Archive for the ‘Kinetic Cinema’ Category

Filmmaker Amy Ruhl is fascinated by the body in film, particularly when it becomes mutated, dismembered or perverted by the cinematic medium. For her Kinetic Cinema program presented this past Monday at Uniondocs in Brooklyn, she focused on the rich history of the female body in film, especially that most intriguing of female archetypes, the femme fatale.

In her first short film, “How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body” Ruhl reimagines the famous courtesan and spy as if she lived her life the way it ended (by execution with her body donated to science and her head put on display at the Musée d’Anatomie). Ruhl’s Mata Hari is quite literally a person split in her allegiances – between mind and body, warring countries, sexualities, high and low art. There was no reconciling her contradictions, and in trying to have everything both ways, she enraged the very public she was trying to seduce and was destroyed.

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Girl Walk // All Day, a music video of epic proportions will be coming to New York, NY Sunday May 6th 2012 for a screening at The Wild Project in the East Village. There will also be a special dance performance by Flex group, Streets Finest.  Tickets are available here.

Additional screenings will be added to their website in the next few weeks, check the events page for a screening near you.

Check out one of their latest videos featuring  Flex group, Streets Finest.

PORCH STORIES, Photo: Gary Tacon

Marta Renzi’s Kinetic Cinema program “Let Me Entertain You” presented at Gibney Dance Center on Thursday March 22nd had a political and moral message behind it’s light title – Making an audience laugh is just as important and necessary a function of art as making them cry, or question, or think.

The evening was centered around a quote from Preston Sturges’ iconic 1941 film “Sullivan’s Travels” in which a Hollywood filmmaker sets out to make a “serious” film about poverty in America during the Depression. After a series of mishaps, the hero is believed to be dead and he ends up in jail, where he truly learns the dehumanizing oppression of poor people. The only light in the whole experience comes when he watches a movie with his fellow inmates, and he finds himself laughing tears of joy at the antics of Disney characters (just the sort of trite entertainment he was critical of when he set out on his journey). At the end of the film he tells his producers he wants to make a comedy, and leaves us with this unforgettable last line: “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh! Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan! Boy!”

For filmmaker and choreographer Marta Renzi, this sentiment can be seen throughout her thirty years of art making, in which she has worked with people of all ages, classes, and races, both professional and amateur. Her mandate is to bridge art with real life, and she has done it in laundromats (The Welcome Table), auto mechanic’s garages (Year, Make, Model), neighborhoods (Porch Stories), and rust belt towns (Little Wild Heart) to name a few. In the mini-retrospective she showed at Kinetic Cinema we could clearly see her love for common people. Regardless of technique, budget size, or production elements above all else, Renzi wants to show the virtues of ordinary people in their daily lives, and the acts of celebration, joy, pain and pride that are there if only someone will shine a light on it. Interestingly, Renzi has approached this not as a gritty documentarian, but as an entertainer and a dancer.

In many ways, it is the archetypes of the working person that interest Renzi rather than the specific stories of individuals. In her films dance is a means of turning everyday tasks into ritualized sacred acts that defy normal space and time. In “The Welcome Table” working class black women look like high priestesses of the laundromat. As if by magic, the little white girls whose clothes they are washing appear in a procession through the laundromat and then disappear again, only to reappear in a hidden garden of a crumbling mansion. In Porch Stories the neighborhood characters evoke fairy tale counterparts including a “Pied Piper” old musician being followed by mischievous children, and a “Rapunzel”-like author trapped by her own writer’s block on her porch high on a hill.

Opening the evening was a short improvisatory solo and a video work by Arthur Aviles, a long time friend and performer of Renzi’s. Arthur’s video, “To Be Real” tells the story of a pheasant that was trapped in the Hunts’ Point neighborhood of the Bronx, and how the bird’s release inspired a dance (performed by the beautiful Althea Pace outdoors on the Bronx waterfront). Aviles is also concerned with bridging art with community and creating an atmosphere of inclusion. He is the founder of BAAD! (The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance), in an old factory space in Hunts Point that has become a beacon for creative talent in this notoriously poor and underserved part of the city.

In a world that is polarized by words such as entertainment vs. art, socialism vs. capitalism, liberal vs. conservative, it is so refreshing to see Renzi and Aviles’ work which seems to bridge these dualities and show us how we are all in this “cockeyed caravan” together. That is the beauty of art, especially poetic forms like dance. We can go beyond the either/or’s and see how we are connected in divine and beautiful ways.

To learn more about Marta Renzi and her work go to: martarenzi.blogspot.com.
To learn more about Arthur Aviles go to: www.bronxacademyofartsanddance.org

PORCH STORIES, Photo: Gary Tacon

Kinetic Cinema: Let me Entertain You

Screening and discussion with Marta Renzi

Marta Renzi, an acclaimed choreographer and filmmaker, curates a provocative program of Kinetic Cinema that reveals the real inspiration behind her work, and reminds us of why art matters:

“Asked to share something about why I make dance films, I find myself showing excerpts from feature films that include a prison gang, a drunken orgy, and run the gamut from Greek tragedy to Saturday morning cartoons. To accompany these, I’ve chosen bits from my own dance films featuring characters with everyday lives and actual jobs – nursing aide, garbage collector, fast food worker, bartender – and who dance like it.”

Arthur Aviles, a long time performer and collaborator of Marta’s will open the evening with a video and solo piece of his own.

Marta Renzi has been making dances professionally since 1976.  In 1992, Marta received a New York Dance & Performance Award (a “Bessie”), and in 1995 was the first recipient of a Dancing in the Streets award as “a fearless explorer of all manner of unconventional sites, integrating art into everyday life.” In 1981, she made YOU LITTLE WILD HEART, a half-hour video dance for PBS, followed in 1989 by a second for television entitled MOUNTAINVIEW, made in collaboration with filmmaker John Sayles. Since 2005, she has self-produced several short films which have been screened nationally and internationally.

Arthur Aviles is a Bessie Award-winning dancer and choreographer of Puerto Rican descent. Mr. Aviles was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and toured internationally with the company for eight years 1987 to 1995. In 1996 Mr. Aviles founded Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre (AATT) in Paris and moved the company to the Bronx the same year. In December 1998, he inaugurated a new performance space in the American Banknote Building, a warehouse in the Hunts Points section of the Bronx. His company is the centerpiece of BAAD! – The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

Kinetic Cinema had a merry time with the Merry Makers last Sunday, February 26^th at Fort Useless.  The night involved video and performances by Jessica Flannigan, Kate Taylor, and the Merry Makers Rachel Sattler and Elizabeth Burwell along with their filmmaker Ethan Duff. Though quite different from one another the three acts were tied together by elements of nostalgia, parody, and feel good comedy.

During the screening of their film “Adventures In Anytown,” Rachel, Elizabeth, Ethan cued us in on their battles with freezing temperatures, venue changes, time cues, costume design and crunch deadlines.  They shared clips from films that influenced the formation of their stage and screen personas including segments from Annie, Moulin Rouge and Lavern and Shirley among others.

To hear of the Merry Makers process from start to finish was inspiring.  It also reminded us of what we already know but sometimes forget, which is that when it comes to art New Yorkers are by your side to make it happen.

Join us for our next Kinetic Cinema event with Marta Renzi on March 22^nd at the Gibney Dance Center.

For more information about the Merry Makers, visit them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/MerryMakersDance?sk=wall