Spotlight on Local Filmmakers: Rafael Franco and Sylvia Volcan

Past Event at the Grand Central Art Center

10-10-03

Spotlight on Local Filmmakers

The first half of the program featured local filmmakers Rafael Franco, "Sins and Denial," and Sylvia Volcan, "Underground Interview." 

The second half highlighted the use of sound effects and music in shorts by Bob Pece, "Animal Sounds," and 

Amy Caterina-Barrett, "16 Points of Identification," "The Ceremony," and "Stop Scratching."

Special showing of John Kortlander’s "This is Johnny."

Spotlight on Local Filmmakers: Kevin Staniec

Past Event at the Grand Central Art Center

08-22-03

Rat Powered Films is proud to present a screening of SiriusBLUE LLC and Kevin Staniec’s, “Rock Off: A Documentary About a Rockumentary Crew”

Documentary director Kevin Staniec follows Rockumentary director Bruce Watson, and his dysfunctional crew as they film five rock bands from Los Angeles and Orange County. A Documentary about a Rockumentary crew.

ASU Short Film and Video Festival Travels to Santa Ana

SEVENTH ANNUAL ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM SHORT FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL travels to Santa Ana
Come with your lawn chairs and blankets, sit out under the stars and enjoy this free event...
Organized and Juried for the Arizona State University Art Museum by:
Bob Pece, Southern California Filmmaker and John D. Spiak, Arizona State University Art Museum

Arizona State University Art Museum and Rat Powered Films are proud to present a number of short films and videos by artists from around the world. For this one evening, individuals are asked to bring a lawn chair, blanket or anything else they wish to use as a seat and join us on the promendade for this FREE EVENT.
Something about LIZ (*az award)
1. YURIKA ABE
Tempe, Arizona
A short documentary about an ASU student who is hearing-impaired.

2. Tetsuji Rocks #2 (MakeitDonalds’)
TETSUJI AONO, Los Angeles, California
Tetsuji Rocks #2 (MakeitDonalds’) satirizes the image of corporate America, particularly major fast-food chain restaurants. It examines the obscure desire of a corporate image who goes wild after business hours, and also incorporates the idea of what sex can sell in American commercial mass media.

3. Dad, I’m Not Gay!
AMANDA BAEHR, Forest Hills, New York
Dad, I'm Not Gay! tells the story of a young woman whose dad is loving, kind, and understanding. Maybe a little TOO understanding.

4. Sneeze Beat
COLIN COOK, Inglewood, California
By sampling video and audio fragments contained within an ordinary sneeze, Cook’s Sneeze Beat seeks to dissect and reorder the involuntary art by imposing a rhythmic structure upon it. Out of this process emerges a collusion of very different visual readings -–what is at first playful and amusing can equally be read as a pointed reference to sickness and seizure.

5. Museum of Dreams
GREGORY GODHARD, Sydney, Australia
A young boy dreams about a pair of mechanical beings. Who are they and what secrets lurk behind their presence?

6. Lemons
COURTNEY GRAFF, Culver City, California
Danielle Patrie meets her father Dan Patrie for drinks at the Red Café. She hasn’t seen him since 1984, and their short meeting reminds her why. He’s just as casually bullying, thoughtless and beer-drinking as ever.

7. Two Sense
GROO (JASON van GUMSTER), Richmond, Virginia
This animation is based on the concept of memory, or better stated: memorization. The basic idea is that when someone tries to memorize something the typical methodology is repetition. However, as a person repeats something, the mind tends to wander,allowing one thought to morph into another.

8. I Dreamt of Bombay
GABRIEL LICHSTEIN, Los Angeles, California
When a stranger claims to be his long lost friend, Robert Jones must choose between what he thinks is true and what he knows is right.

9. Hoover Drama
LOWELL JACOBS and JOSEPH RHEAUME, Tempe, Arizona
This short black and white narrative gestures toward the genre of the cold-war espionage thriller. A driving electronic soundtrack created by the artists sets the pace for this 60-second expression of suspense. Visual cues build tension as the checkpoint at the Hoover Dam draws near.

