Description: Filmed with the Ashaninka people of the tropical forest in eastern Peru. Moving in close for the feel of, the smell of, the struggle of the place and people who still live with the land, cook over fires, and raise their children in the forest.
"Roots, Thorns" was filmed during a third visit with the Ashaninka.
PASSING BY HARRY (James Prange, USA, 2006, 16mm)
TIE Review: "Jim Prange presents a true enigma to the world of Avant-garde cinema with his new film Passing By Harry. The film subverts many time-honored characteristics of the branch of experimental cinema known as personal cinema, in a way that is, paradoxically, satirical and wholly sincere. The film exalts a car-based voyage to America’s heartland. The filmmaker’s objective for the trip is to commune with the birthplace of our 33rd president. Prange narrates in the early part of the film in the vein of a local tour guide. We see Truman’s boyhood residence, and the home where he lived out his days after his tenure in The White House. Images of Old Glory contribute to the film’s patriotic tone."
"The focus of the film then changes entirely, validating Prange’s choice for a title. An unidentified family then becomes the primary subject of the film. The family engages in leisure activities on a lake, with children frolicking in the water. The film draws to a close on the long road back to the filmmaker’s home."
"The music in Passing By Harry deserves special consideration as it acts as its own character in the film. The melodramatic score oscillates between something that resembles the campy music of a made-for-TV movie, and orchestral splendor of Fantasia. Its overstatement is so grand that gives the whole work the sense of being a silly parody."
"On the surface, Passing by Harry seems like a quaint memoir that honors a conservative ideology. Intentionally or not, the film humorously challenges a chapter in the canon of cinema’s subversives." -Noah Manos, TIE
LAY DOWN TRACKS (Danielle Lombardi/Brigid McCaffrey, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Artist Statement: This film began out of our shared desire to reach outside the private world of the optically printed films we had been making and interact as filmmakers, with eachother, with others, with landscapes, machinery and living rooms. It is an inquiry into how those unsatisfied behind desk, counter, hammer, sought out or fell into a transitory means of getting by. Wheels, windows in the sky, waiting rooms; does another routine just fall into place for these travelers or do novel stimulations and unpredictable comforts rule? We worked with individuals familiar to us and reached out to some we wanted to know, recording audio interviews as one long conversation. A bolex passed between us, we filmed what we saw, reimagined, and recalled about the environments these itinerants moved through. Inviting ourselves along multiple journeys, the path was never linear, and final destinations evaded us. The intersections of these transient lifestyles spoke of local backgrounds, personal identity, and the nature of opportunity.
TIE Review: At its inception, this experimental nonfiction is presented as a travel log. The journey begins in a wooded rural locale that resembles the Pacific Northwest in the melancholic rapture of autumn. Once en route, the authors unhurriedly pass through a series of small towns engaging with some of the local inhabitants. Subtle images of place visually define this inaugural section of the film; these quiet images bear the mark of an outsider presenting details overlooked by a conditioned eye.
As it unfolds, the humanist focus of the film reveals itself. McCaffery and Lombardi connect with a series of individuals who share the intimate personal details of their lives. The film could be defined as a portrait of the rural working class, but it defies that label through several urban, white-collar, individuals who are also subjects of the film. The result is a classless portrait of the individual American that reflects the diversity of our national experience. The candidness of the people in Lay Down Tracks is truly edifying.
Subjects of discourse include: gender roles, travel, locality, work, marriage, religious convictions, beards, wages, and Taoism. -Noah Manos, TIE