ways; 1. by scanning the actor and two other support figures interacting with the scanner glass and each other, one frame at a time 2. By filming the actor revealed by the light of the scanner as he is being scanned. (Each light pass represents a frame of the reanimated scanner image) 3. through line drawings and smears which trace or mark points of contact between the actor and the scanner glass
.
Traces with Elikem
Sound, B/W, (desktop scanner, digital video), 07:00, 2018
Traces performed and captured by scanner and monitor surfaces. Other surfaces include paper and film.
Light reflects and passes through, layers slide past and sometimes meet, punctuated by sounds vibrating and percussive.
With the participation of
Samuel Elikem Kwame Nyamuame, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Dance
Departments of Music, Theater (Dance) & Africana Studies
The W.I.P. Unpublished (2022 - , 5 mins, Color, Digital, Sound.)
from an ongoing experimental documentary project interacting with the unpublished manuscript left by the filmmaker's Grandfather.
Total run time : about 63 minutes
Introduction to Living in a Closed System (2001, 18 mins, color, 16mm, sound.)
Blood of the Earthworm (2006, 32 mins, 16mm, color, sound.)
Story of the Dreaming Water - Chapter One
(2012, 1:50 mins, B/W. 16mm, Silent)
Story of the Dreaming Water - Chapter Two
(2014, 2:30 mins, B/W. 16mm, Silent)
Astrology (2018) (2018, 2:43 mins, B&W, 16mm, Silent)
Prologue to the Tarot: Glenna (2018, 6:43 mins, Color, 16mm, Sound, Magical Approach)
Telekinesis Lesson 6 (2018, 6:40 mins, Color, 16mm, Sound, Magical Approach)
Post screening Q&A: Brittany Gravely, Ken Linehan & Film Critic Jake Mulligan
Brittany Gravely is a multi-talented artist. She is a designer and a publicist for Harvard Film Archive, an artist organizer (AGX Film Collective), and a film festival programmer (the Sleeping Giant Film Festival).
RPM screening series will focus on her cinematic practice. Brittany Gravely employs experimental hand-processing techniques to transform the educational and found footage, also, uses the time-consuming optical printer to over-layer the images to create stunning superimpositions.
Vignettes of Time is a portal to connect with the long-lasting experimental film history. Her work has a wide range of genre bending and creative output, from mid-longform psych-horror in her earlier career to expanded cinema performance, where she collaborates with artist and musician Ken Linehan.
The Brattle Theatre and RPM Fest co-present six of her films, the earliest piece, Introduction to Living in a Closed System, was produced as her MFA thesis. The recent piece titled Telekinesis Lesson 6 is created by the duo, Magical Approach, which Ken Linehan and Brittany Gravely formed in 2018.
Gravely's films have screened internationally, ranging from New York Film Festival, New York Underground,CROSSROADS, Images Film Festival, Antimatter , Chicago Underground, Toronto International Film Festival, to Berlin's Fracto. Notable Venues also include ICA Boston, RISD Museum, MIT, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Mexico City's Estudios Churobusco, Kino Palais in Buenos Aires and more.
Magical Approach | Ken Linehan is a sound and video artist living and working in Providence, RI. Linehan projects original 16mm films that explore the hypnotic divination of collective dream space. Films are accompanied by live manipulated sound scores.
Jake Mulligan is the film section editor and critic for DigBoston, a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, and has led film education courses at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, including “Defining Screwball Comedy” in 2019 and “Roger Corman, Producer” in 2020. His film criticism has also been published in The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, and Filmmaker Magazine.
Introduction to Living in a Closed System (2001)
A fractured educational film based on the idea of a biospheric utopia: a contained, self-sustaining, controlled environment which survives through dynamic and interconnected systems. The disparate elements variously unite or fall apart as all visions, fears and dreams of this retrospective future space attempt to operate within the ideal of a unified, efficient system.
Blood of the Earthworm (2006)
An anti-climactic barrage of both original footage and extractions from horror, science fiction, and educational films, all of which shed a flickering light on contemporary maladies of civilization. The natural course of evolution has been interrupted producing machine-like people who are alienated, destructive, dissatisfied, lifeless. They have been inscribed in the dull job of maintaining the unsustainable, economic system they created.
Story of the Dreaming Water - Chapter One
Shapes developing from a primordial chemistry...
Story of the Dreaming Water - Chapter Two
Maybe there was an opening, and they wandered through...
Astrology
An ancient artifact, an alchemical algorithm, astrological archaeology.
PROLOGUE TO THE TAROT: GLENNA
Directed by Brittany Gravely, Ken Linehan
Described by the filmmakers as a “cinematic tarot card”, Brittany Gravely and Ken Linehan’s twice-exposed Prologue to the Tarot: Glenna is a shimmering portrait of the titular Glenna, accompanied by drapes and opulent crystals worthy of Kenneth Anger or Josef von Sternberg.
TELEKINESIS LESSON 6
Directed by Brittany Gravely, Ken Linehan
Kinetic performances in the intimate realms of ritual, ceremony, art and play – where the natural and supernatural intersect.
