56th AAFF DVD - Volume 11
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Contents of Volume 11:
601 Revir Drive by Josh Weissbach
East Haddam, CT | 2017 | 9
A series of spatial limits are defined while a maker imbibes. Interdependence is inherited after a substance cannot be shook. An animal carefully guards an outlined space as a river runs backwards.
Silica by Pia Borg
Australia/UK | 2017 | 23
Silica explores territorial constructs and the boundaries of the real and the mediated in an opal mining town in the South Australian desert. Charting the journey of a film location scout, notions of settlement and belonging are investigated through images of a town in the midst of abandonment. Combining 35mm photography with microscopic and CG imagery, Silica blurs the actual and imaginary to probe ideas of value which support not only the gem trade but wider questions of identity and mythology.
Sky Room by Marianna Milhorat
Chicago, IL | 2017 | 6
Someone is missing. Plants grow, but at what cost? Technology threatens and seduces as humans attempt to solve a mystery through telepathy and mirrors. Stainless steel and broken glass strewn about an intergalactic discotheque. Commissioned by the Chicago Film Archives and made in collaboration with sound artist Brian Kirkbride, with footage and sound from the archive chopped, manipulated, and arpeggiated into a fertile mix of anthem and narrative.
Mariachi Plaza by Misho Antadze
Los Angeles, CA | 2017 | 20
A study of Mariachi Plaza in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.
The Trigger of the Cone by Niyaz Saghari
Iran/UK | 2016 | 2
Visual experimentation with the dadaist poetry of Ali Sarandibi which juxtaposes the outer, urban life in Tehran with the inner, softer life of its inhabitants.
Blue Movie by Michael Morris
Dallas, TX | 2015 | 7
Blue Movie is an elegiac tribute to the late Juanita Slusher, a Dallas-based exotic dancer well known in the ’50s and ’60s as “Candy Barr.” Footage from the stag film Smart Alec, a film given to the filmmaker by his grandfather, is used as the majority of the source imagery, set to a rendition of “Autumn Leaves” performed by Dallas-based vocalist Lily Taylor. The song was noted by Candy Barr as her favorite to dance to, while also noting that she viewed her dancing as a form of creative expression. The silver-based emulsion of the film was replaced with cyanotype chemistry and laid under the sun to create the blue image.
Re-Vue by Dirk de Bruyn
Melbourne, Australia | 2017 | 6
Re-Vue is a mutilated love letter to the film’s form in address to the the act of seeing itself. It is shaped as a response to, and in dialogue with, Mike Hoolboom’s 2017 film Color My World. A flicker fest lamenting a lost relationship with narrative cinema, by which it is forever marked.
Shape of a Surface by Nazlı Dinçel
Aphrodisias, Turkey | 2017 | 9
The ground holds accounts of once pagan, then Christian and now Muslim ruins of the city built for Aphrodite. As she takes revenge on Narcissus, mirrors reveal surfaces and what is seen, limbs dismantle, and marble turns flesh.
An Empty Threat by Josh LewisBrooklyn, New York | 2018 | 8
A sequence of truces. A personality test offering mostly slippage.
DVD Collection
All participating filmmakers on Volume 11 receive income from each DVD sold. Films in this collection screened at the 56th Ann Arbor Film Festival in March 2018.
DVD Credits
Programmed by Katie McGowan; design by goodgood; DVD authoring by Tom Bray; DVD replication by A to Z Media
Special Thanks: Ethan Voyles, Kyle Stefek, Martin Thoburn, and Potter-Belmar Labs