Saturday @ 6 PM The Past Is In Front Of You
TRT 81:55 min.
The Future is Behind You - Abigail Child   2005             20:00
The Future Is Behind You creates a fictional story composed from an anonymous family archive from 1930’s Europe, reconstructed to emphasize gender acculturation in two sisters who play, race, fight, kiss and grow up together under a shadow of oncoming history. There are at least three levels in the material: 1) home movies in which a family from 1930s Germany near the Swiss border poses for the camera, preternaturally happy. Unusually, the mother is main cinematographer; 2) the historical moment which remains as text trace, undermining the image and serving as covert motive for the action; 3) the development of gender identities—the innocent freedom of the elder transformed into socially bruised ‘bride,’ the irrepressibility of the younger moving from tomboy to awkward, diffident adult. At once biography & fiction, history & psychology, The Future Is Behind You excavates gestures to explore the speculative seduction of narrative; it seeks a bridge between private & public histories.

Abigail Child‘s films and videos always contain an element of humor, liveliness and complex montage. The Future Is Behind You premiered in New York Film Festival and the Rotterdam Festival, won first prize at Black Maria and the International Critic’s Prize atOberhausen (2005).
In Whose Name? - Nandini Sikand   2004             11:00
In Whose Name? is a filmic essay which explores the co-opting of icons by political agendas. This experimental short is told through personal narrative, Super 8mm home movies, Bollywood film and comic book art.

Born and raised in New Delhi, Nandini Sikand is an independent filmmaker and freelance televison producer based in New York City. Her films include The Bhangra Wrap (1995, distributed by NAATA), Don’t Fence Me In (1998, distributed by Women Make Movies) and Amazonia (2001, distributed by Women Make Movies) and In Whose Name? (2004) All her films have won awards and have screened at numerous domestic and international film festivals. Nandini has been awarded grants for her films from The Jerome Foundation (1997-98) and New York State Council on the Arts (2001-02). She also produced the documentary, Mahasweta Devi: Witness, Advocate, Writer (2001). She is on the board of directors of Women Make Movies (www.wmm.com), a non-profit feminist, media distribution organization. In television, she has worked on projects for Channel Four: UK, Rainbow Programming, Ovation: the Arts Network, HBO, Oxygen Media and The History Channel. 

Nandini is an Indian Classical dancer and is co-founder and co-director of the Trinayan Collective (www.trinayan.org). She is also pursuing a PhD at in Cultural Anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY and has taught courses on production and film theory at Hunter College, CUNY and .Swarthmore College, PA.
Untitled (Rambo) - Rä di Martino 2003               3:00
Rambo, the character, is embroiled in a series of failed attempts to stop all war. The American icon becomes a parody of himself when seen in the context of silent cinema, his words replaced by affected inter-titles and his actions underscored by a clunky and obsessive piano piece. Famous world-wide, the original expensive production is completely destabilized by using little devices. Extrapolating bits of sequences from the original Rambo II film and then re-editing and manipulating them so that everything becomes completely different.

Rä di Martino was born in Rome in 1975 and she lived in London since 1997 where she graduated with an MFA at the Slade School of Art. In 2004 she moved to New York with a research grant award at Columbia University.

Candy Coated Humvee - Drew Waters 2005              1:00
Oh Dude - Drew Waters 2005            1:00

Through the creation of a single iconic repetitive image Candy Coated Humvee displays the intersection between official political spin and the realities of a failing war on terror. Eternal flames in an eternal war.

Oh Dude breaks with the heroic or benevolent war narrative that commonly frames images from Iraq as they are presented to a mainstream Television audience. In displaying a segment of footage deemed too explicit or ambiguous for the daily news narrative, a clearer perception arises, a closer view of the realities of technological warfare.

Drew Waters is an Australian digital and video installation artist residing in Brooklyn, NY. As well as creating works of art he is a freelance video editor at NBC Studios in New York.
Rapture - Mathieu Borysevicz and Jean-Christian Bourcart   2005                13:00

This story spawns from the contested ground within our conscience. Using metaphorRapturedescribes the sadistic and per-verse impulses in our capitalistic culture. Denial, compliance, erasure, and victimization are shown as characters in a condition ofa post 9-11 America.

Rapture is the first collaborative project between Mathieu Borysevicz and Jean-Christian Bourcart. Mathieu is a Brooklyn based artist, filmmaker, and critic who exhibited his work at the ICA London, the Bauhaus in Dessau, The Beijing Art Museum, etc. He has received awards from the Asian Cultural Council, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Nebraska Council of the Arts. Jean-Christian Bourcart, a photographer and filmmaker, has been living and working in New York since 1997. As a photographer, Bourcart has been the recipient of the Prix Gilles Dusein, Paris, and The World Press Award, Amsterdam. His films have been awarded numerous prizes including the Prix du Jury, Belfort Festival, and the Prix d'Interpretation Masculine, Annecy Festival.
60 Explosions - Jennifer Matotek   2004                1:20
In a world of many explosions, here are just 60.

Jennifer Matotek is an emerging curator, interdisciplinary artist, and videomaker whose work has been shown across North America in galleries and film and video festivals such as the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the New York Underground Film Festival, and Cinematexas.
Architectural Response to War - Robert Creighton 2003               8:04
This discovery of space, of materials worn by elements, a structure in response to forces that did not arrive. The bomb represents the end of everything. The shelter is impotent architecture that proposes a solution which does not address the symbolic nature of the bomb. It becomes the embodiment of the war with no solution. Images by Robert Creighton.
Sound by Andrew Creighton.

Robert Creighton received his BA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and worked as an exhibit designer for six years. His background includes widely varying exhibit, product, and media design projects. He is currently freelancing on various media projects and recently finished a Masters degree in Media Studies at The New School in New York. As part of a larger investigation into movement and the future of transportation, his thesis project explored the absence of motion in cars.
untitled. (an animation suite) - John Richey 2004             3:21
A collection of generic figures vacantly ‘practice’ choreographies of fear. Stark white bodies with slow and deliberate movements crouch and shield their heads, dive for cover, or roll across screen all against an ominous black void. Multiple figures collide/embrace a billowing white form. A simple and repetitive ‘I’m safe’ is implied in order to simultaneously question/re-enforce notions of safety and stability. A figure enters from the left, approaches a pile of something, slowly digs in, and deliberately buries his head inside.

John Richey is a cross-disciplinary artist who creates intimate works about the paradoxical situations of fear and control. He received a BFA from The University of Arizona in 2001 and a MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2004. His animations have been exhibited nationally and internationally and were mentioned in the “Best of 2004” issue of ARTFORUM International. Richey currently resides in Brooklyn, NY and is the Head Preparator at Greene Naftali Gallery.

Dante Notebook #13 "The Forest of Suicides" - Jason Boughton 2005    20:17
Where is Hell? How does one get to Hell? Who goes there, and what do they do in Hell? A meditation on mass murder and its reconstruction, in the form of an instructional film on forgetting; a shortcut to the second ring of Hell, where the violent are condemned to run forever though a forest of their suffering fellow murderers. An adaptation of the 13th canto of the Inferno for science television.

Jason Boughton lives and works in Brooklyn.