September 17th, 2014
@ Farewell Books (map)
8:30pm
Free! ($5-$10 Suggested Donation)
CINEMA BABYLON is a traveling screening series, showcasing a program of emerging independent filmmakers exploring both the excesses of narrative, and the unraveling form of experimental film. This series is supported by the Millennium Film Workshop. With filmmakers and programmers Michael Bucuzzo & Christina Kolozsvary in person, and featuring work by Lindsay Denniberg, Rachel Maclean, Gina Marie Napolitan, Mike Olenick, and Stephen Quinlan.
Farewell Books, founded in February 2013 and run by Travis Kent & Mikaylah Bowman, is a progressive new and used bookshop and art gallery in the city of Austin, Texas.
Cinema Babylon Tour Promo from SurreaLux on Vimeo.
Program
Lol Cats by Rachel Maclean
15 min / digital / sound / 2013
Lolcats — inspired by the Internet meme of the same name — explores an amalgam of past and present manifestations of cat worship. Shot entirely against green-screen the video presents a mutable space, at once a mysterious lost civilisation and a modern day touristic fun park. The narrative centres on a young female protagonist, presenting her in moments of intrigue, fear, metamorphosis and decay. Journeying through this erratic environment she encounters a bejewelled Katy Perry discussing dental hygiene with an aristocratic cat, stumbles upon an army of hostile feline cyborgs and is surgically dissected by a gothic physician.
Hex and the City by Stephen Quinlan
10 min / digital / sound / 2013
In the winter of late 2002, HBO executives made the decision to re-vamp its second most-popular series, replacing its entire writing staff with a new team formed and led by Donna Gregory: the underground cultural icon responsible for the NAFFU newsletter and several relatively important experimental films starring her own sex organs as talking puppet-like characters.
Eudora by Michael Bucuzzo
10 min / digital / sound / 2013
Eudora explores the family home through the eyes of a returning spirit: my grandfather. By navigating the lens through spaces and belongings of personal history, the camera becomes an attenuator for passed familial memories encased in a domestic tomb. As a ghost story devoid of characters, Eudora uses its images as a resurrective force to examine the ambiguity of memory and reality, and its further degradation through the act of recollecting.
CHANCES! by Lindsay Denniberg
15 min / digital / sound / 2009
Filmed in lands made of glitter and spit-up, CHANCES! documents the journey of two Triscults just hanging out. Disrupted by their evil dance instructor Mr.Transylvania; Triscults seek revenge, meet new friends and overcome with the power of Frank. CHANCES! was a year-long project created by a group of friends seeking magic through the use of film!
A Catechism of Familiar Things by Gina Marie Napolitan
8 min / digital / sound / 2012
A survey of the visual history of Brockton, Massachusetts and a fractured re-telling of one of the city’s most infamous murder cases: the 1946 Christmas Tree Slaying.
Stop-motion animation, paper cut-outs, paint-on-glass, and long exposure photography re-activate an eclectic stockpile of found objects, most of which were salvaged from my grandparents’ and parents’ houses.
Spaceboy by Mike Olenick
6:50 min / digital / sound / 2009
A sexy sci-fi space opera set in a glittery galaxy. Will Spaceboy find true love in outer space or will he die in a cruel embrace?
Astronaut and the Star by Christina Kolozsvary
22 min / digital / sound / 2013
The Astronaut and the Star is a fantasy psycho-drama set in the 1940s. A young man roams the hallways of a home in which he is imprisoned, while pining over his mysterious female captor. As temptation is pursued, the young man becomes lost between reverie and reality. Punishment and reward follow the tenuous logic of a dream, as this house of desire crumbles from within.
