The dream and the waking, 1997, 15:10, b&w/color. Hi-8
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
The dream and the waking is a documentation of my commute between New York and Boston, which I make every week for my job. I wanted to document not only the fact of the commute -- where I go and how I get there, what I am leaving behind and what I am going to -- but also the stream of thought that runs through my mind on this commute. The trip was not something I would normally do unless I absolutely had to, and for almost a year it was the one part of my life that never changed. The space of the commute is like a non-space, like a recurring dream. It combines the public space of the road with a deeply solitary mental space. There is nothing in-between.
Screenings "Collective Noise," a video installation
exhibition, 1904 7th Place, Los Angeles, March-April 1997; Mix Festival,
New York, 1997.
(Untitled), 1997, continuous video loop, Beta, color, video installation with carved plywood structure and LCD monitor, 4' x 8', collaboration with Taylor Davis
Cecilia Dougherty, camera and editing
Taylor Davis, plywood sculpture
This piece is a video sculpture consisting of a large plywood frame,
carved in a series of rectangular cuts, one of which holds a tiny video
monitor, slightly recessed into the surrounding sculpture. The image on
the monitor is a montage of super-models, tiny kittens, car crashes and
explosions, women with machine guns, a female nude, the ocean and beautiful
flowers. The video is silent.
My Failure to Assimilate, 1995, 20:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
An experimental narrative about the nature of outsider status, and it's effects on one's creative development, personal psychology, and community identification. It is about the high price of holding on to a vision, which ultimately leads to loneliness and isolation. It is about the role of identity politics in establishing territories of isolation rather than inclusion.
Screenings Premiered in 1995 at the Pacific Film Archive, University
Art Museum, Berkeley; lesbian and gay film festivals nationally and internationally;
New York 33rd Film Festival/4th Video Festival; "Lesbian Genders,"
The Whitney Museum; "Language and Disorder" at New Langton Arts
in San Francisco; "Tell Me Anything: the confessional voice in recent
video," Name Gallery, Chicago; in-person presentations at 911 Arts
Center in Seattle, and Segue Performance Space in New York; cable television
in Philadelphia.
I'm Leaving Home Without You (You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)), 1994, 13:00, b&w, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
This tape was made for gallery installation, to be played on a 13" black and white monitor set on a small table. External speakers increase the presence of the audio over the video. The video is Fisher Price camcorder feedback, the audio is from Eric Burden and the Animals, and Sylvester. Content-wise, the piece is about the strong relationships between pop music, memory, childhood, and the idea of being caught in history. I was evoking memories of my sister who was a fatality of the 1960s, involved with drugs in a way that eventually led to her death. I was also evoking memories of the San Francisco of the mid- to late 1970s, an era the spirit of which was lost to AIDS.
Installation at Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine,
April 1994.
Joe-Joe, 1993 52:00, b&w/color, 3/4", collaboration with Leslie Singer
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, editor, camera., Leslie Singer script.
An adaptation of the diaries of Joe Orton. We present Orton not as one gay rogue, but as two women, both named Joe Orton--two sides of the same person, lesbians, sisters, lovers. The issues that interested us were the construction of stardom, the increasing positive visibility of gay men in contemporary consciousness in comparison with the infinitely unacceptable and unfashionable lesbian. We did our best to confound Freudian notions of narcissism as the exclusive territory of women and homosexual men.
Screenings Premiered at a tribute to my work, The New Festival,
New York, 1993; lesbian and gay film festivals nationally and internationally;
in person presentations at Segue Performance Space, New York; University
of California at San Diego; San Francisco Cinematheque; and Pacific Film
Archive, Berkeley.
zuJobw, 1993, 3:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
This tape was made specifically for an exhibit at New Langton Arts, San Francisco, about the artist formerly known as Prince. It is a deconstruction of Prince's back-up group, Vanity, and their hit song "Nasty Girl."
Installation at exhibition "Life Without Prince," New
Langton Arts, July 1993.
In flux, 1993, 50:00, b&w, VHS, collaboration with Leslie Singer
Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer producers/directors, editors, camera.
This is the fourth of four improvisational non-edited videotapes. The
tapes altogether constitute an experiment in the immediate, diaristic, performative
and collaborative aspects of working in video. No public screenings.
The Drama of the Gifted Child, 1992, 6:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
This tape is about the idea of narcissistic transference, sexual dependency, and failure to distinguish between the self and the loved one. It is also about using love to create a border between oneself and political/psychological oppression.
Screenings Inaugural Video Invitational, Center for the Arts,
San Francisco; San Francisco Cinematheque; "Forms of Attention,"
The Brewery, Los Angeles; lesbian and gay film festivals nationally and
internationally.
Meet Me in Saint Louis, Fuck Me in Kansas City, 1992, 35:00, b&w, VHS, collaboration with Leslie Singer
Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer producers/directors, camera.
This is the third of four improvisational video collaborations, where we worked within parameters of what was most immediately accessible in terms of themes, props, actions (performance) and conversation (dialogue).
Screening Partial screening at Bard College, July 1996.
