Eye Am Episode 18 July 6th 2008

Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens is a short film series showcasing women's memoir spanning across all genres of film and video.

EA airs @ 9:30-10:30pm the 1st Sunday of the month on...
Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Time Warner #34/ RCN #82 (in Manhattan)& Streaming Live Online at www.mnn.org (Worldwide)


Episode 18 Sunday July 6th 2008 9:30-10:30pm MNN.org/TWC 34/RCN 82 (in Manhattan)Worldwide at www.MNN.org

Featuring work by Vanessa Woods, Sarah Kriely, Emily DeGruchy, Judith van der Made. Victoria Kereszi, Sophia Peer, Kristi Ryba, Lili White, Penny Lane & Jessica Bardsley













Passing , 2007, 1:20 minutes
A short film that explores the idea of passing (passing time, passing histories, and passing away). To create the film, self-portrait photographs of the filmmaker taken in an abandoned home were used as a stage to re-inhabit and reinvent through single frame animation. Mark making, collage and sound engender a new history in the spaces of a vanishing home.

Filmmaker Biography:
Vanessa Woods graduated with an MFA in film, with honors, from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her artwork and films have been exhibited internationally and she has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship for Film from the San Francisco Arts Commission, a Film Arts Foundation Personal Works Grant, and the San Francisco Art Institutes's MFA Film Fellowship. She has also been awarded residencies at the Headland Center for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony and in Pont-Aven, France, through the Museum of Pont-Aven. Woods has produced eight films that have been broadcast nationally and screened internationally, including the Education Channel, the Centre International d'Art (France), The Anthology Film Archives (New York), the Oberhausen Film Festival (Germany) and San Francisco International Film Festival. Woods is currently working on several new films, including a feature-length documentary titled Mimita, (www.Mimita.com)) which follows a family of women raising their adopted child in Bronx, New York.
www.vanessawoods.com













Che Lake, 2007, 14 minutes
A visual soundscape of NYC and the places that exist close to our hearts.

Filmmaker Biography
Sarah Kriely













French Ladies, 2006, :40 seconds
Animated ladies dancing.

Filmmaker Biography
Emily DeGruchy
www.elimenop.com













Fitna (Feminin Chaos), 2006, 12:40 minutes
I am... who? Many... one. I dream free... imprisoned? A nightmare... reality alone.

Filmmaker Biography
Judith van der Made also known as Skills Ltd. Is a performance artist, video artist and musician residing in the Netherlands. After various studies (social studies, physical theater) she started making videos in 2000. It started out of frustration of not being able to put all ideas into live performance; discovering video as the the best thing that ever happened to her.
www.antenna.nl/barleyqueen













For My Country, 2007, 4:00 minutes
An experimental Super 8 found footage composition of American girls dancing, stripping, and boxing from the 50's re-mixed with sound by 'Miss Pocono Idol'.

Filmmaker Biography
Victoria Kereszi is an artist, photographer, documentary filmmaker, curator, community media organizer, and educator. For the past three years, Victoria worked at Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a flagship community media operation, where she began as the Youth Programming Coordinator and eventually became the Director of Programming. In addition to her own video and photographic pursuits, she is the founder and curator of Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens, a women's memoir television series and traveling festival. Victoria's arts and education work has taken her to Costa Rica and Cuba to work with youth to document their experiences of friendship and culture. In 2003, Victoria received her MA from NYU's Gallatin School with a concentration in Documentary Film and Gender Studies. She currently lives in Troy, New York where she is attending RPI's iEAR program in the Fall.
www.victoriakereszi.net













Turned On, 2006, 5:51 minutes
A teen couple's relationship comes to an electric conclusion in this video. A circuit of trials and tribulations leads them to plug into one another as a way to find an outlet for their curiosities. The anxiety and tenderness the two are experiencing is shown through odd pacing and colorful situations. They are fumbling in the dark trying to communicate and connect in a way that noth frightens and excites them. The strange language of attraction and intimacy creates a difficult situation for the couple as they explore themselves and each other.

Filmmaker Biography
Sophia Peer New York based video artists and filmmaker Sophia Peer was born in Queens, NY, in 1980. She received her BA from SUNY Purchase (2002) and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts . Her short narrative videos juxtapose the banal with the absurd. Whether urine and potato salad, mice and agoraphobics, senior citizens and Jane Fonda, or young love and audio equipment, the result converts anxiety and sadness into comedy. Peer irreverently pokes fun at the world and its quirks. Her fictional characters embody the surreal aspects of reality as she presents us with a very oblique sense of the ridiculousness in everyday life.
www.sophiapeer.com













Babydoll, 2006, 3:00 minutes
Using dolls, the embodiment of all that is female, to serve as standardized human forms, Ryba’s work examines cultural roles, relationships and common experiences such as growth, transition and change. Her primary interest lies in exploring the traditional gendered roles of women, principally motherhood and the domestic sphere. Drawing her ideas from personal experience and cultural influences, her focus is to question how in our society these gendered roles have become and remain so trivialized and devalued.

