Film Brigade is Back!

Chicago Short Film Brigade
I founded and incorporated this feisty little non-profit org in 2006. We host intimate community screenings of local and international short films in the midwest.

Film Brigade was on hiatus this year while I reorganized the board, my life, and started my new film (among 100 things).

We’re back! Board is now comprised of the original three founding board members: myself (photo center), Andrew Bird (absent on picture day), and Jason Vassiliades (left). Ryan Jewell (right) joined the board this month after a year of solid, inventive volunteering. 2010 Season looking gorgeous.

Home Video on New York Times Website

Home Video on New York Times Website

I made this home video years ago.  A hot weekend, the three of us hung out in the barn for hours while they recorded. I baked an apple pie, shot tons of video.

During a break in recording, Andrew and I went for a long walk in the hills. When not shooting, I slung the camera round to my back so we could play frisbee and race each other uphill. Dan opted to stay back and read. It was 2005.

This past Christmas, Andrew asked if he could post the video to his blog on the NYTimes website. I was reluctant at first. We’d just spent months undoing our deeply intertwined life. The barn was a compounded and painful loss for me. Winter without it was unbearable.

Ultimately, it seemed fine to match the video with Andrew’s blog. I sat down and trimmed two minutes off the home movie. Shuffled things around. Tightened scope, threw on some credits.

What I shot that day was a thorough gathering of everything I love about the farm. Only a tiny piece of that is in this video, tailored to the recording process.

I love that it feels like a Sesame Street minifilm of sorts – like the one where they show you where milk comes from or how bread is made.

I’m pleased with how Andrew tied it to the new record.  We were together for three albums. I remember each melody’s birth – on a walk somewhere together in the world, in the shower, doing laundries. Kayaking, playing frisbee, making breakfast at home.

Nearly five years together culminated in a parting of ways full of snot and tears last autumn. We are still close. This video doesn’t in any way sum up what the barn means to me but I’m glad it was made.

New Project, Old Project

2008 was nuts, to say the least. I’ve worked hard to dial it back in recent months. Have been taking it easy (kind of).

Of course, a new project is in the works. I’ve been developing it for about a year now. It’s a documentary called Mormons Make Movies (about my personal connection to the Mormon film industry). Am gathering funding and putting together crew.

Rhino is off and running. I’m with the film til June’s end. Our trip to IDFA in November was a thrilla, all five screenings sold out. So excellent to have a yum-pile of Kartemquin people rambling around in Amsterdam together. Andrew and Neal met up with us too- finishing off a short European tour.

IDFA is a great festival. I’m still feeling mean and critical about the quality of the short films I saw but my two favorite feature films at IDFA were Nishtha Jain’s Lakshmi and Me and Rick Minnich’s Forgetting Dad. The balance of intensity in both films was incredible, considering both filmmakers were in their own films. So many ways that can go.

All Up in Rhino

RHINO continues to bring droughts and monsoons of work for me. As we near the finish line, tends more toward rigorous monsoon than anything. Non-stop triage for things that have to be done RIGHT NOW.

About a year ago I was setting my alarm for the middle of the night so I could call Namibia and beg for permits. Or writing emails to Kenya, practicing patience knowing that two weeks is a fairly standard time frame in which to respond, whether that response be from some obscure record label (soundtrack is going to be glorious) or a wildlife conservationist living in far out lands.

This week I brought our Namibian translator back from his home in Yonkers so he could help us be sure the Himba scenes were edited correctly. Tomorrow I have piles of narrator-candidates to sort through. There’s a Kenyan man we’re rather attached to, but he’s still in Africa.

This thing is soon finished. Proud of it. Exhausted.

Now With 50% Less Heart Attacks?

Trying. Doing my very best to enjoy! Not work too hard! Take a day off here and there. I am enjoying very much. Wow I love my projects. Still working too hard. But enjoying. To boot, this showed up today and I was launched over the moon…

My beloved friend Diana Sudyka made this for the Film Brigade’s upcoming BEST show. We’ve all worked really hard on this show. The poster feels like a reward.

We Begin the Year… by Rocking It

We’re home from family holiday extravaganza, did it all again this year… holidays with his family and mine. Excellent to witness each other’s People for a few days.

Film Brigade is in full, swift, swing. Best Of at the end of the month has us all dancing, quick. I’m a bit breathless about what film the audience will give the money prize to. It can only go well, right? Also piecing together this season’s Premiere.

Milking the Rhino rounds the corner from whispers of production to full on holy nuts- we have to finish this film AND it has to makes sense.

We woke up New Year’s day feeling full of potential thrills and lay in our cozy house making plans and feeling light. No resolutions. Just plans.

