Parnes moves further into her interrogation of horror genres and the art world, with their sometimes over-lapping cults of personality. Grappling with the danger of beauty without criticality, Hollywood Inferno takes the viewer through the alienating world of a teenager named Sandy, a modern-day Dante, and follows where her aspirations toward stardom lead her.
Segalove re-enacts the trials and travails of her desperate, hormonal, pubescent years with actors dancing their way through what looks like a techni-color version of the Cleaver’s backyard. She plays herself, getting questionable advice from girlfriends, begging her mother for a bra and falling in love for the first time, with Moondoggie in Gidget Goes Hawaiian.
A rockin’ talkin’ pony and its human companion examine the evolution of Halloween games, from the ancient rite of bobbing for apples to the contemporary spectacle of American football. Confronting liminality on 3rd down and long, the pony BRINGS IT TO THE HOUSE.
This title is also available on Ben Coonley: Trick Pony Trilogy.
Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.
The Dealers: Between the Frames, Chapter 1 and The Galleries: Between the Frames, Chapter 3
Deaf Dogs Can Hear is an autobiographical work that traces the tragic yet humourous episodes of the artist as a young girl, and her pet chihuahua. Her love for this deformed and unattractive pet only grows deeper as one tragedy after another befalls the dog and the creature becomes repulsive to all eyes but its owner's.
Pictures from Dorothy is a current day consideration of the symbolism of Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz.
Cast: Matilda Washington. Music: David Reid.
This title is only available on Broad Daylight and Other Times: Selected Works of Kevin Jerome Everson.
On the vast Kazakhstan Steppes, nine 16-year-olds prepare to graduate from the Akkol orphanage. Rockets launched overhead from the nearby Cosmodrome inspire their dreams as they write about and perform their imagined future-selves. Guided by the nomadic spirit and natural beauty of the Steppes, the teens explore questions of time and truth in relation to the challenging reality of their lives.
The repeatedly distorted, primate behaviour of an (ani)female carrying her baby, reflecting the pain and suffering provoked by the mother/child relationship.
Paternal Rites is a first-person essay film that examines the secret underbelly of a contemporary Jewish American family as they grapple with the aftereffects of physical and sexual abuse on their present-day lives. It is also a groundbreaking film about the nature of trauma and memory itself: the ways in which trauma encrypts in uncanny ways; the function of speech and narrative in the process of decryption; and the role of film and filmmaking in the practice of healing.
five more minutes is an exploration of grief. Two women spend an afternoon recreating lost time. What begins as play-acting breaks open into a world where the tenderness and sorrow of having to say goodbye exist untempered.
In this wistful tape, Segalove looks at how her childhood vision of the future holds up (or doesn't) in adulthood. Commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
A high and low fidelity record of obsessions past and present. A hooded man named Cobra Commander (drawn naked) and a boy with black glasses. A fanged woman named Shadow-La and a girl in a rose colored wig. Belinda (Heaven on Earth), Madonna (Live to Tell), and headphones (worn naked). An airport terminal. Home. The Montgomery Ward catalog circa 1980. That orange bedspread, that red flowered couch.
Indians In Brazil is an educational series for Brazilian public schools that invites students to experience cultural diversity. Four teenagers are invited to discover a new world and participate in Indian daily life in two different communities. They show their emotions, curiosity and fears, and are surprised by their new friends.
Bouncing balloons, cloth puppets and loud mouthed 'wall-bangers' enliven a grown up nursery.
—Mike Kuchar
Time Bomb tells the story of a young girl's experience at a Baptist retreat, where she is called upon to accept Jesus into her life after a coercive game of terror. This piece explores memory, the power of crowds, rituals of conversion, and the isolation of a child lost in the world of adults. Fear and family values motivate action and create an empty arena for escape. Visually, Time Bomb proceeds through a sequence of images that figure the "light" of memory as simultaneously revelatory and obscuring, constructive and destructive.
Using a psychoanalytic tool from the 1950s, a series of black and white drawings illustrate the adventures of a family of dogs, dramatizing a young girl's appointment with her psychiatrist.
This title is also available on O Night Without Objects.
Peggy and Fred, sole inhabitants of post-apocalyptic Earth, weather a prairie twister and scavenge for sense and sustenance amid the ruined devices of a ghosted culture. The improvised and playful dialogue of the children provides a key to understanding the tape; their distracted sense of make-believe floats between realities, between acting their parts and doing what they want—patching together identities that, like fidgeting children, refuse to stand still.
The Videofreex tape a group of young people working on a farm run by Chris Locke and his wife in Shandaken, NY. After learning how to take care of the chickens, they are taught how to kill and pluck one. Later they sit down for a communal dinner, and one of the group exclaims "Mmmmm, tastes good!"
"I, Soldier is the first part of a video series in which I am dealing with the state-controlled ceremonies for the national days of the Turkish Republic. The nationalistic attributes attached to these large-scale ceremonies are underlined in a non-descriptive and almost voyeuristic point of view. I, Soldier was shot at the National Day for Youth and Sports; the day that marks the start of the independence war of the Turkish public under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the Allied Forces back in 1919.
Natural Life is a feature-length experimental documentary challenging inequities in the U.S. juvenile justice system by depicting, through documentation and reenactment, the stories of five individuals who were sentenced to Life Without Parole (Natural Life) for crimes they committed as youth.
The youthful status and/or lesser culpability of these youths, their backgrounds, and their potential for rehabilitation were not taken into account at any point in the charging and sentencing process. The five will never be evaluated for change, difference or growth. They will remain in prison till they die.
five more minutes is an exploration of grief. Two women spend an afternoon recreating lost time. What begins as play-acting breaks open into a world where the tenderness and sorrow of having to say goodbye exist untempered.
I could not remember anything about my childhood before the age of twelve. I made a decision to remember. West Fingerboard Road relays how I remembered my forgotten childhood memories, and references the writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze that echo my ideas on memory and the process of remembering.
-- Susan Youssef
"Inside a Lithuanian synagogue, young Domas Darguzs regales the filmmaker with a whispered, wide-eyed account of mythical events, while the film cross-cuts to images of farm-life. Kid brother of an Israeli soldier, Domas's stories are part fantasy, part hopeful ruminations of a courageous, young mind interrupted only by an impatient adult."
— KJ Mohr
Indians In Brazil is an educational series for Brazilian public schools that invites students to experience cultural diversity. Four teenagers are invited to discover a new world and participate in Indian daily life in two different communities. They show their emotions, curiosity and fears, and are surprised by their new friends.
