The Spring '07 Archives: Episode Nine aired on Wednesday May 2nd 2007

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Monthly series trailer~
Memoir, experimental, documentary film and video made by women around the world. Featuring works by Naomi White, Lani Sciandra, Lili White, Caroline Koebel, & NMASS Video Project.

Episode Description












Daily Practice
Through the repetition of various
everyday routines, we create images of ourselves. In the four vignettes that comprise Daily Practice, I employ video to explore issues of balance—the earnest and healthy desires for growth versus rituals that perhaps go too far, and instead consume our identities. Does 'practice' improve who we are, or diminish our reality and sense of self? When do repetition and imitation become obsession, and how do we gauge when a practice that may have once been beneficial has become destructive? By depicting different aspects of ritual /obsession this work investigates how the need to change ourselves can elevate ordinary practices into transformative spells in the drive to become something 'more.' Through imitation, conditioning and practice these characters attempt to create new instinctual behaviors
through which they come to understand themselves and their world.

Filmmaker Bio
Naomi White is a photographer and video editor. She has worked for such companies as Dadamobile, A&E, Discovery Channel, Lifetime, ABC, as well as directing and editing music videos and documentaries. Recently she co-edited a feature film called "Mo" for director Brian Lederman. White's career began as a photographer and videographer, probing narrative ideas through autobiographical vignettes which formed her fascination with the storytelling process. Her recent photographic series "The Ironclad Lover" was featured in a group show at the Redhead gallery at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn.
www.naomiwhite.com














Moon of Honey (2006) 4minutes 6seconds
a day in the field
the microcosm of marriage
cloud and sunshine
ebb...
and flow
tea and pee and sympathy
seeds to sow.
A girl
a boy
growing pain
growing joy
Filmmaker Bio
Lani Sciandra




















Treasure (2006) 3minutes 30seconds
My place is your place... — I was here
Hoover Dam, located outside Las Vegas Nevada, was developed to supply hydroelectricity for Arizona, Nevada and California, including the city of Los Angeles, and its surrounding areas.
Dam projects in the American West disrupted the communal life of Native Americans and other peoples by forcing dislocation upon families who knew no other way of life. Destruction of their land and submersion of ancient rock art carvings of religious and archeological interest are also by-products of these ventures. The character in TREASURE builds a new city while searching for water by the seaside. Eerie sound and composite images of Hoover Dam, Las Vegas Nevada, and defunct water springs with Indian petroglyphs present an ominous mood.















Peace Piece (2006) 2minutes 33seconds
(MADE AS A RESPONSE TO WAR)
“in Flanders field where poppies grow”
Flower chain made by children at Ljubljana’s National Gallery — Slovenia is the only nation where “Culture Day” is a national holiday.
Jung’s thought: only by dealing with one’s “shadow” side can one arrive at peace

Filmmaker Bio
Lili White has been exhibiting her works in solo and group shows in the United States and abroad since before moving to New York. In Philadelphia she received at B.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with a four-year painting certificate. Her interest in the moving image and multimedia, lead her to perform, write, produce, direct several live multi-media pieces, each of which included the performance participation of over a dozen actors, poets and dancers. Upon the introduction of computer digital editing programs, she made several videos, that featured her gestural performances as well as others that were based upon poetry and documentary subjects. These are often seen as a continuation of her earlier Super 8 film work and lead to screenings at numerous cultural centers, including the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, the Museum of American Art in Philadelphia and The Newhouse Center in Staten Island, New York.
www.liliwhite.com













Berlin Warszawa Express (2006) 19minutes
In Berlin Warszawa Express a disappearance becomes a departure, but rather than attempting to reconstitute what is lost, the filmmaker follows the clues and signs framing the site and scene with an anticipatory gaze. She performs the kino eye, meeting the same train day after day, yet here the eye is aligned with not just any body, but with the distinctly maternal body. Her pregnant self a decoy, the filmmaker takes in the world around her, and makes contemporary the tradition of the city film.

Tracking shots, the Lumière brothers, animation, structural film, light and reflection, protofilmic toys such as the zoetrope, sprocket holes—cinema itself is a main line for Berlin Warszawa Express. The live-ness and intersections of all the film’s rails depend on who’s traveling.

Filmmaker Bio
Through an expanded arts and cultural practice infused by experimental film, Caroline Koebel problem solves relations of form and content anew in each project with the intent to create participatory audienceship. In addition to single-channel cinema, she uses film and digital video as key components of installation and performance. Transmissions of conceptual art, feminist film and literary theory, and punk d.i.y. ethos guide Koebel in work that embraces pleasure and desire as tactics to corrupt commodity culture, authoritarianism, and the endangerment of subjective experience. For a handful of years, the global movement for progressive social change has inspired her to place greater focus on questions of political agency, while continuing to examine how individual artworks are themselves agents of power. Drawing breath from pioneers such as Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren, Koebel situates writing and curating firmly within her creative practice. She holds a BA in Film Studies from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Visual Arts from UCSD, and teaches in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. She has exhibited in the US at Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Film Forum, Other Cinema, and elsewhere, and internationally, including in Brazil, Cuba, Ireland, Thailand, and Poland. In January 2007, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center hosted the premiere of Berlin Warszawa Express and a retrospective of 16mm films in a program called “Shots & Cuts: Films by Caroline Koebel.”














Ruth's Story (2005) 16minutes
This piece follows a young woman in New York City as she struggles
with her relationship with her mother, who emigrated from Mexico to
the United States in search of a better life. Ruth relates her hopes
and dreams, even as she grapples with her mother's illness, caused by
years of working in a garment factory in Brooklyn.

Filmmaker Bio
This is the work of the NMASS Video Project. The National Mobilization Against Sweatshops is a workers membership organization with centers in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. NMASS brings working people from many different communities together to fight for control of our work, our health, our time and our lives.
www.nmass.org