Unsubscribe #2:
All Eyes on the Silver Screen (2010, 2m45s, 16mm, color, silent)
Blanket Statement #1: Home is Where the Heart is (2012, 3m, 16mm, col., sound.)
Blanket Statement #2:All or Nothing (2013, 4m, 16mm, col., sound.)
Unsubscribe #1:Special Offer Inside (2010, 4m30s, 16mm, color, sound)
Unsubscribe #3:Glitch Envy (2010, 16mm, 5m45s, color, sound)
All Stars (2006, 24s, 16mm, color, sound)
Razzle Dazzle
(2014, 5m, 16mm, color, silent)
Point de Gaze
(2012, 5m, 16mm, col., silent.)
Hoarders Without Borders 1.0
(2018, 4m45s, 16mm, color, silent)
Wasteland No. 1:
Ardent, Verdant (2017, 4m30s, 16mm, color, silent)
Wasteland No. 2:
Hardy, Hearty (2019, 6m40s, 16mm, color, silent)
Wasteland No. 3:
Moons, Sons (2021, 5m, 16mm, color, silent)
Post screening Q&A: Jodie Mack & Sarah Keller
The monthly RPM screening series continues. The Brattle Theatre and RPM co-present a solo film program of Jodie Mack, Cabinet of Curiosities. Just like those wonder rooms, Jodie Mack's work creates a sense of spectacle at a speed of 24 frames per second.
This program highlights her 20 years filmmaking praxis as an experimental animator. Most works will be shown in their original format 16mm (sound and silent).
Her handmade experimental animations shine the light on the museum collections, everyday objects and abandoned electric circuit boards.
The kinetic film celebrates and transforms the colors, images and patterns, and also raises the questions of the ownership and the labor behind those ubiquitous objects.
Mack's 16mm films have screened at a variety of venues including the Locarno Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the Jeonju International Film Festival, and the Viennale. She has presented solo programs at the 25FPS Festival, Anthology Film Archives, BFI London Film Festival, Harvard Film Archive, National Gallery of Art, REDCAT, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, and Wexner Center for the Arts among others. Her work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Cinema Scope, The New York Times, and Senses of Cinema. She was the 2017/18 Roberta and David Logie/Film Study Center Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a 2018/19 Fellow at the Film Study Center Fellow at Harvard University. She was a 2019 Artist In Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts and a 2021 MacDowell Fellow. She is an Associate Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College.
For more info please visit Jodie Mack .
Post screening Q&A: Jodie Mack & Sarah Keller
Sarah Keller is Associate Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on experimental forms and feminist issues in cinema. She co-edited the collection Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, and in her book Maya Deren: Incomplete Control she examines the role of unfinished work, focusing on Deren's oeuvre. Most recently, she published her book Anxious Cinephilia (2020), which centers on the intertwined role of love and anxiety in encounters with cinema, and she has just completed a book, titled Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame, on the career of experimental filmmaker and artist Barbara Hammer (Wayne State University Press 2021).
Unsubscribe #2: All Eyes on the Silver Screen
(2010, 2m45s, 16mm, color, silent)
Everybody's watching...
Blanket Statement #1: Home is Where the Heart is
(2012, 3m, 16mm, col., sound.)
Discordant dysfunction down to the nitty griddy.
Blanket Statement #2: All or Nothing
(2013, 4m, 16mm, col., sound.)
A battle of extreme extremes.
Unsubscribe #1: Special Offer Inside
(2010, 4m30s, 16mm, color, sound)
A flurry of security envelopes casts spells on the screen - cello by Christy LeMaster and Traci Jo Partin
Unsubscribe #3: Glitch Envy
(2010, 16mm, 5m45s, color, sound)
Junk mail detritus forms a handicraft salute to new media.
All Stars
(2006, 24s, 16mm, color, sound)
A bite-sized star punch exercise in direct animation with colored acetate.
Razzle Dazzle
(2014, 5m, 16mm, color, silent)
Tacky threads luminesce at a firefly’s pace, twinkling through remnants of chintzy opulence and gaudy glamour prestissimo brilliante.
Point de Gaze
(2012, 5m, 16mm, col., silent.)
Named after a type of Belgian lace, this fabric flicker film investigates intricate illusion and optical arrest.
Hoarders Without Borders 1.0
(2018, 4m45s, 16mm, color, silent)
Featuring crystallized magic markers and the kidney stone of a horse, the generously-curated mineral collection of Mary Johnson comes to life in a manual labor of love for the process of archival procedure.
Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant
(2017, 4m30s, 16mm, color, silent)
A eulogy for wasted potential sends the out of date to the out of body: trash to treasure. An appetite for destruction charts the product life cycle, interrupting the horizon through an intersection of perspectives.
Wasteland No. 2: Hardy, Hearty
(2019, 6m40s, 16mm, color, silent)
Garden ghosts flirt with the weeds of spring, cycling matter[s] and lives and deaths.
From Felix Salten’s Bambi, chapter on Winter:
"Can it be true," said the first leaf, "can it really be true, that others come to take our places when we're gone and after them still others, and more and more?" "It really is true," whispered the second leaf. "We can't even begin to imagine it, it's beyond our powers." "It makes me very sad," added the first leaf. They were very silent a while."
