From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Jan 10 2008 - 13:21:37 PST
Hey Dara,
I curated a show at Ocularis a few years back called The Imagination of
Disaster that includes a number of titles that might be relevant to your
class.
Best,
Thomas
--- The Imagination of Disaster "The environment was increasingly unstable..." For Susan Sontag, the imagination of disaster was all about sci-fi movies and ŗthe peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, making a mess.˛ No stranger to danger, Ocularis melts down those metaphors with a rubble-rousing program of film and video. From Kevin Eversonšs split screen tale of love and loss at the hands of the elements, to Bobby Abatešs pixilated stream of pornographic catastrophe, these experiments are all too relevant in a new age of American anxiety, cold rags to our hurricane fevers. Work to be screened: Searching Ruins on Broadway, Galveston, For Dead Bodies Edison Manufacturing Company, 35mm, 1900, 52 seconds "At the first news of the disaster by cyclone and tidal wave that devastated Galveston on Saturday, Sept. 8th, 1900, we equipped a party of photographers and sent them by special train to the scene of the ruins. Arriving at the scene of desolation shortly after the storm had swept over that city, our party succeeded, at the risk of life and limb, in taking about a thousand feet of moving pictures. In spite of the fact that Galveston was under martial law and that the photographers were shot down at sight by the excited police guards, a very wide range of subject has been secured. The series, taken as a whole, will give the entire world a definite idea of the terrible disaster, unequaled since the Johnstown flood of 1889...These films are now drawing immense crowds at Eden Musee and Proctor's vaudeville houses in New York City. Procure these films and increase the receipts of your exhibitions. This great disaster which has startled the entire world, has made an indelible impression on the minds of the public, and everyone will be interested in seeing authentic moving pictures of a representative American city almost entirely wiped out by the combined power of water and wind...ours are positively the only animated picture films secured while the city of Galveston was in a state of chaos." - Edison Film Catalog From Pompeii to Xenia Kevin Everson, 16mm, 2003, 4 min "Some wept for themselves, others, for their relations." One volcano. One tornado. Two cities and two sets of lovers. A narrative of bereavement that cuts across time, latitudes, and longitudes. Burn Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolle, 35mm on video, 2001, 10 min "Articulates a fascination with, and symbolism of, fire. A sleeping man dreams of an uninhabited urban landscape as flames engulf his bed; nearby, a woman is consumed by flames as she sits in a stuffed armchair, watching the man. A man enters a bathroom, where his image in the mirror burns while he washes and brushes his teeth, unscathed. A man and woman argue in a room where small fires begin to consume their clothing and their surroundings. As their argument becomes more violent, the entire house they are in collapses into a raging flame." - RR/PJ American Dreams #3 Moira Tierney, 16mm, 2002, 5 min "What happens when the smoke clears? One of the most remarkable sights was the mass movement of people, on foot, along highways usually reserved for motorized traffic. The Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, as well as the FDR Drive, which runs along the East River from lower to upper Manhattan, became human rivers with an unhurried but steady flow and no end in sight." - MT Come Softly Bobby Abate, video, 1999, 11 min Part of the Real Video Trilogy "Crafted from softly pixilated QuickTime, NetMeeting sessions, emotive vintage pop, airplane disaster footage, online porn, streaming Hollywood trailers, and the curious hypnotic qualities of taping off computer monitors, Bobby Abate's internet-sex-n-death thrillogy explores new anxieties made possible by technology, and the profoundly intimate places that tiny images and lonely piano chords burrow deep within the soul. Real Videos is like a tender and tumultuous visual virus, created to infect a world where humans live through movies, die through malfunctions and, in between, email their love." - Ed Halter Rescue Parables HalfLifers, video, 1994, 4 min "Various scenarios are envisaged where a rescue might be possible. Props include a hoist, a trolley, various doors and windows, ladders and a length of hose. It is unclear whether our two heroes help or hinder one another. What is sure is that no rescue is in sight. One of four short tapes that make up The Rescue Series, a Halflifers project that attempts to articulate deep-seated anxieties about the loss of functionality or purpose through a series of spontaneous 'crisis re-enactments.'" - Video Data Bank Strange Weather Peggy Ahwesh and Margie Strosser, video, 1993, 50 min A quartet of crack addicts, absorbed by their life of pure sensation, are holed up inside while the world outside is about to explode. "Strange Weather is about a moment when the roar of the elements becomes an imperceptible din and all belief is suspended. Jan, a paranoid, upper-class pipe dreamer; Centipede, a sexually tepid rockhound; and Patty, strung-out on fantasies of the good life, compromise a stuporous enclave, protecting themselves against elemental moral decay from without. But storm warnings on the tube augur a fearsome change. Shot in Pixelvision, Peggy Ahwesh's tainted soap opera is by visual definition a small world. Minute details a smoldering cigarette, the grout between tiles, particles of kitty litter are rendered large but with anemic resolution as though the characters' surroundings have prominence but no meaning. In Strange Weather, Florida is anything but a picture postcard." - Steve Seid On 1/10/08 12:34 PM, "Dara G" <email suppressed> wrote: > Hi again, > THanks to all who responded to my last inquiry. > > I am teaching a class about film/video and the representation of > disasters (specifically nuclear and environmental) > I have lots of docs and hollywood features but feel that there must > be more experimental work out there dealing with these themes. > If anyone can recommend anything that would be great! > > Thanks > Best, Dara > > > __________________________________________________________________ > For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>. __________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.