Filmmaker Biography
Kristi Ryba received her BA degree in painting and printmaking from the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC in 1989; and her M.F.A. in Visual Art degree from Vermont College in 2006. Since 2002, she has been making stop frame video animations that have expanded on the themes from her earlier paintings, prints and books. Her stop frame video animations have shown in New York, Atlanta, Boise, ID, Cranbrook MI, Greenville and Charleston, SC.
www.kristiryba.com















Providing Nourishment, 1996, 3:05 minutes
THE HOUSE OF THE GENTLE one of eight houses from the I Ching, an augury, also know as The Chinese Book of Changes; which describe sixty-four different but archetypal forms of energy. The “gentle” refers to the elemental nature of wind or wood: both are considered soft, yet they are penetrating forces.
In #27: Providing Nourishment, the I Ching advises to
“Pay heed to the providing of nourishment and to what a man seeks to fill his own mouth with.” The rose is the symbol of beauty, love and eternity.

Filmmaker Biography
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













Faded Glamour Trailer, 2008, 5 minutes
A documentary about three eccentric women who have been producing their own television shows for cable access in Manhattan for the past 15-37 years. The piece is an attempt to challenge the stereotypes of women in the media, deconstruct the notion of celebrity, and define nostalgia.

Filmmaker Biography
Victoria Kereszi is an artist, photographer, documentary filmmaker, curator, community media organizer, and educator. For the past three years, Victoria worked at Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a flagship community media operation, where she began as the Youth Programming Coordinator and eventually became the Director of Programming. In addition to her own video and photographic pursuits, she is the founder and curator of Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens, a women's memoir television series and traveling festival. Victoria's arts and education work has taken her to Costa Rica and Cuba to work with youth to document their experiences of friendship and culture. In 2003, Victoria received her MA from NYU's Gallatin School with a concentration in Documentary Film and Gender Studies. She currently lives in Troy, New York where she is attending RPI's iEAR program in the Fall.
www.victoriakereszi.net













The Wren, 2007, 3:53 minutes
A little thing about certain qualities shared by Emily Dickinson and Troglodytes troglodytes (the winter wren). Made by two women on opposite coasts searching for elusive things.

Filmmaker Biography
Penny Lane is an independent filmmaker and video artist living in Troy, NY and Northampton, MA. Her collaborative and solo experimental, narrative and documentary videos have screened at AFI FEST, Int'l Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco Int'l Film Festival, Images Festival, Seattle Int'l Film Festival, Women in the Director's Chair, Santa Fe Art Institute, MOMA, and DUMBO Art Under the Bridge. Her award-winning documentaries The Abortion Diaries and Independent Media in a Time of War (the latter made with Hudson-Mohawk Indymedia) are regularly screened in classrooms, community centers and microcinemas across the U.S. and internationally on Free Speech TV and Yes! Television. The Abortion Diaries has screened in 40 states at over 170 different community venues, ranging from bars to art centers to clinics to colleges. From 2003-5 she was a core producer of the Hudson-Mohawk Independent Media Center, a group dedicated to challenging the assumptions of the mainstream media. She has also worked extensively with youth in community centers such as Children's Media Project and The Ark, Inc. She earned her MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her BA in American Culture at Vassar College. Currently she is a visiting assistant professor of video and new media at Hampshire College and is working on a documentary about a Depression-era madam.
And yes, that is her real name.
www.p-lane.com

Jessica Bardsley is a Cultural Studies major in her last year of college at New College of Florida. She likes feminism, Anne Carson, bike rides, blue whales, monsters, video, and hanging out with her friends.

Eye Am Episode 17 Sunday June 1st 2008

Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens is a short film series showcasing women's memoir spanning across all genres of film and video.

EA airs @ 9:30-10:30pm the 1st Sunday of the month on...
Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Time Warner #34/ RCN #82 (in Manhattan)& Streaming Live Online at www.mnn.org (Worldwide)

Episode 17 Sunday June 1st 2008
Featuring work by Abigail Feldman, Sophia Peer, Vanessa Woods, Lili White, Tala Dowlatshahi & Stephanie Sigs













The Year of the Correspondent, 10 minutes, 2004
A woman's journey post 911 through her letters to a war journalist.

Filmmaker Biography:
Abigail Feldman was born in 1974, and grew up in Kingston, NY.
She graduated from Bard College in 1996, and recently received her
MFA from the School of Visual Arts Photography, Video and Related
Media Department. She has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY for
the past ten years. Abigail Feldman has been a passionate observer
since she was introduced to the medium of photography, and has
photographed all over the country, as well as in many parts of the world.
Besides photographing the interiors of the homes of friends and family,
she photographs everything from obscure corners to Jazz musicians to
what is right in front of her.
www.abigailfeldman.com













Out of Breath, 2006, 15:30 minutes
A confused five-year-old girl becomes a threat to those around her as she tests life's limitations. While discovering her relationship to the world, she learns what she cam expect from it. Out of Breath is a surreal thriller in which reality is fleeting and the simplest if life's lessons can leave you gasping for air.

