Portrait

Turn, 2018

In 1959, Jean Seberg stares into Raoul Coutard’s 35mm camera lens and then turns – the closing frame of Godard’s Breathless is the back of her head. For the film it is a closing. For her character it is less clear. Is it a refusal? A denial? A shying away from? An admission of guilt or not caring? A disappearing act? In 2017 on the streets of Berlin, twenty-three women, friends and passersby, reverse Seberg’s action. 

On February 10th, 2005, Lynne Stewart was convicted of providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy. She is the first lawyer to be convicted of aiding terrorism in the United States. Stewart was convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005, and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her felony conviction led to her being automatically disbarred. She was re-sentenced on July 15th, 2010, to ten years in prison in light of her perjury at trial.

Cartoonist Ben Katchar is profiled in his old diamond district studio. A Big Apple pumpkin patch that's 100% kosher.

In a garden of roses and memorabilia from darkest Africa, a man and woman ponder the joy of cooking and the companionship of cats. Goodies for the guts abound in this visual essay on feline friendship and far away places. An electronic voyage beyond the stench of house and garden that transports the viewer- and cat- to the promised land.

A series of portraits either stroked on canvas or snapped on photo emulsions becomes the theme of this travelette as the viewer relives the visions that confronted me during a hop and skip excursion over state lines and bodily curvatures.

Vera, 2003

Vera is an assisted self-portrait of consumption. The subject is a woman whose passions and compulsions are of spending and loss, taste and subjectivity.

Curt McDowell, the director, on his feet and weaving in and out of this televised tapestry with gracious grossness and Hoosier-based hospitality.

 

We At Her, 1995

A story about a young woman in Jerusalem.

Music by Toshi Reagon

Five improvisers are asked to ‘channel’ the psyche of Tony Blair. George Barber asks questions, and also feeds the improvisers anecdotes from various sources about Tony Blair’s life and experience as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The work’s unifying themes are: Tony Blair landing in the Iraqi desert at night; meeting George Bush, and the regrets of his key decisions.

This moving video portrait follows a group of teenage boys who attend the Masada School, a school for juvenile delinquents and social misfits. The boys worked on every phase of the video, and present a picture of themselves that challenges society’s, and their own, typecasting. The humor, philosophy, and honest retelling of the students’ stories details the Catch-22 of living on the street, how parents' problems are passed on to the boys through abuse and neglect, and the struggle each feels to keep hope for a better life.