Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

The political or cultural aspects of history are the mere surface of history; that in preference to, and deeper than these, the reality of history lies in biological power, in pure vitality, in what is in man of cosmic energy, not identical with, but related to, the energy which agitates the sea, fecundates the beast, causes the tree to flower and the star to shine. Built out of a 30-fram clip of a lens flare. LSD is illegal, 1859 is not. Jury's Choice First Prize at the 2009 Black Maria Film and Video Festival. 2008 New York film Festival, Views from the Avant-Garde 2009 Rotterdam International Film Festival Brakhage Symposium at the University of Colorado

Serving as the second piece in a three-part cycle exploring the unperceivable conditions that frame life, in this film the same protagonist encounters an antagonist that is studying her, measuring her body and comparing her to units of space and time. Clocks rush and her movements are calculated on a grid: the eye is observed augmented through lenses; under water her breath is submitted to a resistance rate; needles are use to quantify her reactions and pain: and storing machines capture voice and motion. For the scientist measurement is understanding. At the operation table she opened a small vivisection in the patient body. With a flower stigma she proceeds to pollinate her, giving to nectar and blood the same flow.

Over the last 28 years, Negativland’s work has touched on a number of issues that are very much in public view these days: creative anti-corporate activism, media literacy, intellectual property issues, evolving notions of ownership in a digital age, the art of collage, pranks and media hoaxes, and “culture jamming.” Most famous for getting sued for their “U2” single, and the subject of renowned filmmaker Craig Baldwin’s 1995 feature film Sonic Outlaws, Negativland have grown many thorns in the side of the corporate media and the entertainment biz. Join us for this one-of-a-kind multimedia presentation by Mark Hosler, founding member of Negativland. Q & A to follow. No lawyers were harmed in the making of this event! Sponsored by: Michigan Radio - 91.7 WUOM Ann Arbor

Music by David Byrne and Brian Eno.

A place where we wait to find either transcendence or a path into ourselves that we hope is deep enough to draw new life from. Here we wait...

A biography about the nineteenth century writer and explorer Eliza Farnham. Through voiceover, inter-titles, black space and a subjective camera, a single event in her life is examined.

A world in autumn; a requiem for lands not yet departed. This video was made with handpainted 35mm filmstrips, acrylic ink and solvents.

Amid an ocean of wax one might chance upon a garden of flowering chemicals, where the filmmakers have circumnavigated microscopic reactions, creating an epic in miniature.

BOUQUETS 21-30 is a part of the ecological BOUQUETS series, consisting of one-minute films composed in the camera by weaving the characteristics of different environments with the activities there at the time. The filming basically entails using the filmstrip as a canvas with the freedom to Film frames on any part of the strip in any order, running the film through the camera as many times as needed.