Filmmaker Biography:
New York based video artists and filmmaker Sophia Peer was born in Queens, NY, in 1980. She received her BA from SUNY Purchase (2002) and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts . Her short narrative videos juxtapose the banal with the absurd. Whether urine and potato salad, mice and agoraphobics, senior citizens and Jane Fonda, or young love and audio equipment, the result converts anxiety and sadness into comedy. Peer irreverently pokes fun at the world and its quirks. Her fictional characters embody the surreal aspects of reality as she presents us with a very oblique sense of the ridiculousness in everyday life.
www.sophiapeer.com













Five Cents a Peek, 2007, 6:33 minutes
A filmic interpretation of a poem by Sharon Olds wherein the circus becomes a metaphor for a woman's performance in, and for, the world. The film incorporates animation, archival circus footage and distortions of the female form to explore ideas of performance, spectatorship and the male gaze. The eye is a reoccurring trope in the film, referencing the spectator/audience looking the the subject and the subject looking inward at herself. Because the circus is a spectacle whose very existence derives from performance and illusion, the performative and illusory aspects fo the film are exaggerated. The audio of the film draws upon this concept, wherein the narrator stops ans starts the poem over and over thereby making the practice and performance of the poem evident.














The Stillness in the Room, 2007, 8:30 minutes
A memento of sorts, the film explores explores 19th century English death and the mourning rituals within a framework of time, growth and decay. The film draws upon the regimented mourning procedures set forth by Queen Victoria, characterized by a strict dress code which included the black “weeping veil” - a veil of black crepe worn during the first year of grieving. In the film, the veil is a dominant trope that serves to reveal fragments of imagery, ritual, and emotive experience. The film edits are fluid and malleable like the veil. Much of the film was put through various processes of decay, thereby physically implicating the subject of the film in its physical structure. The “Stillness in the Room” is generated though a subtle, quiet soundtrack that incorporates components of Emily Dickinson's funeral poems.

Filmmaker Biography:
Vanessa Woods graduated with an MFA in film, with honors, from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her artwork and films have been exhibited internationally and she has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship for Film from the San Francisco Arts Commission, a Film Arts Foundation Personal Works Grant, and the San Francisco Art Institutes's MFA Film Fellowship. She has also been awarded residencies at the Headland Center for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony and in Pont-Aven, France, through the Museum of Pont-Aven. Woods has produced eight films that have been broadcast nationally and screened internationally, including the Education Channel, the Centre International d'Art (France), The Anthology Film Archives (New York), the Oberhausen Film Festival (Germany) and San Francisco International Film Festival. Woods is currently working on several new films, including a feature-length documentary titled Mimita, (www.Mimita.com) which follows a family of women raising their adopted child in Bronx, New York.
www.vanessawoods.com














Words on Peace Piece, 2006, 1:32 minutes
In 2006 the NY Filmmakers Co-Op put out a call for filmmakers to create a piece as a response to the current war in Iraq. This was a made for that call. Words on Peace Piece was inspired by the following references:

"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.

C.G. Jung's thought: only by dealing with one's "shadow" side can one arrive at peace.













NY(See), 2005, excerpt 6:45 minutes
[a pun substituting the word "see" for the letter "C"] captures today's zeitgeist and is White's first feature-length movie. Eschewing the documentary films' standard of expressing opinion, and made without a script, storyboard or an editing plan, NY (see) reflects what New York stands for: America's cradle of immigration; the site of the 9/11 Disaster; the platform of a genuine international city.

At one time New York was considered to be the center of the art world. What does it mean to be an artist-immigrant in New York after 9/11 when the whole world is on the verge of major change?

Filmmaker Biography:
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













Veiled Stories, 4:30 minutes
Through the eyes of a Muslim woman in the U.S.

Filmmakers:
Tala Dowlatshahi
Tala Dowlatshahi is a US Representative of Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres)-the Paris-based media watchdog organization. More than a third of the world’s people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Reporters Without Borders works constantly to restore their right to be informed. Eighty-one media professionals lost their lives in 2006 for doing what they were paid to do– keep us informed. Today, more than 120 journalists around the world are in prison simply for doing their job. In Nepal, Eritrea and China, they can spend years in jail just for using the “wrong” word or photo. Reporters Without Borders believes imprisoning or killing a journalist is like eliminating a key witness which threatens everyone’s right to be informed. It has been fighting such practices for more than 17 years.
www.taladowlatshahi.com


* To submit work to Eye Am, please email eyeam@earthlink.net for details~
* Next Episode Sunday, July 6th 2008 Featuring the works of Vanessa Woods, Sarah Kriely, Emily DeGruchy, Judith van der Made. Victoria Kereszi, Sophia Peer, Kristi Ryba, Lili White, Penny Lane & Jessica Bardsley.