Diary

ARISE! Walk Dog Eat Donut

Film- and videomaker Ken Kobland returns to the urban landscapes he filmed 20 years previously, such as the New York subway and the S-Bahn in Berlin. We leave, we travel, but it’s always the same images that we are drawn to. A moving road movie about eternal departure and arrival.

Arizona Byways

A cactus-strewn desert becomes the backdrop for this series of filmic stopovers that focuses on the living quarters assigned the assignee of this adventurous arrangement. Great natural beauty clashes with manufactured outdoorsmanship, as a tired body and sluggish mind seek the oblivion of hotel hospitality in an arid region of artistic aspirations. The viewer is introduced to a world of prickly plants and satin-skinned succubi who prowl the alleys of western decay to staple their fig leaflets on the vertical shafts that poke unsheathed at the virgin skies of southern Arizona.

Prisoners of the Prairie

This weather diary finds me not quite alone on the prairie as Pepe and Poncho pay a visit. They dangle about the motel room and peer into blue tinged moods of explosive angst and laid back lumpiness. The sky above seeths and soothes the sinners below as we plod the sod with shiftless soles. Come join the pageant of tropospheric turmoil as flesh and wood ponder the vortex of violence that threatens manipulated mobility.

Delectable Destinations

This time, the call of the west sends me packing to Oregon, California and Arizona. You too can experience the dizzy delights of a whirlwind tour and witness wonders seen through the savage eye of a Sony camcorder. Actually, the adventure is rather mellow in mood and should spare the viewer a need for the ever looming and inevitable barf bag. See Phoenix in all its rocky royalty! Relish in the student clogged ivy halls of Portland! Immerse yourself in a technicolor rendering of Irvine, California.

Borderstasis: A Video Diary

This strange, lyrical performance video diary is a millennial reflection on the impossibility to "reveal" one’s self in stormy times such as ours. The piece is also about the intricate connections between performance and everyday life; about language, identity, love, nostalgia and activism amidst the California apocalypse.

Atrium of the Omni-Orb

A quickie side trip to the Virginia Film Festival highlights some nice, fall foliage and a few fleeting faces as the camera probes a sculptural artifact or two before abruptly shutting down.

Ask the Insects

Nine micro-essays on animation and death--with many appearances including Goethe, Pink Floyd and Bambi--leads to a final encounter and introduction.

Art Space

A brief trip to the Miami '09 art festival was the moving (or swimming) force to instigate this travelogue. There are some bathing sequences sprinkled about and lots of munching going on in this latest addition to my Christmas video series. There's even a Santa Claus figure trodding across sand instead of snow; but don't let that dismaying personage in shades of gray discolor an otherwise plentiful poo-poo platter of pulchritude.

Artists in Residence

The artists of the future and the past converge and converse as the funding dries up and extrapolation envisions extinction.

Edible Atrocities

We are what we eat, and we talk about what we are; so, naturally, we get hungry all the time. Join my friends as we not only hear, but see what they are and taste the essence of each one without the fear of emotional attachment. A leisurely, if somewhat "lazy Susan" of chewable tidbits that can be spit out if so desired (or undesired). A session of chowing down and chewing the fat with an assortment of gobblers that break bread, but no wind, with me.

East By Southwest

A trip to Boston to visit a local filmmaker in his studio is followed by a journey to the cinematic facilities of SUNY College in Purchase, NY, and then to the kitchen and living quarters of my mother in the Bronx. My mother is in her most candid mode as we relate and debate. My brother Mike suffers dental woes, too.

Dingleberry Jingles

Christmas is here again in this diary of glittering gifts, furry friends, underground movie making, and grotesque greetings. A veneer of good cheer coats the surface like thin ice, so proceed with caution!

Diorama

A sprawling look at chunks of our country as I travel back east to present some programs, and a peek at the venues that screen underground movies to the youth of today. The video also opens up big vistas of the West as I daydream about recent trips to mountainous terrain while admiring a plaster diorama of the Pacific northwest which I purchased at an all-you-can-eat restaurant in Pennsylvania.

The Desert Within

This is a journey to El Paso, Texas, where the Super-8 filmmaker Willie Varella and I have a dialogue amid domestic routines, motel accommodations, and emotional baggage, indicative of life on the road. 

The Deafening Goo

A prop-filled encounter with a young fantasy filmmaker eventually becomes muffled by an earwax problem I develop; but not before the viewer is dragged through Studio 8 where my class and I are concocting a sordid, high school melodrama.