Slice of life creations in video and photo format of a New York-based video and documentary producer.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
lights, teleprompter...
action. My client, St. Vincent Hospital, squeezes in one last video podcast this year, explaining how a health care provider can offer and take an HIV test during any routine medical visit in under 2 minutes. We taped at the Adolescent AIDS program of Montefiore and the podcast will be available through the New York State AIDS Institute by early next year if not sooner.
Much as it pains me to explain today's blog entry, here goes anyway. Basil and I had our usual Saturday morning brunch and ended up doing a little gallery hopping in West Chelsea. When we decided to go to Rebel Rebel Records we walked the High Line down to get there.
This is where we ran into Santacon 2009 full scale. There are little signs along the Highline stating 'Keep it Wild', so this quite sauced little santa took the indication to heart and bared herself - though from this angle you are missing the goods. Will she regret it tomorrow?
to tango, so of course I accepted when Michael was kind enough to invite me to the book party he hosted for the new edition of his Frommer's Buenos Aires guide. The party happens at the Argentine consulate which is a grand old mansion built by one of JP Morgan's partners over 110 years ago. It was a lovely evening of Argentine wine, empanadas and tango.
On mostly cloudy days like today I like to remember that above the clouds the sun is still shining. As it was on this day over the Pacific Northwest. Can you guess which mountain that is?
I saw this documentary at a Romanian film festival curated by Mihai Chirilov at the Tribeca screening room. However, it premiered in the U.S. in February this year at MOMA’s documentary fortnight.
Reading the synopsis beforehand I knew the film was about a family in Moldova where the mother has gone to Italy to work and has not returned for three years, leaving the father to cope with the family on his own. It’s something I observed many times in the interviews I conducted in Romania for the documentary project I taped in 2007.
While I assumed this documentary was set in the region of Moldova in Romania, it was actually set in another country, the Republic of Moldova, which has a large Romanian-speaking population. Mihai introduced the film explaining that the title, The Flower Bridge, referred to the cultural affinity of these two countries. Or at least that’s what I understood.
He also mentioned that the director’s method with this production was to observe the family for several months while taking notes and then go back with a camera and have them re-enact specific scenes that he had synthesized to tell the story. Wow! This leads to all kinds of questions – how much was directed and how much was real. The film starts with the father treating the boy for chicken pox, did that happen right as they were beginning to film or was it re-created? The boy doesn’t seem that sick actually, now that I think about it.
In any case the scene shows the tender side of the father caring for his son, and you learn about the poverty and isolation of the family that is unable to seek medical care. The father is the main character and you learn more about him from the scenes when there is no dialogue, the way he meticulously gathers the ash from the stove so that it doesn’t spill on the floor in the house, or the way he kneads and rolls out the dough and cuts it just so for his daughters to shape. There are a few scenes where he talks directly to camera in a very stilted fashion and explains something like why they are going to plant barley on a given day. In other scenes he barks out instructions for the children to undertake various chores, such as this one where they cut his hair. (I wouldn't have picked this one for the trailer, as I find the scene rather course and overt, when as a whole the film was a bit more subtle in tone.)
A more memorable scene followed a phone call from the mother. She spends a while on the line berating the children to be diligent with their schoolwork – we find out that most of what she has earned has gone to put them in better schools – and when it is his turn to speak he doesn’t have much to say, her situation remains the same, she can’t return until her ‘documents’ arrive and when that will happen seems uncertain. He hangs up and yells at the children for laughing at the situation. The children are laughing so as not to cry, at least they got to hear their mother’s voice and they can cover the embarrassed awkwardness of their father, who admittedly doesn’t know how to talk on the phone. The frustration he feels at the distance of his wife and the Kafkaesque bureaucratic obstacles they face to reunite is absolutely palpable as a lived family drama observed delicately from the other room at just the precise moment you need that distance.
The cinematography was absolutely beautiful. You observed the passing of the seasons as they worked the land and tended the house and animals. You could live in their mostly agricultural life without an explanation of why the geese and goats were gathered and driven here or there, or why the corn was being spread out in the loft, or the reasons for the rituals performed at the grave of the father’s parents. There was no music whatsoever and the audio was suberb.
