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.

While Mata Hari’s career was spent mostly in the service of men, she really yearned for artistic legitimacy and coveted the role of Salomé (played by many lesbian performers of the time). Ruhl showed the ‘Dance of the 7 Veils’ from Alla Nazimova’s Salomé and explained the allure of the part this way:

“This clip illustrates my favorite part of the [Oscar Wilde] play, which is that everyone in the play is looking at another character and desiring them, but that character never looks back at them… King Herod is looking at Salomé very lecherously and his wife [Queen Herodia] is saying ‘Don’t look at her!’…Salome is looking at John the Baptist, who won’t look at anyone but up toward God, because he has this annoying piety…I think that it’s a really amazing, on Oscar Wilde’s part, critique of the sexual roles going on at that time in Victorian England, where nobody gets to have what they actually want…and this role really spoke to a lot of lesbian performers.”

In addition to Ruhl’s film and curated selections, two other experimental filmmakers, Amy Greenfield and Kerrie Welsh showed shorts and took part in the discussion.

Amy Greenfield’s Wildfire was made from footage shot of a multimedia, avant gard strip show. After looking at the footage of the show, she wanted to show a thread between her work and the early films Thomas Edison made of female performers dancing in the style of Loie Fuller, the most famous of which is Annabelle Dances. Made in 1894, Annabelle Dances is of Annabelle in a costume of billowing fabric that she swirled and moved in undulating and serpentine ways. The film was hand tinted in different colors to simulate the lighting effects of live stage shows. Greenfield opens her film with footage of Edison’s Annabelle Dances and dissolves into her modern version with nude women whirling fabric. The video was also hand tinted in a similar way to the early film and the rapidly shifting edits make the images whirl past the viewers eyes giving a spinning sensation to the watcher.

Kerrie Welsh’s Peter, Peter… draws from the aesthetic of home movies in the 1950s, and starts out showing a typical nuclear family in a nondescript suburb where everything is “hunky dory”. The mood quickly shifts as the pretty wife has an extramarital affair and the father goes into a jealous rage.  A dark retelling of the children’s rhyme, “Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well,” Welsh’s film shows everything that would never be included  in a  typical family home movie, and incases it all in a shell of normalcy.

Kerrie Welsh, Amy Greenfield, Anna Brady Nuse (moderator), and Amy Ruhl

The three filmmakers shared a mutual interest in the history of feminism in film, and a desire open up roles for women (and ways of interpreting those roles).

Greenfield commented, “What interests me, is living through 1980’s feminism, that what we’re doing, using the female erotic, not rejecting any aspect of the female and cinema, was a no no then – I was very persecuted. But audiences are coming around again to my films and it’s a wonderful time for seeing films like this.”

Kerrie Welsh replied, “One of the things I think is interesting [about Ruhl’s film], is the way it is engaging with all of these historical moments in a way that is also engaging with the film medium. So when you talk about the female erotic, I feel like [Ruhl’s Mata Hari] is really using performance, she’s using her own body, in a way that is referencing not some natural female eroticism, but all of these difference modes of performance that have been naturalized  or associated with sexuality in various ways. I think the questioning of that in this really funny weird way is what speaks to me about the film.”

Ruhl explained that while Mata Hari never worked in film herself, she became a rich subject for other great actresses who depicted her on screen, including Theda Bera, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.

“What really interested me [about Mata Hari] was that she really defined this subset of femme fatale.”

Related articles:

• “Mata Hari, the Technologized Body: A Conversation with Amy Ruhl” by Kerrie Welsh, On-Verge
• http://www.uniondocs.org/2012-05-07-kinetic-cinema-with-amy-ruhl/
• Amy Ruhl on Vimeo
• Amy Greenfield articles in Move the Frame
• Flesh into Light: The Films of Amy Greenfield, by Robert Haller Intellect Press.

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

Come to laugh and be inspired, and leave tapping your toes!

Fort Useless

36 Ditmars Street

Brooklyn, NY 11221

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kinetic Cinema: “Dance on Camera Extended”

Kinetic Cinema’s Dance on Camera Extended program last Saturday, February 4th, was an intimate yet rich event. After the screening viewers conversed on the diversity in the six films shown that evening, as well as the wide array of films at the Dance on Camera Festival the weekend before. Why do we yearn for an element of surprise in modern dance?  How does a dance film weave in narrative and does it have to be a complete narrative? Is it important to know where a choreographer is from?  Does it change our perspective?  These were just some of the many questions debated.

Thank you to those, including dance film choreographer and director Jody Oberfelder, who came out to join and share their perspective.  As she eloquently said it is conversations like these that make the events so worth it!

Presented in conjunction with CRS and the Dance Films Association.

Come join us for our next Kinetic Cinema, The MerryMakers Make Movies featuring the vaudeville shenanigans and silent films of The MerryMakers at Fort Useless in Brooklyn on Sunday, February 26th at 7pm (doors open at 6:30)!

