1998 Film Festival: Persistent VISION Film & Video Festival
Marblehead Festival of Arts presents the Persistent VISION Film & Video Festival. Featuring a variety of experimental works, animations, shorts, documentaries and dramas, the Festival presents a selection of work from some of the most outstanding film and videomakers in the country, reflecting a range of subjects, styles and genres. Most of the presented works have received prestigious awards as well as domestic and international recognition.
The screening was held in the Warwick Cinema.
Chairperson: Kim Foley
Committee: Sally Schreiber-Cohn
In Memory of Kathleen Connor
“32 Flavors” Alana Davis
Directed by Liz Friedlander
4 minutes
The music video portrays the artist as many different characters.
American Rhapsody
Nina Hasin
6 minutes
American Rhapsody, based on Kenneth Fearing’s haunting 1942 poem, is an exploration of alienation and the search for meaning amid the mad whirl of life in the city. A compelling performance by Ray McNiece, an original jazz score, and images of a brooding, neon landscape merge with the rhythmic force of the poet’s language to create a poignant and contemporary vision of urban life.
Arnold Rides a Chair
Scene from Arnold Rides a Chair
Craig Bartlett
1 minute
This film was produced for Sesame Street and explores Arnold’s vivid imagination. It was distributed in the 23rd Tournee of Animation.
The Arnold Waltz
Scene from The Arnold Waltz
Craig Bartlett
3 minutes
Arnold daydreaming his way through the school day was distributed in the 22nd Tournee of Animation.
The Blue Shoe
Peter Reynolds & Gary Goldberger
Narrated by Richard Davies
Executive Producer: William Churchill
Assistant Directors: John Lechner & Keri Green
Post-production by CF Video & Interactive, Boston
Winner at World Animation Celebration 1998, Pasadena, California, The Blue Shoe is a modern fable about the elusive search for true love—featuring a blue shoe and a green boot. The blue shoe’s journey gradually reveals that sometimes the answers to our dreams are often the things we simply overlook.
Conservation of Matter: The Fall and Rise of Boston’s Elevated Subway
Scene from Conservation of Matter: The Fall and Rise
of Boston's Elevated Subway
Tim Wright
28:30 minutes
Jamaica Plain Newsreel’s thirty minute documentary traces the fate of 100,000 tons of steel, which was erected in 1898, demolished in 1978, shipped more than 8,000 miles away to be melted and re-formed into steel bars, which were subsequently shipped to a yet more surprising location where they were used in the building of a new and equally monumental structure. Workers, historians, preachers, politicians, artists, riders, architects, astrophysicists and street people on two continents address the significance of the process as it unfolds.
Dead End
Bao Vu
25 minutes
Twelve year old Ton, unaccepted at school and emotionally devastated by his father’s death, vows to help his mother pay the rent. But finding a job isn’t easy and, desperate to survive, Ton is forced to make a difficult choice.
Flora Bella Rosa Mia
Kathleen Connor
3 minutes
This whimsical animated film offers a much-needed happy perspective on femininity.
Going Further
Kathleen Connor
14 minutes
The consideration of an erotic experience—its natural beauty and its inherent threat of destruction. “Going Further” into the realm in which one becomes, in the words of W.H. Auden, “mortal, guilty, and to me the entirely beautiful.” A process of wreckage, prayer, self-containment, darkness of heart, dance movement, airy release, and ongoing demolishment.
“Gone Til November” Wyclef Jean
Directed by Francis Lawrence
4 minutes
This song is about the artist who must go away for long periods of time, leaving behind loved ones.
Ground Zero / Sacred Ground
Scene from Ground Zero/Sacred Ground
Karen Aqua
9 minutes
In southcentral New Mexico, an ancient Native American rock art site lies thirty-five miles from the detonation site of the world’s first atomic bomb. This animated film explores the juxtaposition of these two sites and the contrasting cultures which created them: one which accepts and reveres the power of the natural world, and the other which strives to control and manipulate the forces of nature. Received 1st Prize, Animation at 1998 Marin County National Festival of Short Films; Film Editing Award, 1998 Ann Arbor Film Festival; Jury Prize, 1998 Big Muddy Film Festival; Director’s Choice Award, 1998 Black Maria Film & Video Festival; Honorable Mention, 1998 New England Film & Video Festival.