I have yet to fill you in about how the IMITOSIS music video was made while was still waking up in the middle of the night to argue with Namibians for permits. And why watching my nephew chase a piece of banana around his neck was infinitely better than most things that week.

Here’s a photo of a pullet egg fresh from a chicken’s bum last spring. I ate the egg for breakfast after putting the camera down. Those girls are getting big… why, I remember when they were still living in the tub, all 28 of them.

Chicago is Where We Do the Laundry

That sums it up these days. Chicago is for laundry. Our friends don’t really think of us as living there anymore.

I took a red-eye on the 18th of November to join Andrew, who’d been gone since November 3rd. We were supposed to be home three-plus days before leaving again on the 5th of December but snow kept us in New York long enough for a less-than-48-hour stop in Chicago for… laundry (and other scrambling) before a flight to San Diego (then LA, San Francisco, and Minneapolis). Working on the road’s been excellent. Takes the sting out of the long Chicago-Winter-Beatdown.

Being home for a total of 8 days in December was completely worth it, especially for the scramble we all did to shoot three live shows in Mpls. I decided at the last minute to edit down Lisa Barcy’s MERMAID to use as projections for those shows. We spent the morning at the hotel’s waterpark then parted ways (Andrew off to do press and freakout). I spent the day in our hotel room with cranky old iMovie, editing MERMAID down from 17 minutes to 7. We used it at that night’s show and the next. A total blast. (photo courtesy of James Tran)

Live Show Visuals for Andrew

Am back in Chicago after a five-show run with Andrew and the boys. Living on the tourbus is how I imagine it would be to go camping while hurtling through space. It’s a constant battle between hot and cold air, extreme light vs. blinding dark. Then absolute inactivity with wild, frantic bursts of action once we hit the ground. We don’t stop working until way after the show is over. Can’t say I mind it in short doses.

This was culmination of a project I’ve been working on since Spring: visual projections for Andrew’s live performances. This batch features the beauty and glory of work by Arthur Ganson, Britta Johnson, and Bill Brown.

Arthur Ganson’s machines are spectacular. I’m thrilled he allowed us to include his films in a recent blitz of Film Brigade shows AND trusted me enough to chop them up for projections. Working the editor Amanda Dunlap, I built a light storyline out of Ganson’s handmade gears, the little yellow walking chair, mysterious clapping eggs, and unforgettable flying paper wings.

These were selected from Arthur’s films (which he shot and edited) of his original sculptures and feature “Thinking Chair”, “Machine With Eggshells”, “Machine With 23 Scraps of Paper” and a few spare parts from others. An excellent fit for Andrew’s “Opposite Day”.

I first saw Britta Johnson’s short film “Post Nasal Drift” in 2002 and it knocked my pants off. PND is a compelling, gorgeous, astonishing myopic stop-motion animated microbe adventure. After matching Britta with Andrew for his first-ever music video (Imitosis), it was easy to see how PND would live on stage.

With a bit of nudging (editor, Angelo Valencia) to reduce it from the original 11-minute length, PND fits flawlessly with “Simple X” and the brand-new “Anonanimal”. Andrew played the latter song for the first time (outside of our house) at the music video premiere we hosted at the Hideout in August. The visuals were an unmistakable match.

After countless viewings, Bill Brown’s short film “Roswell” STILL manages to be haunting, amusing, epic, and intimate – all in about 17 minutes.

In describing the kind of visuals he envisioned for “Armchairs”, Andrew told me that he wrote parts of this song alone in his van on the road in Kansas – with wheat fields out the window. As I understand it, “Armchairs” also came about during a time when Andrew realized how far away from everything solo touring had taken him. Family crises occurred without him as he satellited further out into the touring atmosphere.

What better a match than this beautiful film (16mm color) about vast highways, big lonely sunsets, and the idea that each day on the road is part of an amnesiac starboy’s dream? Whenever I correspond with Bill he’s either on his way out on the road or just getting back from weeks and months away. In a mad hustle to finish projections, I asked Bill if he’d let us use “Roswell”. He was game. We are very lucky he had time to hit a FedEx before leaving town again.

Big thanks to Britta, Arthur, & Bill for sharing their work. ALSO, for their assistance and/or advice: Mike Bulington, Chicago’s own James Bond, Amanda Dunlap, Angelo Valencia, Whitehouse Post, and Roger Beebe.

Show photos via Flickr, courtesy of Brianne Karabetsos (2nd, 3rd, 5th from top), and Aubrey Dunnick (#6).

Britta continues to make amazing works of film art. I see her in Seattle as much as possible, never get tired of that brain.