*NOTE TIME CHANGE*
On Sunday April 19, 2009, at 7:30 pm, my M.F.A. thesis film Common Ground will have its premiere as part of a program of four short films. The screening will take place at the Egyptian Theatre, presented by Los Angeles Filmforum.
Los Angeles Filmforum presents Common Ground: Four films
At the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. (at Las Palmas), Los Angeles CA 90028
Four young film-makers–Vera Brunner-Sung, Haeyong Moon, Erika Vogt, and Laida Lertxundi –celebrate the commonplace and the contingent. They lead us to notice anew what we might miss in our everyday surroundings. They celebrate the memories made in a stone, in a field, in a song. Are these places sacred then? We live in a ruined paradise, and in ruining it, we have made it our home, and since it is our home, we must learn to love it and to value it. That is the lesson of these movies. – Thom Andersen
COMMON GROUND by Vera Brunner-Sung (2008, 27 min., 16mm and super-8 on DV)
FOR A BRIGHTER DAY by Haeyong Moon (2005, 30 min., 16mm)
MOTOR POST MOTOR BAND DISBAND by Erika Vogt (2007-2009, 22 min., video)
MY TEARS ARE DRY by Laida Lertxundi (2009, c. 4 min., 16mm)
Three filmmakers will be present!
Programmed by Thom Andersen
Common Ground by Vera Brunner-Sung (2008, 27 min., 16mm and super-8 on DV)
World Premiere!
From 2006 to 2008, I filmed in and around Arnold Heights, a neighborhood of abandoned military family housing near Riverside, California. While initially drawn to the buildings themselves, I ended up using little of my early footage. As I researched its history, the site struck me as a confluence of social and economic interests representative of something much larger than another desert ruin. The resulting document is as much about imagination and ritual as it is the physical place itself. Landscape acts as a mirror of the past on the future. Common Ground seeks to understand what becomes of memory—both personal and cultural—in this process. – Vera Brunner-Sung
For a Brighter Day by Haeyong Moon (2005, 30 min, 16mm color w/ SR)
For a Brighter Day captures the everyday image and sounds of Los Angeles, New York City and Tecate: the people we encounter on the street level, the melody from the ice cream truck, colorful flowers sprouting from the most unexpected places, wired fences that shape our view, abandoned objects that dress the street, and pigeons and cats that look for a place of refuge. The film takes a journey through the traffic and cycle of our daily life, resonating a vision of hope and complacency in the present. – Haeyong Moon
Motor Post Motor Band Disband by Erika Vogt (2007-2009, 22 min., video)
The seven short videos that comprise Motor Post Motor Band Disband are part of a collection of works that in part take the screen and projection as their subject. In Screen Talk, for example, two iconic images, that of a motor part and that of a music man find themselves exchanging information. Both images reverberate on the screen. The motor pulsates under the light and motion of a film projector and Vogt whirls as an offset shadow, generating music that is deafened by the sounds of the film machine. Each piece in the collection Motor Post Motor Band Disband was taped, re-taped, filmed, re-filmed, projected and re-projected. The result is a raucous collection of animated works that is both celebratory and mournful. – Erika Vogt
My Tears Are Dry by Laida Lertxundi (2009, 4 min., 16mm, color/sound)
World Premiere!
A film in the three parts of a dialectic. Hoagy Land’s song is played and interrupted as guitar makes sound, two women, a bed, an armchair, and the beautiful outside. After Bruce Baillie’s All My Life. The lyrics of the song reference the eternal sunshine of California and its promises. – Laida Lertxundi