Chicago Underground Film Festival and Filmmakers Summit 2008

“Using a 35mm strip of picture slug featuring the recently deceased American comedian Richard Pryor, this extended Rorschach assault on the eyes moves out of a flickering chaos created by incompatible film gauges into a punchline involving historically incompatible racial stereotypes.” – B.R.

“Observing unseen events on a sun-lit afternoon” – K.E.

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In a previous I experimented with overlapping layers of video. In the project, I found that when layering segments, unique visual effects could be created. Around the same time, I was reading a book about canons, which, in music, are essentially layers of melodies in different variations in harmony with each other. I decided my next project would be sort of a visual equivalent to the canon.The simplest version of a canon is a round. Most are familiar with the song 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'; when sung in multiple parts, it is probably the best-known example of a round. Canons are typically more complex than rounds. Whereas 'Row, Row, Row...' has several voices singing the same melody, canons often add layers of melodies altered in tempo, key, or sequnce to change the sound of the base melody.I took footage at a local park at night after everyone left, then used segments of that footage as 'melodies.' The movement of the camera, when layered, becomes a rhythmic pattern. When the layers move at different speeds, the rhythm becomes more complex. Layers treated with color create new harmonies or cancel out parts of the footage beneath it. New forms are created and the source footage becomes an altogether different image.With Canons, the intention was to explore some of the parallels between music and motion pictures by using the rules of music to create a visual composition, and to transform ordinary scenes into something more alien or less familiar.

“Case Studies in Psychotherapy” follows the progress of Richard, an Everyman who began the psychotherapeutic process in a previous films, “Not Too Much Remember.”

Following the prologue, Beneath the Pressure of the Sky attempts to approximate the testimony and transition of our lovers in the face of a system which takes pride in its unwillingness to approximate anything at all. PRODUCER’S NOTE: The technical process motivating the this piece is the perpetual findings of my research into the physical nature of digital, archival media. It begins quite simply, in text; letters are written, prose, poems, notes, lists and expectations. At the same time, the code of a particular video file (its memory) is translated; this code becomes one of two programming languages, known as Hexadecimal and ASCII (figure 1.1). Both languages represent abstractions of our spoken language, used to streamline complex computations through an omission of redundancies. However, when the initial writings are joined to the functional code (figure 1.2), it creates a situation of crisis for the file, which can no longer be applied for the translation it was designed for. This manifests itself in the visual change during playback. Over time, the file would have changed along these lines anyway, though not from acute spoken language, rather from a 1 forgetting that it was once a 0. This video, and much of the Ceibas Cycle, attempts an approximation of these processes, both natural and digital.

Something has happened to PBS favorite 'Charlie Rose.' The erudite conversations and sober intellectualism have been replaced by an absurd world where illogic, inane dialogues, and open hostility rule. The one-on-one interview between Charlie and his guest begins as usual but quickly goes awry, so much so that Charlie is warned that, somewhere, a man named 'Steve' is 'not happy.' Though this seemingly random statement might confuse us, Charlie understands it for what it is – a threat. But who is 'Steve' and why is he angry? And why does the mere mention of his name stop Charlie cold? Using appropriated footage from a single episode of 'Charlie Rose,' filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr. creates something both disturbing and farcical in ''Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett.'

Introduce the next generation of CUFF Fans, at this family friendly film screening and dance party courtesy of our friends at Chic-A-Go-Go.

Circles of Confusion is meditative experimental documentary about loss in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The filmmaker parallels her experience upon returning to New Orleans with the experience of filmmaker Stevenson Palfi, who committed suicide in the months after the hurricane.