Family

This arresting early work conveys a tension that emanates from what Tanaka posits as life's basic dualities: male/female, past/present, known/unknown. By focusing issues of identity, doubt, wonder, and awareness through the body, and the bodies of her ancestors, Tanaka succeeds in creating a work with both personal and political power. Tanaka creates a unique voice that speaks of her experience of maturing into womanhood, repeating the refrain, "I my mother." An experimental video, this work contains one of the first examples of flicker editing.

Brian Springer

The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity

The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity is a documentary about the search for four lost treasures buried on a single farm in Missouri. These treasures include a Spanish explorer's gold, silver from the Civil War, mysterious stone carvings, lost texts, and a wife's attempt to heal her husband and protect herself and her children. Part personal documentary and part historical essay, The Disappointment traces the patterns of cultural forgetting etched in the landscape of the Austin Farm.

Stashu Kybartas

Danny

This video is a moving personal documentary about Danny, a friend of Kybartas who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986. This powerful work explores the reason for Danny’s return home and his attempts to reconcile his relationship with his family members who had difficulty facing his homosexuality and his imminent death. Retracing Danny’s memory of his once-high lifestyle in the clubs and gyms of Miami, Danny avoids sentimentalizing its subject as it juxtaposes images, text, and voice-over to build a sense of the psychological struggle brought on by Danny’s impending, premature death.

George Kuchar

Currents of Destiny

In this video, made soon after the death of his mother Stella, we accompany George to the wake, and on to a trip to Albert Maysles holiday home on Fisher's Island.

"Deep waters flow around the living, dead and inanimate objects that bring this picture to life on the wide screen tapestry of electronic reality. Come and join the young and old of eastern energies as they bask in the sun and shadows of past sins and future fortunes. See how the other side lives and devours the fruits and nuts that pepper this great nation with neon nutrients worthy of Broadway and beyond!"

Arthur Ginsberg

The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd (Excerpt)

From 1970 to 1972, Arthur Ginsberg and Video Free America recorded the private life of a not-so-average American couple-Carel Row and Ferd Eggan. She is a porn actress and filmmaker; he is a bisexual junkie. The video verite camera captures the desires and frustrations of their evolving relationship and their responses to the ongoing videotaping exercise. The tape, a study in "the effect of living too close to an electronic medium," reveals attitudes and discussions that also render it a fascinating social document of the west coast counterculture.

Cecilia Dougherty

Coal Miner's Granddaughter

Shot primarily in Fisher-Price pixelvision, for the “murky look of memory," Coal Miner’s Granddaughter is a profoundly moving family portrait focusing on the youngest daughter Jane, as she leaves her Pennsylvania home and finds sexual independence in San Francisco. This semi-autobiographical narrative is remarkable for Dougherty’s unconventional approach: working with non-professional, plain-looking actors and improvised dialogue to recreate the life of the “average” family, and women who are “Plain Janes with big desires.”

Michael Robinson

Carol Anne is Dead

A family embraces the heart of evil in this Poltergeist re-make/drag show, circa 1992.

"Robinson recycles his family's home movie version of Poltergeist, made when he was ten, into a raw look at the performative."

--Onion City Film Festival

This title is only available on CHANNELING: an invocation of spectral bodies and queer spirits.

Ximena Cuevas

Cama (Bed)

"The life of objects intrigues me. Apparently inanimate, they adopt the souls, actions and lifestyles of their keepers. Here, a bed testifies to what goes on behind the closed door of a decent family's bedroom."

—Ximena Cuevas

This title is also available on Ximena Cuevas: Dormimundo Vol. 1 (Sleepworld Vol. 1) and Ximena Cuevas: El Mundo del Silencio (The Silent World).

Julie Zando

The Bus Stops Here

The Bus Stops Here is an experimental narrative about two sisters, Judith and Anna, plunged into depression by their struggle to gain control over their lives. Narrated by Judith’s counselor, The Bus Stops Here traps these women in a narrative in which their unmediated voices are rarely heard; instead, the viewer learns about them only through the interceding power structures of narrative, family, and psychiatric establishment.

Donigan Cumming

if only I

"What if... Colleen's life, in her own words, has been "wretched." She was sexually abused by her father, betrayed by her husband, separated from her children, driven by her love for a heroin addict to attempted suicide. Colleen has survived by taking responsibility for her decisions and dreaming of a safer place, sometimes relying on the kindness of strangers. if only I marks another hot summer in crisis. Colleen presents herself, broken and whole, to the camera.

Kathy High

Icky and Kathy Trilogy

Shot in black and white, this rough-and-ready trilogy is about twin sisters who "act out" and act up in their own best interests. At the age when a young girl might discover her own sexuality, they explore themselves (and each other) in "games" and playtime together. In the three sections—"Icky and Kathy Find Liberty", "The Babysitter", and "Learning To Suck"—the girls engage in slightly illicit acts together. Being naughty can be fun!

Mike Kuchar

House of Souls

The walls of a lone house reverberate with Human energy.

Lynda Benglis

Home Tape Revised

In Home Tape [Revised], Benglis took a portable tape recorder with her when she visited her family in Louisiana. She saw most of the experience through the video camera, thus giving her a distance from an emotionally involving situation. The tapes were replayed and re-shot off a monitor and commented about by Benglis... It is a deeply personal tape about an emotionally involving situation, but it is precisely controlled.

HalfLifers

Homesteaders

A HalfLifers journey to a lush interior landscape where some domestic chores and an unexpected encounter provoke a crisis at Mission Control, paving the way for a seasonal reflection upon the meaning of "home."

This title is also available on HalfLifers: The Complete History.

Rea Tajiri

History and Memory

A search for a non-existent image, a desire to create an image where there is none,“ leads to Rea Tajiri’s composition on recorded history and non-recorded memory. Framed by the haunting facts of the post-Pearl Harbor Japanese internment camps (which dislocated 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II), Tajiri creates a version of her family’s story through interviews and historical detail, remembering a time that many people would rather forget.

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