Crime or Violence

Money

Taped on Prince Street in Soho, New York, Skip Blumberg creates a one-word performance. Shouting the word "Money" over and over, he attracts the attentions of New York's finest. The crew attempt to explain to the policemen that there is no public disorder as the streets were empty when they began to tape.

The video is an unwitting early example of the reaction of the state to the use of video cameras on the streets.

Sterling Ruby

COOK

Transcription of voice over from COOK: "I’m a chemist/I’m a cooker/ I’m a manufacturer and a distributer/I’ll do whatever the fuck I want in the privacy of my own home."

A disguised and threatening voice repeats this rhythmic slogan over found footage of meth labs seized by law enforcement. Made in 2003, this video remains eerily relevant, addressing the violent and irrational impulses underlying the American Dream of free enterprise.

This title is only available on Suitable Video, Volume 1.

Jeanne C. Finley, John Muse

Manhole 452

Despite assurances from local municipalities, a fact of life is that Manholes blow sky high more frequently than most people realize. Manhole 452 directs the viewer’s attention to the shapes, sizes and patterns of manhole covers on Geary Street in San Francisco, and then plunges deep below into the manholes themselves to explore the hidden threat that lies below.

Basma Alsharif

Everywhere was the Same

In an empty room, a slideshow projection of abandoned places plays alongside the narrative of two girls who find themselves on the shores of a pre-apocalyptic paradise. Told through subtitle text that weaves fact and fiction together, the story of a massacre unfolds. When the image and text malfunctions and the story is no longer comprehensible, the video wanders away from the room of the slideshow, allowing us to see what is happening elsewhere.

Radical Closure, Program 1: The Captives

This first program deals with stories of captivity. To start, Hostage: The Bachar Tapes by Walid Raad presents us with an imagined hostage presumably held in custody along with the American hostages in Lebanon during the 1980’s. Raad’s work reflects on the invention and communication of stories about abduction, insisting on the families’ unity in the face of threats, and reads through the fears and sexual fantasies of the kidnapped Americans who are held in the same cell with a Lebanese man.

Jennifer Montgomery

Deliver

Like a generation of viewers, I was profoundly affected by Deliverance. But I have always been troubled by the hegemonic structures of gender proposed by Boorman and Dickey. Hence, my version is played by women: myself, Peggy Ahwesh, Jackie Goss, Su Friedrich, and Meredith Root, all experimental filmmakers who work as academics. While faithful to our respective male characters, we also play ourselves.

Călin Dan

Wings for Dogs

The result of a three-year project with inmates from a high security prison in Romania, Wings for Dogs is an essay about language and its capacity to simultaneously communicate and hide issues connected to guilt and responsibility.

Nicolas Provost

Stardust

Stardust is the second part of the trilogy where Nicolas Provost investigates the boundaries of fiction and reality by filming everyday life with a hidden high resolution camera and turning the cinematic images into a fiction film by using cinematographic and narrative codes from the Hollywood film language. The first part of the trilogy was the award winning Plot Point (2007) that was shot entirely with a hidden camera and turned everyday life around Times Square, New York into a thriller film.

Kevin Jerome Everson

Second and Lee

Second and Lee is a cautionary tale about when not to run. It uses archival reportage and voiceover recollection to trace through repetitive corridors of presumption, justice and judgment.

Cast: James Williams.

This title is only available on Broad Daylight and Other Times: Selected Works of Kevin Jerome Everson.

Kevin Jerome Everson

Playing Dead

Playing Dead is a film about lying still to stay alive. A news reporter queries the survivor of a brutal attack.

This title is only available on Broad Daylight and Other Times: Selected Works of Kevin Jerome Everson.

Hester Scheurwater

Lisa

Two women occupy one space. Without showing their faces, the camera lingers on their bodies in images that capture both from an extreme high angle. The camera distorts the female body, even creating a grotesque effect. A voice repeatedly calls for a woman: “Lisa, come here, don’t be afraid… that’s it, I won’t hurt you.” A video which explores the gaze on the female body, and the desires and violence overwhelming it.

This title is also available on Hester Scheurwater Videoworks: Volume 1.

Peggy Ahwesh

Pistolary! Films and Videos by Peggy Ahwesh

This 3-disc DVD collection features nine works by maverick film and video maker Peggy Ahwesh. The set also includes title descriptions, a biography, film/videography, a selected bibliography, and the following texts:

Pistolary! Films and Videos by Peggy Ahwesh -- Eileen Myles
Film, Baby -- Peggy Ahwesh
Interview with Peggy Ahwesh -- Scott MacDonald

François Bucher

Haute Surveillance

This video develops from a real event that took place during a theater seminar in the masters degree program at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Columbia. The seminar occurred during one of the university's worst periods of violence. Two students in charge of a presentation on the life and work of French author Jean Genet decided to play a hoax on their fellow students - a hoax that involved an armed kidnapping. Their idea was to perform the ethos of Genet's work rather than to represent it in a conventional way.

Hester Scheurwater

Bruises

A bruise on her face. The woman has white makeup, bright red lips and dark-rimmed eyes, which are largely covered by her hair. Without uttering a word, she hits her face, head and upper body.

Donigan Cumming

Donigan Cumming: Controlled Disturbance

This three-DVD collection features 18 titles, 10 years of videography, and over six hours of material by Donigan Cumming.

"Cumming has said that it is his intention to question, "the myth of the innocent, invisible photographic witness." Borrowing from what he calls, "experimental ethnography," Cumming consciously positions himself not only as investigator, but also participant, caretaker and friend. Thus his examinations of human frailty are always tempered by a compassion that stems from his own involvement in the situations he records."

Crime or Violence

Search