Light and Dark
Kathleen Connor
8 minutes
A study on the reflection of light. And dark.
“Losing A Whole Year” Third Eye Blind
Directed by Francis Lawrence
4 minutes
This highly visual experience takes the view of a car crash in extreme slow motion.
Middle Street
Scene from Middle Street
Henry Ferrini & Willie Alexander
4 minutes
There is a “Middle Street” in the middle of most cities and towns in America. This Middle Street is in America’s oldest fishing port, Gloucester, Massachusetts. It’s crowded with churches, city hall and funeral parlors. The street is in the inner sanctum of the city. Written by Willie Alexander and pictured by Henry Ferrini, the images were culled from dreams and memories of the 1950s: travelling over wharfs, through religious festivals and into the movies, transmuting a personal story into a Gloucester story.
Portland
Directed by Guy Guillet
20 minutes
A melodrama. Two strangers, an attractive young woman and a drifter haunted by his past are trapped together inside a broken-down car. Facing imminent death, their antagonism flares, then gives way to compassion as they both search for some measure of salvation.
Speak
Rob Todd
7:30 minutes
An abstract presentation of the birth of language, this film is as much about the development of an infant’s relationship to speech as an adult mind’s grasping to connect the space between speech moments.
Wanda
Scene from Wanda
Director & Animator: Ruth Hayes
Audio Mix: John Hawk
4 minutes
Wanda is a short story of feline and feminine desire. In this delightful piece, composed of video animation and live-action footage in Super and Video 8, the narrator reflects on the unrestrained behavior of her cat in heat. Wanda received the Jurors’ Award, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, 1991; The 39th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, 1993; The Learning Channel, Through Her Eyes, 1992–96; Women in the Director’s Chair Festival Tour, 1992; Midnight Theater, KCTS-9, Seattle, 1991; Dallas Video Festival, 1991; Video Shorts 10, 1991; The Fifth International Festival of Films by Women Directors, Seattle, 1990.
Filmmaker Biographies
Karen Aqua has been making animated films since her graduation from Rhode Island School of Design in 1976. Her award-winning films have been screened nationally and internationally, including at the New York Film Festival and at international animation festivals in Zagreb, Ottawa, and Annecy (France). She has received film production grants from the American Film Institute, Massachusetts Council of the Arts and Humanities, New England Film/Video Fellowship Program, Massachusetts Arts Lottery Council, and New Forms Regional Initiative. Aqua was a Lecturer in Animation at Boston College from 1984–1991, and American Instructor at Emerson College in 1987. She has served as a juror for major animation and film festivals in the US and Canada; and she has presented one-person screenings of her work at museums and universities around the US, including the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), California Institute of Arts, University of Oregon, and Harvard University. Since 1990, she has produced, directed, and animated over a dozen segments for the acclaimed Sesame Street television program.
Craig Bartlett, Creator/Executive Producer of Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold!, began his career in animation at Will Vinton Studios in 1982, working in stop-motion animation on features and commercials. In 1987, he moved to Los Angeles to direct and animate the Penny cartoons for CBS’s Saturday morning hit, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. In 1988, he created Arnold, starring him in a series of Penny-like shorts for the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd Tournees of Animation and Sesame Street. Bartlett’s introduction to Nickelodeon came with a job at Klasky-Csupo, story editing and directing for the first season of Rugrats. Bartlett started work on the pilot of Hey Arnold in 1994, and is now working on the third year of series production with episodes 41–60.
Kathleen Connor was one of the most insightful, reflective filmmakers of our time. Her surreal films exhibit a rare quality of light, sound, and meaning—unusual among personal experimental artists. Inspired by the works of Bruce Baillie and Maya Deren, Kathleen’s mastery of imagery, sometimes almost mesmerizing, is a delight to watch.
