Director: Diane Bonder

Composer: Mary Feaster

Running Time: 9:06

The shimmering light of everyday movement weaves into a dance of memory and loss.

Diane Bonder (1960-2006) made short experimental film for over 12 years. She completed 12 films. Combining super-8 and 16mm in both documentary and semi-narrative strategies, she explored issues of belonging, landscape, and loss. Her work has screened internationally at festivals including Ann Arbor, Images Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Double Take Documentary Film Festival, and institutions, Pacific Film Archive, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, The New Museum, the San Francisco Cinemateque as well as numerous microcinemas.

Completed Works:

• I REMEMBER NOW… WE NEVER DANCED... I MISS YOU… GOOD BYE…, 2006, 9 minutes
• YOU ARE NOT FROM HERE, super-8 on video, 2005, 9 minutes
• CLOSER TO HEAVEN, 16mm, 2003, 15 minutes
• IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU'D BE HOME BY NOW, 16mm, 2001, 15 minutes
• IF, 16mm, 2000, 12 minutes
• THE PHYSICS OF LOVE, super-8 on video, 1998, 25 minutes
• DEAR MOM, 16mm, 1996, 13 minutes
• TONGUE IN CHIC, video, 1996, 22 minutes
• PAINTING BY NUMBERS, super-8 on video, 1996, 3 minutes
• PAROLE, super-8, 1993, 9 minutes
• DANGEROUS WHEN WET, super-8 on video, 1993, 5 minutes
• STICK FIGURES super-8 on video, 1993, 3 minutes
• CHARTING INFRACTIONS, video, 1992, 20 minutes

Friend and fellow filmmaker, Kathy High, on Diane Bonder's work:

"Diane Bonder's film work is inspiring and haunting. Her films are fractured fairy tales about love, loss and displacement. Using optical printing techniques (re-filming frame after frame by hand) to overlay images on top of images, these films poignantly speak through washes of sensuous layers of pictures and sounds. The results are dreamlike journeys through everyday life.

"Bonder tells stories about personal memory, growing up queer, and forgotten places. Her narratives sometimes embrace a mix of archival films, photo albums and childhood games to trace the complexities of family dynamics, and love relationships gone awry. Her films also let us have a complicated look at landscapes that go unnoticed -- singling out the workings of gentrification through every faded sign and closed storefront -- remembering small town U.S.A. without nostalgia but with a historian's keen sense of detail. It is in the details that her stories come alive. Her films are poetic treasures."

From NEW YORK TIMES, September 10, 2006:

BONDER--Diane A. This notes the sad and untimely death of independent filmmaker Diane A. Bonder, 46. Diane died at her home in Brooklyn on June 23, almost a year after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was predeceased by her beloved father John Bonder and mother Geraldine (Cleerdin) Bonder, and is survived by her partner Terri Burger, her aunt Virginia, uncle Bob, cousin Mark and his children Lauren and Steven, as well as by her dear friends--her other family. Diane made lo-fi experimental film and video in documentary, poetic, and semi-narrative styles. She maintained a longstanding relationship with Millennium Film Workshop, where she taught herself the optical printing techniques which became part of her signature visual style. Retrospective screenings of her work have been held at MoMA, Hall Walls (Buffalo) and Millennium Film Workshop, and Diane was a regular contributor to both the Mix NYC and Mad Cat Women's Festivals. In addition to residencies at UCross (Wyoming) and Squeaky Wheel (Buffalo, NY), she received numerous grants including NYFA and NYSCA in 2003. Her work has screened throughout the US and internationally and received many awards. A former resident of Northampton and Boston, MA, Diane graduated with her BA from UMAss Amherst, studied photography at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston and received her MFA from Rutgers University. In 1996 Diane made Brooklyn, NY, her home. In addition to being an accomplished and prolific filmmaker, she also ran her own graphic design company, Rat Star Designs, catering primarily to nonprofit organizations. Diane was loving, strong, passionate, creative, feisty, frugal, determined, loyal and an inspiration. Cherished and loved by her many close friends and family, she will be forever missed. ... A fund has been established to support experimental filmmakers in Diane's name. Contributions may be sent to the ''Diane Bonder Memorial Fund'' at Millennium Film Workshop, 66 East 4th St., NYC, NY 10003.