The camera angles were very deliberate and isolated. Though you lived with the family in their little house, I couldn’t give you an exact layout from room to room. Except I’m sure it was small and there was always mostly one angle chosen probably for purposes of lighting and space. But even the exterior shots were sort of vague, at first I thought wider establishing shots were from the vantage of the house, but then it seemed that they overlooked the house and the village. My urge to build a complete and detailed picture of their life was over-ruled by the director’s intention to tell their story his way and allow me to experience what he considered the essence of their existence at that time.
The Flower Bridge (Podul de flori)
Directed by Thomas Ciulei Romania, 2008, 87 minutes Cast: Costică Arhir, Maria Arhir, Alexandra Arhir, Alexie Arhir U.S premiere — February 2009 at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight.
After Christopher's award as an emerging leader in social work by the National Association of Social Workers he took his small posse for a celebratory nightcap in nearby little Italy.
From ridavio. Angelo Musco is a New York-based artist who works with the human body to create his art. His work is impressive, and being able to participate in the creative process with him is always fun. While I was in Turkey when his large shoot happened, I was able to interview him later after he completed the piece and edited this 'making of' with footage shot by a volunteer.
To create Aranea Angelo needed an enormous quantity of naked bodies. In September he held a photo shoot in Asbury Park, NJ. Around 80 models were recruited to participate. The convention hall on the boardwalk was closed to the public at midnight and for over five hours Angelo and his assistant Danielle worked with the models to create the numerous shapes needed to form the piece.
As Angelo explains in the video, the word Aranea defines a genus of orb-weaving spider thus the creation of the piece consisted in weaving a web with human bodies. The photos taken this evening were mostly used to create the negative space of the web. Several additional photo sessions were held in his New York studio to create the positive elements.
To finish the project Angelo and Danielle worked for several months, and in the last 2 months for 12 - 20 hours a day, to create a web with over 52,000 bodies. The final piece will be one 8' X 16' photograph in four panels. Aranea exhibits at Pulse Art Fair in Miami, opening on December 3, 2009. Angelo is represented by the Carrie Secrist gallery.
what you will has moved to Saturdays at the Guggenheim. The Kandinsky exhibit is worth full price, but not when you consider the line. A matinee, a stop at the Norwegian Church Xmas fair, and La Danse at Film Forum made for a full afternoon and evening. If you have the opportunity the documentary has been held over and is superb.
Ali was shy about getting his picture taken, but he looked great at the opening for the show he curated at the Studio Museum. When the flash didn't go off it seemed like a good way to keep it incognito. The energy in the museum on those nights is always fun. The artistic crowd in Harlem can really turn it out.
Neil organized a small 'reunion' from those of us who canvased for Obama in PA last year to phone bank in support of a public option in the health care reform that will be discussed soon in the Senate. The action was conceived by the group Act Now and consisted of calling Connecticut voters and urging them to call Joe Lieberman's office and request that he not filibuster with the Republicans to kill the public option.
As we made our calls the House debated their version of health care reform which they would pass. A Times article states that 36 million more Americans will be covered who do not currently have health insurance. Republicans bitterly opposed the reform and will continue to fight hard to maintain the status quo (their plan called for insuring only 3 million more Americans).
Will these calls make a difference? It's hard to say. Lieberman is quite a wily and smug politician, even leaving his political party and holding on to his senate seat. In any case, we had reports that the voice mail in his offices was full from the calls. If you live in Connecticut and want to try reaching him on Monday Act Now has posted his contact information here.
Personally it felt good to take action, even to read the script aloud, to say words in favor of reform, progress and a way forward. And every so often, to connect with a voter also willing to take action.
The Hudson River bike path was a bit more congested today with the arrival of the USS New York. Not only was recycled steel from the World Trade Center site used in it's construction, it was being made in New Orleans when Katrina struck, what a history.
To my own astonishment I towed the party line when I got in the voting booth this morning - the Green Party line of course, where I am registered - pulling the lever for Rev Billy Talen. Somehow I didn't know or had forgotten he was actually running for mayor. But in the true spirit of democracy I had to support a voice who is among the few agitating for a truly alternative vision for this city, who does speak for the disenfranchised and will continue to create spaces of civic participation.
While walking in the park today I noticed the large willow by the pond had fallen. Or maybe was taken down? It had seemed fairly healthy.