Wasteland No. 3: Moons, Sons
(2021, 5m, 16mm, color, silent)
A world tender and unhatched, Future chaos in repose, in slumber. Yggdrasil. Microcosmos. Batter in a bowl. A living wreath. Oleander hyacinth blow away dandelion, particles of an interplanetary lullaby.
Dedicated to the one I love.
Desiccated attic must
momento mori in grace engraved.
With the loss of the imaginary and the real, I am unspeakable
as one remembers I once was this...
before myself, and then nothing, before I could touch the envelope that is right before me, translucent,
When I could cry but could not answer.
- Darcy Shreve
LIMEN, 12 minutes, 16mm, b/w sound. 2019
Razed by Wolves, 8 mins, 16mm, color/sound, 1998
The Passenger, 17 mins, 16mm, col/sd. 2007
Story of Sarah, 7 mins, 16mm, color/sound, 1993/1997
WEST: What I know about her, 20 mins, 16mm, col/bw, optical sound, 2012
Fall, 2006, 5 mins, 35mm, col/sd, 2006
Post screening Q&A: Kathryn Ramey & Sarah Keller
RPM and The Brattle Theatre co-present a solo screening program of Kathryn Ramey's work, titled WHITE WOMEN ARE A CURSE AGAINST THEIR SEX : films from 30 years of making against the cisheteropatriarchy by a person living with a uterus.
In the upcoming watershed moment of taking away women's rights by the United States Supreme Court decision, the program features Kathryn Ramey's six pieces ranging from the earliest piece, Story of Sarah, made in 1993 to Limen, a piece from 2019.
The program highlights her filmmaking praxis as a resistance to the collusion of white college educated women in the racist transphobic ableist patriarchy and condemn Amerikkka in the 21st century. Kathryn Ramey defines/(reminds us) what's the meaning of a creative person living with a uterus. Her films are known for hand processing and multiple exposure through painstakingly optical printing. Most works will be shown in their original format 16mm or 35mm.
Kathryn Ramey is a filmmaker and anthropologist whose work operates at the intersection of experimental film processes and ethnographic research. She is a recent recipient of Guggenheim fellow, LEF Foundation fellow and Creative Capital grantee.
For more info please visit rameyfilms.
Post screening Q&A: Kathryn Ramey & Sarah Keller
Sarah Keller is Associate Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on experimental forms and feminist issues in cinema. She co-edited the collection Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, and in her book Maya Deren: Incomplete Control she examines the role of unfinished work, focusing on Deren's oeuvre. Most recently, she published her book Anxious Cinephilia (2020), which centers on the intertwined role of love and anxiety in encounters with cinema, and she has just completed a book, titled Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame, on the career of experimental filmmaker and artist Barbara Hammer (Wayne State University Press 2021).
Poster Drawing by Leela Corman
For more info please visit Leela Corman.
LIMEN
12 minutes, 16mm, bw sd. 2019
threshold. between two states of being.
the boundary of perception.
long synopsis or whatever:
I'm not a fan of over explaining lyrical films.
Mostly because the reason I make films without words (which isn't very often) is because words fail me.
This is a horror film. If I must say what it is about, it is trying to capture the feeling of slipping into a deep depression and the long road out.
The title, LIMEN, comes from the word liminality and was inspired by the work on rites of passage by anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner who characterized the liminal phase as being "betwixt and between" neither what one was before, nor what was is to become after the transition is complete.
This footage was shot while I was emerging from a very serious post-partum depression episode and was edited three years later after the suicide of a close friend and colleague. It is a primal scream.
-- KR
Razed by Wolves
1998 color/sound 16mm 8 mins
A fairy tale princess transported into an urban landscape with a talking doll serving as interlocutor.
the passenger
17mins, 16mm, col/sd. 2007
With whispered voice-over, text on screen, singing and kinesic anthropologists Jacques Van Flack and Ray Birdwhistell intoning analysis, the passenger is a hand-processed multi-vocal film meditation on madness, motherhood, psychoanalysis and the possibility of escaping one’s fate.
The passenger is a personal, experimental, 16mm film that addresses my tenuous relationship with my mentally ill mother and my reservations about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood.
- KR
Story of Sarah
1993 color/sound 16mm 7 mins
Originally on super-8 and filmmed at The Evergreen State College in Olympia WA this film posits biblical narrative as personal history with women being pitted against each other and without bodily autonomy. It was optically reprinted on 16mm in 1997.
WEST: What I know about her
16mm, col/bw, optical sound, 20 mins, 2012
WEST: What I know about her is an experimental documentary about Elizabeth Crandall Perry: adventurer, midwife and distant ancestor to the filmmaker. Ramey and her then 5-yr old son, explore the path Perry took across the American West and film side-by-side through monuments to American expansionism until they arrive at the family farm in Oregon.
Fall
2006, 5 mins, 35mm, col/sd, 2006
,
From the tale of Icarus to Plato's cave analogy and through the fragile materiality of hand processed 35mm film, Fall relates the pain of knowledge acquisition as a girl becomes a woman and one turns into two.
