Pictures at an Exhibition
With visits from Robert Schaller and Phil Solomon, not to mention our own Jon Behrens, we've been lucky to see some of the strongest contemporary work in the realm of abstract filmmaking. Not all experimental filmmakers work in the abstract, though. Some find their own sense of visual poetry in more traditional ways, like through beautifully photographed compositions. Such is the case with the films of Bill Brown; he will present them in person at 911 Media Arts on Saturday, January 17.
The title of the show, Truck Stop Still Lifes, nicely evokes a life on the road looking at landscapes far from where you grew up. Caught somewhere between documentary and personal narrative, Brown's essay-films cover large areas of the North American landscape. His narration makes them play like episodes of NPR's This American Life, but with strong images and without the annoying music.
Confederation Park opens in Montreal with a lovingly photographed static shot of a middle-class neighborhood. Brown then begins telling personal stories, and his observations return again and again to the French liberation movement in Quebec and reactions to the idea of secession. Even as he traverses the country collecting beautiful shots--ending up in Vancouver--his thoughts never stray too far from this central idea.
In Buffalo Common, Brown compares the "decommissioning" of marginal agricultural land to the decommissioning of the nuclear missile silos that litter the North Dakota landscape. Like the other films of his that I've seen, it's both amusing and thought-provoking. I haven't had a chance to see his latest, Mountain State, but I love the concept. Apparently it looks at the history of westward expansion through 25 historical markers in the state of West Virginia.
Elsewhere in town, the group Cinema Diaspora is once again taking control of the Central Cinema (1411 21st Ave at Union St), this time under the title Uniting Communities. Nazrah: A Muslim Woman's Perspective (Saturday at 7 pm; Sunday at 4 pm) is a documentary that gives voice to 12 local Muslim women on topics like faith, family, dating, marriage, careers, feminism, travel, and more. The other movie is Shouting Silence (Saturday at 4 pm; Sunday at 7 pm), a documentary that personalizes the devastation of AIDS in Africa by looking at it through the eyes of an adult orphan who lost her mother to the disease in 1996.
In terms of potential film production in town, stop on by Consolidated Works on Monday, January 19 (7:30 pm, FREE) for a screenplay reading of Harper's Tangle, about a snow-globe-factory worker who goes on a journey and meets giant fish and talking squirrels. And congrats to the UW film students who beat universities from across the nation (schools who have actual film programs, at least) to win $10,000 in Pioneer's 48-hour filmmaking competition.
