ANAIS NIN VIDEO & FILM DIARY FESTIVAL 2004 FILM PROGRAM
Friday, May 28th 8:30pm
Henry Miller Library lawn
RESILIENCE
Amy Happ, USA 1997
The heartbreaking story of the filmmaker's "second" mother, a relocated Eskimo woman who is confronted with racism and sexism in middle America, and who must eventually face her own alcoholism as well.
(14 mins.)
PASSAGES
Gabriela Bohm, USA 2000 (film clip)
A personal documentary about filmmaker Gabriela Bohm's journey through Eastern Europe, Israel, South America, and the United States to uncover her family's history. "It's a compelling tour!" L.A Weekly
(60 mins.)
WHY, ARIZONA
John Church, USA 1996
An experimental x-rated road movie on the highways of the queer erotic frontier.
(8 mins.)
Saturday, May 29th 8:30pm
Henry Miller Library lawn
HONEY AND EGGS- THE END OF FANTASY
Marjorie Sturm, USA 2001/2004 (film clip)
This video diary documents the feelings and
decision-making that occurred after falling in love with an Italian man in Mexico and being
reunited with him three years later. Kate Thompson travels with this film, too. Music by
Marjorie Sturm and Ernesto Diaz-Infante.
(30 mins.)
TENDING ECHO PARK
Monica Gazzo, USA 1999
"Tending Echo Park" is an experimental diary film by Monica Gazzo on
life in the Los Angeles community of Echo Park at the turn of the XXth
century. Daily artifacts, people and literary reminiscences from the 1900's are
juxtaposed with images of the city in a rich sound / image collage. The film is a
stylistic essay on cinematic "écriture feminine" and reinvents a film
grammar based on gender and race. The autobiographical material of daily life is
expressed through semiotic strategies and psychoanalytical symbolism. Music
composed and performed by Joan La Barbara.
(16 mins.)
IN THE BATHTUB OF THE WORLD
Caveh Zahedi, USA 2002 (film clip)
On January 1st, 1999, Caveh began a year-long video diary, the idea
being to shoot one minute each day.
(80 mins.)
Some fine articles about the upcoming
Experimental Music (and Anais Nin Diary Film)
Festival:
Look At Me By Sue Fishkoff --CoastWeekly
Unchained Melodies By Stuart Thornton --CoastWeekly
411: A Musical Suprise By Andrew Gilhooley --The Salinas Californian
BIOS
GABRIELA BOHM
Throughout her adult life, Ms. Bohm has
persistently pursued her two main passions: the
fine arts ands the healing arts. She attended A
Midrasha Le Morim Leomanut art school in Israel,
where she studied film, photography, painting,
sculpture, and art history.
In 1986, she moved to the United States to study
film at New York University, where she worked on
all aspects of various short films. Her thesis
film Voice-less, which she produced, directed,
wrote, and edited, screened at many film
festivals around the country. She graduated in
1990 with a BFA in Film and Television, and after
graduating she produced The Wild Side, a
documentary short subject on the war on drugs for
Brazilian Television.
Over the past ten years, she has also pursued a
career in various healing arts. She has studied,
taught and practiced massage, shiatsu and
"psycho-structural balancing," and she has been
exploring the possibility of creating a
synergistic partnership between the art and
healing communities. Her latest film, Passages,
is an effort to bring together these longstanding
passions.
JOHN CHURCH is the son of Reverend Joe B. Church
and Betty Church. Along with his two older sisters
Karen and Kathy, John spent the first 18 years of his
life painting, drawing, and listening to his father's
sermons at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Valdese,
NC. In 1984, John attended the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he came out of the
closet as gay, co-chaired the Nuclear Disarmament
Group and received a degree in Political Science/History.
After receiving his undergraduate degree, John moved to
Washington D.C. and worked for the Congressional Research
Service of the Library of Congress. His distaste for
Washington's political climate under the Bush Sr.
regime of the late eighties returned him to his original
love of the visual arts and storytelling. So in 1993,
he moved West to California to commit himself to his passion. In
San Francisco, he made several experimental queer films,
in Super-8 and video, which won awards at the San
Francisco Aids Foundation Video Competition and went
on to play in numerous Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals
around the world. John is presently enrolled in the
MFA Directing Program in UCLA's school of Theater,
Film and Television in Los Angeles where he will be
shooting his Thesis film called Evermore this
June.
MONICA GAZZO
was born in Argentina, has worked and lived
in Italy, and is now a Los Angeles based filmmaker, videographer,
trilingual linguist and film / video educator.
Her work is distinguished by a unique combination of visual
poetry, originality and intimacy, while challenging issues of gender
and race. She held a studio at Angels Gate Cultural Center from 1994
to 2001 and currently lives and works in Venice,
CA.
AMY HAPP was born in Santa Ana, which is part of Orange County,
California. She left as soon as was possible to study filmmaking at
San Francisco State and is now finishing her MFA there. Her primary
filmic interest is creative documentary. Resilience is her first film.