Henry Ferrini is currently finishing Memory Babe, a series of video poems about Jack Kerouac’s hometown Lowell, Massachusetts, with a grant from the Massachusetts Humanities Foundation. Throughout the winter of ’97, he lent his experience to the Los Angeles based Survivors of the Holocaust Visual History Project. His last film, Witch City, is set to air on PBS during Halloween week of ’98. During the war in the former Yugoslavia, Ferrini worked for the United Nations Television where he wrote, produced, directed and shot Pôsta, a series that aired in Belgrade and Zagreb. His documentary films include Poem in Action, Leather Soul, and Radio Fishtown” His work has been exhibited at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; the Museum of Fine Arts and the Space in Boston; and the Zone in Northhampton. He currently is developing a feature script based on stories from his documentary experience.
Liz Friedlander, up and coming L.A. director, is known for her unique ability to capture on film intimate moments with and personalities of the artists with whom she works.
Gary Goldberger was raised on a diet of claymation and video experimenting. Combining his collegiate background in spatial relations and the understanding of physical motion, Gary’s natural path led him to graphic design and 3D animation. Using the TicTacToon System by Toon Boom Technologies, Gary used his knowledge of 3D space and moved it to the 2.5D world by producing and co-directing The Blue Shoe with Peter Reynolds. Gary’s credits include several short films, corporate programs, short and long format broadcast work, and CD-ROM products.
Guy Guillet has been making films and videos for more than 15 years. Among his credits are an interactive video with Peter Gabriel and producer/director of an interactive videodisc for the MIT Media Lab. He currently directs music videos and was director for Collective Soul’s The World I Know video which received extensive airplay on MTV. Guillet’s work has received many awards, including First Place National winner at The American Film Institute’s National Video Festival, and C.I.N.E. Eagle Certificates. His work has been screened both domestically and abroad at many festivals including The American Film Festival; and Melbourne, Chicago, and Christchurch International Film Festivals.
Nina Hasin is an editor and part-time independent filmmaker. She’s worked in news, magazine-format, and documentaries since 1981. From 1986–88, she studied under pioneer documentary filmmaker Richard Leacock at the M.I.T. Film/Video Section. Her short films, Rhapsody in Orange and Boston Driving, have been screened both nationally and internationally and have received numerous awards. She currently edits at WBZ-TV in Boston.
Ruth Hayes is perhaps best know for her flip books, although she has also made a name for herself as a filmmaker. Her 1990 video, Wanda, won a prize at the Black Magic Film & Video Festival and her 1994 film, Reign of the Dog, won the Civil Disobedience Award at the Humboldt International film Festival. Hayes studied animation at Harvard and at Cal Arts, where she received an MFA. In 1979 she formed Random Motion Co. and began selling her flip-books. In addition to working as a film programmer and consultant for non-profit organizations, she has been a teacher and visiting artist at many schools, including The Evergreen State College and George Mason University.
Francis Lawrence is a talented director who amongst his other accomplishments just completed an Aerosmith video for the soundtrack from the feature film Armageddon.
Peter H. Reynolds has worked in the field of education (his passion) for more than a decade. For 13 years he served as vice president and creative director of Tom Snyder Productions, a leading educational software producer and publisher, where he helped produce many award-winning titles and over twenty interactive children’s stories for the Internet online service Prodigy. Peter then went on to launch FableVision Animation Studios, where he is now producing award-winning children’s broadcast programming, educational videos, and multimedia applications. FableVision Animation Studios specializes in crafting “stories that matter” using humor and whimsical characters primarily through cel-style 2-D animation, but also via CD-ROM, books, and the Web.
Rob Todd has been working in film and video for the past nine years. His work includes over twenty-five experimental short films. He teaches film production and sound at Emerson College.
Bao Vu is a film student at the School of Visual Arts. He left Vietnam in the 80s and arrived at SCA three years ago. For more than a decade, Bao Vu has worked as both a photographer and a video editor. His first film, Last Hope, won an Honorable Mention award at the Columbus International Film Festival, and has had screenings in a number of film festivals in the US.
Tim Wright, an award-winning Super 8mm film and video maker, is co-founder of Jamaica Plain Newsreel, a documentary production and training organization. Conservation of Matter his most recent production, was a winner at the New England Film/Video Festival and went on to garner the Grand Prize and Audience Choice Awards at the 1997 U.S. Super 8mm Festival in Rutgers, New Jersey.
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