Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

"A personal investigation of cellular memory, a bio-metaphysical musical." -Betzy Bromberg “Los Angeles-based experimental filmmaker Betzy Bromberg returns to the screen with her latest gem, a Darkness Swallowed , a 78-minute meditation on the evanescent traces of memory and loss. At once her most elliptical and also her most overt work in a career that spans nearly 30 years and more than a dozen dazzling films, a Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth… Dedicated to the filmmaker's mother, the film is also a gift to us, a reminder of cinema's organic basis in chemistry and light, and of its ability to take us deep inside.” - Holly Willis, LA WEEKLY

For over 30 years, Emily Hubley has created short, hand-drawn animated films that explore personal memory and the turbulence of emotional life. The daughter of filmmakers Faith and John Hubley, she worked at The Hubley Studio in various capacities from 1977 to the present. Ms. Hubley created the animation for John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch. With Jeremiah Dickey, she has provided segments to numerous documentaries including Blue Vinyl by Judith Helfand and this year’s William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, directed by Emily and Sara Kunstler, and What’s On Your Plate?, directed by Catherine Gund. Ms. Hubley was a 2004 Annenberg Film Fellow. She workshopped her first feature film, The Toe Tactic, at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters’ and Filmmakers’ Labs. Films in screening order: Pigeon Within Set Set Spike The Toe Tactic

A lyrical filmmaker as well as a sound and visual artist, Robert Todd has been making short films since 1990. His collection of short films, shot in 16mm, demonstrate a masterful command of the medium, the strong influence of painting, musical forms and poetry, and an openness to chance. His visually stunning body of work, not easily defined or categorized, comes from a deeply personal place, which is quiet, thoughtful, and curious. The films take a variety of poetic approaches to looking at the personal, political, and social ways in which we choose to live. His works have been exhibited internationally at a wide variety of venues and festivals including (in addition to the Ann Arbor Film Festival) the Media City Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Entre Vue - Belfort International Festival, Black Maria Film Festival, Nouveau Cinema in Montreal, Cinematheque Ontario, the Harvard Film Archive, Pacific Film Archive, the Paris Biennial, Slamdance Film Festival, and others. His films have won numerous festival prizes, grants, and artist’s awards. He currently teaches film production at Emerson College in Boston. Films in screening order: Riverbed Antechamber Passing Repair