Humor

This episode includes: two more adverts, considerations of the future, a multiple projection spectacular in miniature, a riverine jaunt, much fog, and an ending x 2.

This is the fourth and final episode in The Variations cycle.

A Fourth of July celebration ignites the Id and unleashes a digital demon hungry for imagery of the young and the restless to appease the contraption it sees through: the cannibal camcorder in a state of carniverous conniptions!

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 certain is that no rescue is in sight.

This title is also available on HalfLifers: Rescue Series and HalfLifers: The Complete History.

Psychologically disturbed Professor Herville (Joe Gibbons) analyzes the literary classic Moby Dick. He gives a tour of the Herman Melville Museum and makes much ado about the book’s Oedipial themes. Breer mixes in footage of the Hollywood adaptation starring Gregory Peck and her own irrepressible animation.

This title is also available on Emily Breer: Classics Exposed.

"A refreshing look at karaoke, psychedelic dance moves, and donuts all mashed together into a small and swinging film about a man who considers his private thoughts and private jokes worth sharing with a large audience. And it's unlikely that many would disagree."

--Impakt Festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2001

This title is also available on Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 1.

The audience's engagement with the smallest subtleties and less than (usually considered) spectacular elements of theater is impressive and speaks volumes on the patience and acuity of modern viewers. Their finely tuned sense of humor and rapt and continuous focus warms the cynics' icy exterior. Likewise, the feedback loop of mutual artistic understanding and respect from the performing elements and receptive viewers, and back again, fortifies those who wish to love art and believe it must have revolutionary value. All are satisfied and joyful in the showing of satisfaction.

Filmed directly from the screen of a smartphone using a language translator app that has been told to translate from French into English, Steve Hates Fish interprets the signage and architecture in a busy London shopping street. In an environment overloaded with information, the signs run riot as the confused and restless software does its best to fulfill its task.

The New York City summer is fueled by the sultry emanations of hot air that tumble off the tongues of potential thespians as they attempt to decipher the gastric guesswork embedded in the prose of the pre-production process. The video camera flits across the boroughs of NYC in a splash-dash sojourn of sumptuous banquets and bohemian bombast, while the down-to-earth wisdom of the seeing impaired helps to guide the protagonist into detours of wisdom befitting his putrid project.

This is sort of an Easter holiday affair as it has bunny images in it, plus the finale was shot on an Easter Sunday visit to a friend’s gallery. A springtime walk through a Pennsylvania landscape and a nautical section featuring an ex-student with X-rated ambitions helps this video to lay a colorful egg.

Walt Disney's re-imagineering of Martin Scorsese's classic film Taxi Driver follows Mickey Mouse-obsessed Travis Bickle as he looks for love in a rapidly transforming New York City. A 'fair use' parody by Bryan Boyce.

"A brilliant video essay."

-- Roger Ebert

A three-day teleplay done at CalArts takes a sordid behind-the-scenes look at an art school professor’s life.

Identically dressed, and with sibling-like resemblance, performance artists Trevor Martin and Kym Olsen shift between spoken word and athletic dance choreography in a collection of 29 scenes. Set in various locations--including a gymnasium, an abandoned hospital, and a trailer park circus--Martin and Olsen slip between a ventriloquist and his dummy, a seducer and his surrogate, a doctor and his patient, and synchronized dance partners. The film examines a complex social psychology--questioning the colonization of the human body for various political, medical and religious agendas.

If television is truly the opiate of the masses, then Teddy Dibble is a living room crack dealer. This newly compiled series of television art comedy includes: 

1. The Cough, 03:17

2. Secrets I’ll Never Tell, 01:02

3. The Shot Heard Around the World, 00:52

4. Rabbit Rabid Raw Bit, 00:18

5. The Man Who Made Faces, 01:11

6. 11:57 P.M. December 31st, 01:05

7. The Sound of Music, 02:25

Psykho III The Musical is an intriguing play on the tension between “authentic” and “pop” camp. This celebration of artifice was originally written, directed, and produced by Mark Oates as a stage musical parody following the release of Psycho II in 1983, and was performed at the East Village’s most notorious nightspot — The Pyramid Club. In 1985, after a wildly successful run, Oates reached out to longtime friend and Downtown video artist Tom Rubnitz to produce a video adaptation of the stage musical.

"Starring an inflatable wig holder that I got at a car boot sale in Bremen, Germany, this film began as a demonstration of different film animation techniques, but evolved into a bizarre improvised narrative in which the head escapes from the violent clutches of a mixed-up model girl, is sent to Poland in a wicker basket, where it has a nice holiday (I took it on holiday to Poland with me and animated it in the countryside), and finally returns on the ferry."

-- Jennet Thomas

Super 8 film, cut-out animation, model and object animation.

(tell me why): The Epistemology of Disco is an often humorous, at times sarcastic and poignant look at the role that disco music has played in the formation of gay male identity.

A day in the life of a professional photographer (Wegman) and his eager student (Smith), this tape offers a humorous, at times surreal, how-to instructional course in photography. Filled with practical advice, the tape sardonically centers itself more on the need to cultivate an effective artistic persona than actually taking any photographs. Wegman asks: "Before you carve out your own niche, it’s important to ask yourself one tough question: do you have the aptitude?"

The vacuum cleaner becomes the device of the feminist 'liberation', or the monster that devours us.

— Insite 2000 program, San Diego Museum of Art 

This title is also available on Ximena Cuevas: El Mundo del Silencio (The Silent World) and Half-Lies: The Videoworks of Ximena Cuevas.

Failing Up describes career advancement despite bad decisions, bankruptcies, and intellectual mediocrity. In this short film, the Manhattan real estate holdings of the King of Failing Up are catalogued and synced to a soundtrack that suggests how it feels to be one of his subjects.

Whip pans, zooms, lens twists, and bursts of stop-frame animation transform eight minutes of borrowed audio from Home Alone 2 (a film that features a cameo of the current US President) into a political work of slapstique concrete.

Cameras aim and click in this breezy short that blows hot and cold kisses to the "Big Apple" below and the maple leaf above and beyond the northern border of this great nation. Harmonize with the hairy (bleached or flea-powdered) as they smoke or yelp in unabashed abandon to the tune of time zones we all share.

When everyone has forgotten the romantic refrains of the Internationale sung in different languages, Pablito, a blue front Amazon parrot, capable of living to 100 years old, will remember. He rings bells and is learning to whistle, hum and sing the Internationale in French, Spanish and German.

After working in solitude at the studio, the artist leaves, uncomfortable with the idea of having to put on a face for the art world, where they expect you to say something articulate in order to grab the curator's attention.

In this interview, American artist, independent curator, writer, and experimental filmmaker, Vaginal Davis reflects on her initiation into the punk rock and art scenes of Los Angeles during the 1980s and 90s, her stylistic influences, and her ongoing efforts to theorize queerness and visuality. Caught between the opposing poles of Hollywood classicism and the rawness of punk, Davis defines her unapologetically gender-bending, campy, and at times aggressively critical performances as scenarios, rather than spectacles or entertainment.

Summer and smoke (from pork chops) filters into every rip in my tee-shirt as legs and souls are bared for the infra-red-hot digital camera that's ON THE PROWL!

The San Francisco Art Institute's 100th anniversary is absorbed into this portrait of alumni in the heat of creation and pasta softening.