video i Season 12
#1211 – Original Airdate: Mon, April 30th at 10pm
49TH SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Featuring films and interviews from the festival
TALES OF MERE EXISTENCE (Dir. Lev Yilmaz)
If you haven't met him yet, meet Lev: a Psychology 101 action figure. He's just like any other young, urban sub-professional seeing the world through inch-thick goggles of self-consciousness. With occasionally inadvisable optimism, he's looking for the comfortable balance between minor victories and overwhelmingly crushing defeats. He's a perpetual wallflower, furiously analyzing the social puzzle but never knowing where he fits into it. He's a super-hero whose only power is the ability to cope. For more, go to: ingredientx.com.
Filmmaker Bio
Lev began the ultra low-budget comic/animation series Tales Of Mere Existence in 2001, based on gleefully embarrassing thoughts and stories from his own life. Films from the series have recently shown on Comedy Central's new late night show "Jump Cuts", as well as in innumerable festivals, screenings, and gathered a substantial cult audience on the Internet. He has continued the series in a self-published comic book that is sold with a DVD of the movies, and plans to continue with it in this cross-media way from now on. The Book/DVD is available at Lev's website.
19: VICTORIA, TEXAS (Dir. Dolissa Medina)
An experimental short film about the deadliest case of human smuggling in U.S. history. Using rich sound design and abstracted news footage, this award-winning four-minute short by San Francisco filmmaker Dolissa Medina is a visceral journey into the dark, claustrophobic experience of a human tragedy. For more about this film you can contact the filmmaker at: dolissa@hotmail.com.
Filmmaker Bio
Dolissa Medina is a San Francisco-based filmmaker whose films include Grounds (2000), Fight or Flight (2002), A Lineage of Kind Men (2004), Cartography of Ashes (2006), and the award-winning 19: Victoria, Texas (2006). She has received grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Film Arts Foundation, and the LEF Foundation. She is a recipient of a 2006 Bay Area Video Coalition Mediamaker Award. Ms Medina is originally from South Texas.
RELATIVE DISTANCE (Dir. Cathy Begien)
In this experimental documentary, the filmmaker records her relatives as each gives her a 2 minute message. Juxtaposed with split-screen footage of her daily activities this film reminds us how difficult it can be to understand someone, all the more so if you love them. To learn more about this film and the filmmaker, visit her website at: cbegien.com.
Filmmaker Bio
San Francisco's dilettante, Cathy Begien, was born in Singapore but raised in Saudi Arabia and Southern California. She attended UC Santa Cruz for writing and then moved to San Francisco. Begien has participated in several film festivals and group shows (including The Getty Center and Angela Hanley Gallery in Los Angeles), and is represented by Winkleman Plus Ultra Gallery in New York. When not busy hiding in her closet (her production studio is known as Closet Arts), she can be found face down on a blanket in Dolores Park.
TROGLODYTE (Dir. Desiree Holman)
Desiree Holman's Troglodyte is a short experimental art video that incorporates video, sculpture and large format photography. In a comic and ridiculous gesture, the video attempts to investigate human emotion and behavior by having its' actors pretend to be chimpanzee. The video plays with ideas of violence, sex, animism, nurturance and the primal horde. To learn more about this film and the filmmaker, go to: desireeholman.com.
Filmmaker Bio
Desiree Holman is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, CA. She received her MFA at UC at Berkeley in 2002. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Yerba Buena (San Francisco), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); BnD (Milan), YYZ (Toronto) and Lisa Boyle Gallery (Chicago).