Amateur Hour: A Super-8 Diary by Jason Halprin
Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 10:00PM
Tears McFarlane Mansion in Cheesman Park
1290 Williams Street, Denver, Colorado
Admission: donation of $5 or more

The Films:
These Super-8 diary films from Jason Halprin shot between 2002 & 2005 contain musings on topics such as repotting houseplants, a solo road trip across Nebraska, the waves rolling in on the Atlantic coast of Florida in winter, and the studied complexities of hand gestures in political stump speeches. At times whimsical, contemplative, intimate, and beautiful these pieces showcase the varied and idiosyncratic styles that Halprin employs when working in a silent, small-gauge motion picture format. Many of the eleven films included in the show were edited in-camera and contain strategies of temporal manipulation utilizing time-lapse and slow motion camerawork. Together they function as a stream-of-consciousness narrative addressing the filmmaker’s emotional states and visual obsessions during an adventurous and untethered period in his life.

The Filmmaker:
Jason Halprin was born in Boston, MA in 1978 and grew up in a small ranching town in Southern Colorado raising sheep and baking prize-winning muffins for 4-H and dreaming of becoming an astronaut or an Olympic Skier. He attended high school in Colorado Springs and after time in Hamilton, NY, Boulder, CO, Berkeley, CA, and Milwaukee, WI, he currently lives in Chicago. Halprin has worked in film and video as art since 1996 and his work has addressed the concepts of home, geography, and the myths of the American West. He is currently a part-time faculty member teaching cinematography at Columbia College (Chicago). Halprin is a Pisces and enjoys hiking, baking, soccer, and travel.

-Jason Halprin in Person-