10. Little Red Plane (**LeBlanc Audience Choice Award)
JOEY JONES, Pasadena, California
An animation about a young boy whose imagination takes him on a spiritual journey guided with a gift from his father. This flight of fantasy transports him to an astonishing world where he is given an opportunity to reconcile the past.

11. Koan
RICHARD KOENIG, Kalamazoo, Michigan
A koan is a riddle or question, but one that has no correct answer - it is a paradox to be meditated upon as a way of getting away from pure reason.

12. Cheap:
JAKE KENNEDY, Manly, Australia
A businessman decides that it can’t be that hard to make a short film and sets out to show people how easy it is.

13. Living on Oak Street
JOHN KORTLANDER, Westerville, Ohio
Living on Oak Street seeks to portray the pain and emptiness of a life left barren by the tragedies of war. Music (and the creative process) serves as a vehicle to sustain a person who has lost everything.

14. This is Jonny
JOHN KORTLANDER, Westerville, Ohio
This short film can be considered a truthful biography of a man whose demographic and social situation preclude his considerable talent from being recognized or exploited. In the foothills of Appalachia, humor and tragedy are not necessarily separate tributaries to the river of life.

15. Ian’s Collections
ELLEN LAKE, Berkeley, California
A whimsical look at Ian and his many unusual, “one-of-a-kind” collections. This engaging documentary celebrates a unique character and his quirky obsession.

16. Me and Billy Bob
JILLIAN McDONALD, Brooklyn, New York
Jillian McDonald and Billy Bob.

17. Gay Boyfriend
RYAN McFAUL, New York, New York
In their debut music video, the "Ukes of Hazzard" want of a guy who can shop all day and cuddle all night. And straight boys need not apply.

18. PlasticHut
RYAN McFAUL, New York, New York
It’s educational! It’s a funny toy! Build Your Own Plastic Hut!

19. SFP (stories for protection) #97
JACOB MELCHI, Los Angeles, California
An excerpt from an ongoing project in which fiction is celebratory, everyday anecdotes seek to alter distant memories, and sometimes those memories are affecting the present tense.

20. Blood Drinkers
RUSTY NAILS, Chicago, Illinois
A 40’s horror movie trailer purposely lost after audiences went insane.

21. Proper Urinal Etiquette (*juror choice award)
KURT NELLIS, Rochester, New York
The unwritten urinal etiquette rules have finally hit the silver screen. Billy, a normal third grade boy, learns what it takes to go to the lavatory with the big boys. You may learn a thing or two yourselves.

22. Three Small Deaths (*juror choice award)
JOSEPH PERAGINE, Atlanta, Georgia
A cartoon about profound change, loss and shock. In the animation, the worst possible nightmare befalls three sets of parents.

23. Kaerajaan
MIKK RAND, Estonia
An alien view of what it is to be human.

24. Revolutions Per Minute
ALEX ROPER, Baltimore, Maryland
July 4th 2001: A record player is filled with 1600 firecrackers and rigged to go off as it plays The Star-Spangled Banner.

25. Extreme Bible Stories: ?Don’t dis Elisha!?
WILLIAM ROSS, Seattle, Washington
Bobby, Suzy and their friends find that childish hijinks can have fatal consequences when they make the mistake of teasing the wrong Old Testament Prophet.

26. Santa’s Little Helper (** LeBlanc Audience Choice Award, Honorable Mention)
JASON GRANT SMITH, Valley Village, California
It’s the Christmas holidays. A woman waits at a restaurant for a personal ad date that turns out to be one of Santa’s elves.

27. Terminator Tomatoes
SUZANNE TWINING, Portland, Oregon
A farmer and his daughter get too deep with a crop of genetically modified tomatoes.