This Sunday choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke will present a screening and discussion at Moviehouse on the ways artists form relationships and navigate their personal lives and their art. The following Sunday dance filmmaker Zena Bibler will teach a down and dirty DIY dance film-making workshop at Green Space Studio in Long Island City.

Exploring Artistic Relationships

A screening and discussion with Aynsley Vandenbroucke

Moviehouse @ 3rd Ward
Sunday November 13th, 7pm Doors and Food, 8pm Screening
$5 suggested donation

In research for her new piece, Vandenbroucke’s program will examine artists’ relationships between personal partnership and artistic practice. From documentaries and films featuring New York based artists like Patti Smith and John Cage, freedom and commitment, presence and absence, public and private, mobility and stability will be questioned and the debate will be recorded.

3rd Ward (map)
195 Morgan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11237
718.715.4961
events@3rdward.com

The One-person Crew: Techniques and strategies for getting it all done yourself

Kinetic Cinema Workshop with Zena Bibler

Green Space
Sunday November 20th, 3-6pm
$30 in advance, $35 at the door

Want to make a dance film but don’t know where to start? In this workshop filmmaker and choreographer, Zena Bibler will teach strategies for making dynamic films through use of camera positioning, perspective, rhythm, and movement composition. This workshop is especially geared towards dance filmmakers interested in filming and editing themselves. Register Now!

Green Space (directions)
37-24 24th St. Suite 301
Long Island City, NY 11101
718.956.3037

On October 21 & 22 the company will premiere their latest performance project, Bound at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, examining the lives of nine individuals living under occupation. For Kinetic Cinema, they will provide a demonstration of their unique working technique with Samar Haddad King live on Skype, along with a curated selection of videos related to Bound.

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre has been hailed as “awesomely athletic” by Chicago Stage Style, and “Like a ray of light coming out of the arid desert…leaving the audience mesmerized in their seats” by Hussein Daaseh, Al Rai. You can more about their long distance creative process in this article by Jennifer Edwards for the Huffington Post.

Here is a video about the making of Bound.

Click here to view the embedded video.

BOUND

October 21-22, 2011 at 7:30pm

LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Mainstage Theater
31-10 Thomson Ave, Long Island City
7 Train to 33 St/ Rawson St
Tickets: $15 Advance / $20 at the door / $10 Students
www.ysdt.org

Kinetic Cinema with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

Saturday December 3rd, 4:30pm

CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing)
123 4th Ave, 2nd FL
New York, NY  10003
212.677.8621
info@crsny.org
$10 suggested donation

We have extended the discounted early registration deadline for Zach Morris’s workshop, “Moving with Objects and Architecture: Choreography for the Camera and Site-Specific Dance”.

Information about the workshop and associated screening, as well as how to register is available on the Kinetic Cinema Page on the Pentacle Website, and below!

Kinetic Cinema @ Green Space

Workshop and Screening: Moving with Objects and Architecture
with Zach Morris

Choreography for the Camera Workshop

Tuesday May 3rd 7-10pm

In this workshop, multi-disciplinary artist Zach Morris will lead participants through a process of creating site-specific movement works for the camera. A grab-bag of choreographic tactics focus on working with the architecture of a site to pull images and meaning from its components. Techniques for researching a site and exploring its possibilities in movement; finding hidden meaning in a space and developing methods to amplify it; and issues of staging, storyboarding, and choreographing for the camera will be introduced through a series of focused exercises.
$35 if registered by May 1st / $40 at door
Register here

Film Screening: Moving with Objects and Architecture
Tuesday May 17th 8-10pm

Join us for an evening of Dance for Camera curated by Zach Morris of Third Rail Projects and The Dance Film Lab.  Films to be screened include Dirty Ho (Lan tou He); (Dir. Lau Kar-Leung, Contrecoup (Dir. Pascal Magnin), Rest in Peace (Chor. Hans Hof Ensemble; Dir. Annick Vroom), as well as footage from Casino Royale (Dir. Martin Campbell), Touch of Evil (Dir. Orson Wells) and Singing in the Rain (Dirs: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen).
$7 online / $10 at door
Reservations

Zach Morris is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer whose work includes site-specific performances, installation art, video and multi-media projects, and immersive performance environments.  He is particularly interested in creating projects that place contemporary art and performance in non-traditional contexts.

Zach’s work has been seen internationally, at several theaters around the U.S. and at numerous venues in New York City.  He is Co-Director of Third Rail Projects,  an NYC arts organization dedicated to bringing art to the public through an array of media; organizer and moderator of the NYC Dance Film Lab; creator of the annual Steampunk Haunted House in New York City; and serves as adjunct faculty for Florida State University.  Zach has a BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University.

Green Space, 37-24 24th St. Suite 301
Long Island City, NY 11101
Phone: 718-956-3037
Info@GreenSpaceStudio.org