She also made Naysayer, a portrait documentary about Tommy Strange, a
long time San Francisco anarchist struggling to reconcile his ideals
with his everyday reality. Currently she is working on a documentary
on a riot at Folsom prison, and the correctional officers who blew the
whistle on the administrators who may or may not have caused it. For
fun she likes to experiment with Super 8 pinhole cameras, and to get by
she is a professional baker.
MARJORIE STURM
was born in Manhattan and raised in
Rockland County, NY. She studied psychology and art at
the University of Michigan and then moved out to San
Francisco. She has lived for extended periods in Mexico,
Nepal, India, and Israel studying poetry, film, music, and
religion. She received her MFA in filmmaking from San
Francisco State University, and has supported herself by
working with the mentally-ill homeless.
CAVEH ZAHEDI
was born in 1960 in Washington D.C.
He began making films while studying philosophy
at Yale University. After graduating, he went to
Switzerland to try to work with Jean-Luc Godard,
but Godard politely declined. Disappointed, Caveh
returned to the United States and got a job
trying to teach video to autistic children. When
fellow workers started mistaking him for one of
the autists, Caveh quit his job and moved to
Paris to try to raise money for a film about
French poet Arthur Rimbaud. He failed to raise a
single centime, and soon returned to the U.S. to
try to make the film in Super-8 with no money.
The result was an unmitigated disaster, and he
decided to give up filmmaking and devote himself
exclusively to collage-making instead.
After some lonely months with collage-making and other filmic
disappointments, Caveh applied and was accepted to UCLA's
flm school.
Here he met and began collaborating with Greg
Watkins, an ex-philosophy major from Stanford.
Together, they co-directed "A Little Stiff", an
experimental narrative in which he re-enacted his
unrequited love for a UCLA art student, using the
real-life participants. The film premiered in
competition at the Sundance Film Festival, won
widespread critical acclaim, and aired on German
television. "A Little Stiff" is currently
available on home video from World Artists.
After making "A Little Stiff", Caveh received
grants from the American Film Institute, the City
of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and
the National Asian-American Telecommunications
Association to make "I Don't Hate Las Vegas
Anymore", an experimental documentary that
attempts to prove the existence of God. The
controversial film won the Critics' Award at the
Rotterdam Film Festival but was treated with
widespread derision and hostility in the U.S.
Caveh's new project is an autobiographical film
entitled "I Am A Sex Addict." The film is being
funded in part by the N.E.A.
NOTES ON FESTIVAL
Ten years ago or so, I met up with an Anais Nin diary after studying
Orthodox Judaism in Jerusalem. She was a name I had often heard and was
meaning to read. Finally, I did so with Leonard Cohen in the background
air. For a week straight I cooped myself up in an apartment reading
her work like a self-enforced rehabilitation program to shake out the
dogma of orthodoxy. Anais Nin was certainly a path to
it.
It's hard for me to summarize all of the things that I love about Anais
Nin, but I will try.
She believed in Travel, the high of new sights and sounds, as well as
the expanded awareness that movement inevitably brings. Insights and
eroticism that can be trusted.
Internationalism and global citizenry.
It seems to me Anais Nin loved artists as much as she loved art. She
put her livelihood on the line, sharing her resources with many people.
She supported Henry Miller at times (I believe some of the time he
stayed in Big Sur), and wanted his artistic vision to be heard despite
not always liking it herself. Theirs was a loving friendship that
didn't have to agree.
Anais Nin bought a printing press in order to self-publish her own
works when no one else would. Her creativity was a necessity, not a
commercial enterprise to be controlled by profiteers.
Later on in her life, she put her early writings into libraries at
women's colleges. Anais Nin wanted young women artists to see how bad
her early writing was as a means of inspiration. She wanted to
demystify the "genius artist," those who are born with special
talents, and let other young women see how hard she struggled to shape
the poetic fluidity of her subconscious writing style. She was generous
with her love and encouragement, inspiring others to unfold
themselves.
Or at least that's what she did for me. The revelations and
observations in her writings triggered me to want to further explore my
own as well as the feminine psyche. Honesty was suddenly addictive,
slightly orgasmic, as she peeled away some of the bullshit we take for
granted.
Anais Nin felt that the "divided self" sought violence in order to feel
something. Anything. Experiencing violence (whether real or simulated)
is better than nothing when you are shut down to a whole continuum of
other emotions. Similar to Jung, Anais Nin believed in the
non-necessity of war if people could unite the different sides of their
personality. When this imbalance is no longer projected outwardly, war
could potentially seize. Her pacifism was personal. From Anais Nin I
learned the word furrawn- the intimacy achieved through conversation
that leads us to a greater understanding of ourselves, others, and
thereby the world at large. These video diaries are in the spirit of
furrawn. Honest confessionals that bring us closer to eyes of the
heart. Through osmosis and time, perhaps this intimacy/understanding
can effect the political climate in new directions? Hope it doesn't
take too long because, as most of us know, we have some scary
sociopaths running our country.
-m.sturm 5/16/04
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