RPF Film Fest 2: We'll Try Harder This Time

Past Event at the Grand Central Art Center
04-8-03

RPF Film Fest 2: We'll Try Harder This Time

1.  Angel Chen, (Los Angeles, CA)
I can see for miles, some how I know (it wont last too long), Trt 03:30
Starring a white mouse undergoing the trauma of being trapped in a pool of honey and as he resigns himself to the situations, by praying, he sees his reflection in the golden pond, achieves enlightenment and ascends into psychic rebirth.

2. Mike Ott, (Valencia, CA)
PAT, Trt 06:00
A short documentary about an old man and his strange ideas about race, love and everything else in the world.  Shot on 16 mm.

3. Jaime Scholnick, (Los Angeles, CA)
Hello kitty gets a mouth, Trt 10:36
Mouthless, thus frustrated in her efforts to effectively use her Hello Kitty vibrator, our famous feline seeks, unsuccessfully to obtain one from 3 different Tokyo plastic surgeons.  They will only give her western eyes or bigger breasts.  After jetting to Beverly Hills and obtaining a the coveted orifice she returns to her Tokyo apartment to relish in her new found “voice.”

4. G Alan Rhodes, (Buffalo, NY)
Timecodes, Trt 04:20
A look at compulsive actions through the use of multi channel video originally from hand processed Super 8mm.

5.  Mike Williams, (Placentia, CA)
No Bull about It, Trt 01:40
And I like to drawr. 

6. Tim White Sobieski, (New York, NY)
Confession, Trt 16:00
War memories shown through the mind games of a young girl who is too young to bear the burden of guilt for all the wars.

7.  Terry Cuddy, (Buffalo, NY)
Resolutions , Trt 05:05
A two-part video-- a collision of photography, spoken word and player piano music.

 8.  Beau Jackson, (Alta Loma, CA)
The Dancer, trt 02:00
A short homage to the history of film and the Photo 11 class.

9. Eduardo Villacis, (Ecuador)
Director Fabio Ferro
Brote subversivo, Trt 08:00
A showdown between the machines and the trees.

10.  Dominic Delay, (Orange, CA), The sisters O’Malley, Trt 10:48
It’s thanksgiving.  Tempers flare.  The turkey is inedible.  There are bizarre happenings.  It takes a food fight to rediscover the power of the Sister O’ Malley.

11. Roman Deingruber, (Brooklyn, NY)
Illusion of reality
Trt 02:07
A short piece about elements of life, love, fear, reality, dreams.

12.  Leilani Lumen, (San Francisco, CA)
Letter to A.K., Trt 05:03
A young woman writes to a lover years after the end of their relationship.

13.  Eric Patrick, (Austin, TX)
Ablution, Trt 12:30
A film ritual in three acts.  Ablution traces a character’s dissociative journey through an archetypal cleansing.

Details: www.asuartmuseum.asu.edu/

6 Booths in 7 Weeks

Past Events at the Grand Central Art Center Project Room

6 Booths in 7 Weeks

April 5 - May 25, 2003

Check out our page at the Grand Central Art Center's website.

An ambitious project that features a new themed slate of short films each week, Six Booths in Seven Weeks spans the gamut of the video medium, presenting short experimental, documentary, animated, and narrative based works as well as advertisements and found footage. The heterogeneity of the exhibition illustrates video's impure, "promiscuous" origins. Significantly, several of the pieces address temporality, a quality that distinguishes video art and film from the other visual arts. By lengthening or looping time and by manipulating the conventions of storytelling, these pieces re-configure perception.

Thematic unity for the exhibit is achieved by the black box constructions in which the videos are screened. These constructions create darkened, intimate environments, which evoke the space of the confession, the home, and the voyeur. The single person booths privilege viewing as a private experience, emphasizing that spectators primarily watch video (television being the usual format), unlike film, individually or in intimate groups. Each video and spectator, thus, appears to be sealed off from the rest. However, outside of the booth/home, the videos act in conjunction to create a cacophony of sound and flickering images, emulating in their collage-like simultaneity the postmodern habit of channel surfing, the barrage of media information the average person negotiates daily, and the ever present humming of a collective--albeit, physically separated--audience for the endless stream of video produced by our culture.

