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The Perpetual Life Of Jim Albers
Inspired by the ancient Hindu concept of samsara -- the endless cycle of birth, life, and death related to karma. A paranoid journey through the mind and body of a man who realizes his daily routine is not only drab and meaningless, but may continue forever. (Matt Goldman, 12 min., 13 sec.)
Fat Feet
Red Grooms shot this 1966 film with a 16mm camera. The vintage piece is a veritable city symphony, complete with living comic strip characters and sound, pixilated and animated. Dominic Falcone and Mimi Gross star. (Red Grooms, 18 min.)
Hyper Alarm Dance
A four-minute computer-animated dance music video that explores issues of time in a colorful, fast-paced dream sequence. It features choreography, performance and animation elements by Michael Cole, a former Merce Cunningham dancer. (Michael Cole, 3 min., 40 sec.)
Kneel and Dimples
The small stars of this 1979 short film enjoy a brief but romantic "hon-knee-moon" in Knee York. Blissfully in love, they visit local hot spots, ride the "stubway," ingest Japan-knees food, and skin-knee dip at Coney Island before meeting an unfortunate end. (Pat Oleszko, David Robinson, 5 min.)
La Puppe
Paying homage to Chris Marker's 1962 classic short La Jetée via a gentle parody, this short features a nuanced performance by Marty, the patriarch of the French New Wave plush toy movement. (Timothy Greenberg, 9 min., 20 sec.)
Breakfast in Despair
Line drawings are the performers in this animated improvisation of dream characters who unfold a plot with unreal transformations. (Eunjung Hwang, 3 min., 5 sec.)
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Fearful Visitation: The Great New York Steamboat Fire of 1904
Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the burning of the steamboat General Slocum in the East River, during which 1,021 lives were lost, this film recalls what was -- until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- the deadliest disaster in the city's history. Using evocative still and moving images, the film offers a step-by-step recounting of the calamity. First-hand accounts are provided by the only two survivors, Catherine Connelly and Adella Wotherspoon; prominent historians such as Kenneth T. Jackson, Edward O'Donnell and Luc Sante provide insight and perspectives. (Philip Dray, Hank Linhart, 52 min.)
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Spring in Awe
Set to an Arabic version of "I Put a Spell on You," this short looks at the presentation of news about the war in Iraq on digital displays in Times Square, and the way the blinking lights and commercialism obscure the realities and absurdities of the conflict. (Martina Radwan, 4 min.)
Why You Were Born
A film animation that utilizes found images cut directly from vintage women's magazines. A frenetic frame speed shatters the role of women in advertising and then offers sadistic feminist and Sapphic solutions. (Kelly Spivey, 6 min.)
Barely Audible
Chinaka Hodge performs this short video, based on her poem inspired by her neighborhood in Oakland, California. Hodges takes viewers into the world of Darius, and through him, Trina, a teenager negotiating impending womanhood, pregnancy, love, and doom. (Katherine Copeland, Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi and Vivian Wenli Lin, 3 min.)
Educated
A seemingly normal day at school turns into a surreal pursuit, when 15-year-old Alice walks into the girls' bathroom and finds her best friend, a fellow over-achiever, hanging herself. As Alice attempts to find out what drove her friend to attempt suicide, she uncovers a fantastical and deadly world of familial obligation, competitive pressure and social expectation in the Chinese-American community. (Georgia Lee, 11 min.)
The Show
A man's fatal lynching is viewed as art in this silent tale, which delves into the last moments of the victim's life as the graphic photograph commemorating the murder resurfaces in a surprising setting. (Cruz Angeles, 8 min., 30 sec.)
How to Tell Your Friends From the Japs
The Eric Idle song "I Like Chinese" is the soundtrack to an all-Asian male slide show with text appropriated from a 1942 TIME article describing physical differences between Chinese and Japanese men. The song's disparaging lyrics, along with the demeaning nature of the photographs, form a tongue-in-cheek, subversive video short. (Julia Cowing, 4 min.)
The Trickle Down Theory of Sorrow
An experimental, autobiographical documentary that situates the filmmaker in a web of economic and social injustices. At the core of the film is an interview with the filmmaker's mother, during which she describes employee exploitation and gender discrimination in the jewelry factories where she worked during the 1940s and '50s. (Mary Filippo, 15 min.)
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Naked Pavement
Joshua Tunick journeys into the world of Spencer Tunick (no relation) as the artist attempts to stage one of his trademark shots: capturing 100 nude people lying on New York City pavement. (Joshua Tunick, 20 min.)
226-1690
Richard P. Rogers creates a minimalist soap opera from the messages left on his answering machine over the course of a year. With footage of scenes visible from the windows of his loft, Rogers provides a poignant account of life caught between the public and the private. (Richard P. Rogers, 28 min.)
The Brooklyn Pigeon Project
The fruits of the unique project by architect Benjamin Aranda to record New York from a whole new perspective -- that of a flock of birds. This piece is a collection of the footage from Aranda's efforts, which involved equipping pigeons with wireless video cameras and microphones and then sending them off on their unpredictable flight patterns. (Benjamin Aranda, 6 min.)