Coal Miner's Granddaughter, 1991, 80:00, color/b&w, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
An experimental narrative conceived around several investigations: is video a valid medium for fictional narrative, does linear story-telling have a place in experimental media. It is largely autobiographical, shot almost entirely with a Fisher Price camcorder, and conceptually based on the idea of documenting family life, as in the 1970s PBS series An American Family.
Screenings Premiered at the San Francisco International Lesbian
and Gay Film Festival, 1991; lesbian and gay film festivals nationally and
internationally; in-person presentations at ICA Boston, Berlin, Amsterdam,
Hull, Sheffield, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco Cinematheque and
Pacific Film Archive.
Hello World Goodbye San Francisco, 1991, 35:00. b&w, VHS, collaboration with Leslie Singer
Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer producers/directors, camera.
This is the second of four improvisational video works described above.
No public screenings.
The Temptation of Jane, 1990, 50:00, b&w, VHS, collaboration with Leslie Singer
Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer producers/directors, camera.
This is the first of four improvisational video collaborations described
above. No public screenings.
The Passion of Jane, 1990, 11:00, b&w, VHS
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, camera.
This tape is an unedited companion piece to Coal Miner's Granddaughter,
made specifically as a video letter from myself as director of the larger
work, to Leslie Singer, the main actor of that piece. No public screenings.
Grapefruit, 1989, 39:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
A mapping of lesbian content over the story of Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and the break-up of the Beatles. I was specifically interested in lesbian reception of popular culture, and how an individual's place in the social order determines the use she makes of pop icons. The tape re-places lesbian relationships from a shadowy margin to the glittering center of the ideal love story, the tragic romance.
Screenings Premiered at Artists Television Access, San Francisco,
1989; Opera Plaza Cinema (New American Makers), San Francisco; San Francisco
Cinematheque; Pacific Film Archive; Tecoah Bruce Gallery, Oakland; ICA London,
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; The New Museum, New York; lesbian
and gay film festivals nationally and internationally; Frauenkneipe, Hamburg;
Wexner Center, Ohio; Artist's Space, New York; Eye Gallery, San Francisco.
Kathy, 1988, 12:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
The second of two tapes which re-create a lesbian-authored vision of female sexual representation, with a specific aim of not directing the action, so that sex can be portrayed in the least mediated way possible. I was interested in how representations of sexuality seem to require a narrative for them to be understood as other than pornography.
Screenings 911 Arts Organization, Seattle; Simon Watson Gallery,
New York; Artists Television Access, San Francisco; lesbian and gay film
festivals nationally and internationally.
Claudia, 1987, 8:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
The first of two tapes examining lesbian-centered sexual representation. My goal was to find out what this representation was apart from a feminist ideal, an erotic ideal, or a pornographic ideal. I wanted to claim the most common of times and places for my own sexuality to be played out, to take that identity out of the realm of the specific or of the traumatized, and made mundane.
Screenings Eye Gallery, San Francisco; Sushi Gallery, San Diego;
Artists Television Access, San Francisco; Cinema Village, New York; Pacific
Film Archive; lesbian and gay film festivals nationally and internationally.
Coat of Arms I, 1987, 16:00, color, slow scan, silent
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
A tape about the history of 20th Century painting, produced using a videophone "robot." The signal from the camera is recorded on audio tape as a high-pitched tone, to be transmitted over telephone lines and re-converted into a slow scan video still. The tape has not been screened publicly.
Coat of Arms II, 1987, 8:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
The imagery from Coat of Arms I has been edited to include the
slow-scan audio signal as the sound track. The tape has not been screened
publicly.
76 Trombones, 1987, 4:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
A deliberate subversion of narrative, within the video piece itself, and within the perception of the viewer. I juxtaposed elements which are not only not related, but which also confound creation of story by their placement in the tape.
Screening San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival,
1987.
Fuck You Purdue, 1987, 12;00, b&w, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
A re-make of Howard Fried's 1972 videotape, Fuck You, Purdue. An homage to early performance-related video.
Screening Artists Television Access, San Francisco, 1987.
Birdland, 1986, 16:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
Originally shot in super-8 film and transferred to video, this tape identifies the lesbian as the outsider, giving her a communally shared criminal identity.
Screening Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, 1987.
Sick, 1986, 6:00, color, 3/4"
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
An extemporaneous monologue about chronic illness and the conflicts illness presents me when confronted by the "positive" image of the healthy, tough, independent and capable woman.
Screenings ICA London; lesbian and gay film festivals nationally
and internationally; Media Gallery, San Francisco; Claire Dunphy Studio,
New York; Pacific Film Archive.
Gay Tape: Butch and Femme, 1985, 29:00, color, VHS
Cecilia Dougherty producer/director, author, editor, camera.
An exploration of attitudes about butch-femme role playing within the lesbian community of Oakland, California. The speakers' monologues are unrehearsed, unplanned, heartfelt, and frequently contradictory. A story emerges of how fantasy, tradition and desire merge to form a strong sense of personal identity within the behavioral constructions of a specific subculture.
Screenings San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, 1985; Stichting Festival, Amsterdam, 1991.