As is fitting for Southern California, an advertising and consumerism mecca, one of the weeks is devoted to television ads. By explicitly crossing into the popular domain for this week, Six Booths in Seven Weeks blurs the boundary between video as art and video as disseminator of mass media message, thereby making the assertion that creative or innovative works can erupt through the cracks of the advertising industry. The inclusion of advertisements also gestures towards video art's continual association with its more popular sibling and art's struggle to critique the ways in which television mediates between the individual and society.

Love Nest Fest

Past Event at the Grand Central Art Center

02-14-03

1. Wendy Wilkins, Los Angeles CA
TRT 00:06:28
Jack and Diane: Two people break up, it happens all the time. But this time the story is told through 57 different song lyrics. It’s a first generation MTV viewers’ solution to bad communication.

2. Lori Rogers, Brooklyn, NY
TRT:00:01:30
Love Story: This is found footage from a NYC flea market. Occasionally I will find films where the person was trying to be creative, but most people don’t know what to do with their movie cameras so they just film their relatives. This is a 1970’s? film where the two teens are acting out Shakespeare.

3. Heilman-C, Los Angeles, CA
TRT 00:10:17
Perfect Eggs: A woman severs the chains of domestic bondage with a little help from man’s best friend.

4. Peggy Wang, Fullerton, CA
TRT 00:02:07
Something Smells Like Fish: romance, action and …a cat?

5. Doug Frisby, Los Angeles CA
TRT 00:08:27
Phantom George: Poor George was born with a gift; the ability to astral project himself into anyone or anything that moves. Oh the possibilities! We follow him from his early exploring years through his unusual experimental college years. No one (and nothing) is safe until this romantic loser meets the girl of his dreams. Yeah, like that will happen.

6. Eric Stefani, Pasadena, CA
TRT 00:03:23
Hicks and chicks: A couple of real characters take their nephew out on the town. They end up looking for girls but have trouble finding them.

7. Tony Mendoza, Columbus, Ohio
TRT 00:06:58
My Father’s Lunch: My father has eaten lunch every day at the same restaurant for 30 years. His routine was amusing and I decided to go along with a video camera, on a day when something unexpected occurred.

8. Antonio de Los Reyes, Gerit Vanenberg, and Mary Allan, Los Angeles
TRT 00:08:15
Dandy’s Inferno: In every home there is a hunger and with every hunger there is a longing for home. So begins Dandy’s Inferno, a domestic odyssey that follows one’s cat’s quest for gastronomic nirvana. A fantastic collage of animation, puppetry and magical sets, Dandy’s Inferno blurs the line between logic and naked animal passion.

9. Christina Ponce, Long Beach, CA
TRT 00:01:52
Untitled: My work deals with breaking down the stereotypical assumptions of mainstream society concerning social minorities, specifically homosexuality, and the fetish.

10. Jack Sekowski, Sherman Oaks, CA
TRT 00:04:11
Passion Fruit: A lazy afternoon in the park. A man. A woman. A bunch of juicy, ripe fruit. All the ingredients for flirtation. What could go wrong?

11. Suzie Silver, Pittsburgh, PA
TRT 00:02:40
Peggy Love: One-Oh-One: Love is an obsession. Pop culture is filled with love songs. What can the musical expression of the word “love” mean? Here, one of the great pop vocalists of the twentieth century, Peggy Lee, sings us some clues.

12. Hee Holman, Los Angeles, CA
TRT 00:13:21
Songbird: A computer generated short, constructed of still photographs, is a fairy tale for adults. A story of a man and his loneliness. Could it be a love story? It all happens in a surrealistic island where quite extraordinary things happen.

13. Taly and Russ Johnson, New York, NY
TRT 00:01:10
William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton: Presidential study number 42. An experimental and in-depth look at the forty-second president of the United States. One sentence under a microscope.

14. Jay Barba and Brian Farrelly, Astoria NY
TRT 00:10:00
Losing your cherry: An educational film from the 1950’s where an animated fruit pie helps guide young boys into the scary but thrilling world of adult sexuality.