A Thin Wrapper of Understanding
Inspired by Susan Sontag's notion of the camera as a machine that can create art randomly without the hand or eye of the artist, an attempt to simulate the subjective experience and question what can and cannot be known about the human memory. Filmmaker Dan Labbato performed this visual experiment by setting up a video camera to make an exposure every 30 seconds and record a trip from upstate New York into the city. (Dan Labbato, 2 min., 50 sec.)
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Ghostcatching
A virtual dance installation performed by legendary dancer Bill T. Jones that melds the arts of dance, drawing and computer composition, and in turn examines the body in motion. (Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, 8 min.)
Yes, She Said
A panicked bride hides in the deep end of a swimming pool to avoid her wedding. Her groom tries to find her, but will he succeed in bringing her to the altar? Laurie McLeod looks at cold -- and wet -- feet in this silent film shot entirely underwater. (Laurie McLeod, 8 min., 53 sec.)
Limón Moving Into the Future
A documentary spotlighting the Limón Dance Company as it carries on the legacy of its late founder, José Limón, while evolving over time. The film captures rehearsals, reconstructions, new creations, and performances as it explores the challenges facing current dancers. (Evann Siebens, 27 min., 27 sec.)
When I am little again
A choreographed collage of video, motion capture animation, text, and family photographs that embrace the healing process of Jewish evolution through remembrance. (Kareen Balsam, 7 min., 30 sec.)
Wrapture
Capturing a moment that begins with the ocean, the abstract movement of the waves, their power, and their randomness, and then the rapture of the deep and the experience of almost drowning. (Carol Goss, 4 min.)
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The Light
Shot across America in New York, Florida and Nevada, a description of a non-place, a universal journey from the countryside to an urban construction ground. The journey is in progress: lights grow from lone street lamps to groups of work lights, from myriad klieg lights traversing the night sky to clusters of 7,000-watt xenon rays that seem to carve a hole into the void. (Brian Doyle, 10 min., 18 sec.)
Global Groove
This 1973 piece by Nam June Paik with John Godfrey is a seminal tape in the history of video art, offering a radical manifesto on global communications in a media-saturated world rendered via frenetic electronic collage. (Nam June Paik, 28 min., 30 sec.)
Poetry in Motion Pictures
KEEPING THINGS WHOLE and DELTA comprise POETRY IN MOTION PICTURES, the fruits of an outreach program based on the Poetry in Motion subway series. (Shaun Irons, Lauren Petty, Jonathan Calm, 12 min.)
Loretta
A hand-made photogram -- or rayogram, after Man Ray -- an opera in miniature, an abstract absolute aria rendered into life by a million flashlight moments. (Jeanne Liotta, 4 min.)
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Night Magic
A man named José holds on to his dream of becoming a magician despite the daily humiliations he endures from his supervisor, teasing from his domino partners, and even the cruelty of a reality-TV magician. (Bernardo Ruiz, 17 min.)
above & beneath
Encapsulates the idea of the digital revolution, the notion that individuals will begin grabbing up equipment and making reflexive, personal masterpieces. Initially, the film presents black-and-white footage of a woman waiting for the subway train and then riding it. The filmmaker then cuts to color footage of the same woman swimming effortlessly in the clear waters of an undersea paradise. (Rene Alberta, 4 min.)
Anna in the Sky
A film about a boy who must resort to the dark arts in order to win back his love, the fickle Anna. (Mark Edgington, 10 min.)
Stefan's Silver Bell
STEFAN'S SILVER BELL -- a fairy tale complete with innocence, hidden truths, and a relationship -- unfolds through the story of Stefan and Roosevelt. As the line between dream and reality dissolves, Stefan must make an unimaginable choice. (Samuel Zalutsky, 15 min.)
Unearthed
The story of a potato that struggles for its life in the face of a hungry ferret, and then receives a wondrous glimpse into the visible world. With its newfound sight, the curious tuber happens upon a discarded bag of potato chips and must then come to terms with its own mortality. (Christina Spangler, 8 min.)
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Clotheslines
CLOTHESLINES documents the pragmatic, symbolic, and artistic role of laundry in women's lives. It shows how the creative energies of women have often been sapped by mundane tasks -- like laundry -- and how, in turn, such tasks reflect a ritualistic approach to life. The film delves deeper into the underlying traditions, beliefs, and practices of women where the recurring image of the clothesline becomes emblematic of the unseen work of women. (Roberta Cantow, 32 min.)
A Good Uplift
Faye Lederman, Cheryl Furjanic, and Eve Lederman offer a glimpse into a Lower East Side lingerie shop in A GOOD UPLIFT, traveling back in time to the corner store where owner and Jewish grandmother Magda embraces and enhances women of all shapes and sizes in pursuit of the perfect bra. (Faye Lederman, Cheryl Furjanic, Eve Lederman, 13 min.)
Dolly
In an old Upper East Side walk-up, plastic heads, limbs, torsos, and wigs clutter a few dimly lit rooms. Welcome to the New York Doll Hospital. DOLLY profiles resident "doctor" Irving Chais as he diagnoses and treats toys and dolls in disrepair. (Annie J. Howell, 7 min.)
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