5.19.2009

6/07/09 Eye Am Episode 21

Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens is a short film series showcasing women's memory and experience 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)


* This month's Episode Features the work of EE Miller, Bernadine Mellis, Samuael Topiary, and Kathy High.


The makers:
EE Miller is an interdisciplinary conversationalist who makes video,
radio, and installation. Her current broadcasts, DEATH JEWEL RADIO, invite guests to consider funeral arts and utopia with music, sound arts and storytelling.
eemiller.wordpress.com

Bernadine Mellis' short films include BORN, THE GOLDEN PHEASANT, and FARM-IN-THE-CITY, a collaboration with EE Miller. Bernadine's father's role as lead attorney in Earth First! activist Judi Bari's civil case against the FBI prompted her to make THE FOREST FOR THE TREES, her first documentary. Bernadine also directed THE ODYSSEY, a collaborative adaptation of Homer's 24-chapter epic, made up of 24 shorts by 24 different mostly queer/trans/lady filmmakers. She is currently in production on a documentary about children of the New Left tentatively called STRUGGLE BABY. Bernadine teaches film and video in the Five Colleges. www.redbirdfilms.com











The Videos:
Farm-in-the-City
A collaboration between EE Miller and Bernadine Mellis. 8mm footage from the 1930s edited with EE Miller’s interview with Corinna Press, an artist who imagines giant possibilities, ecstatic collaboration and struggle. Screenings include MadCat Women's International Film Festival, MIX NYC, SF's The Lab, and Third Street Gallery in Philadelphia.

Gum and Tea
EE Miller began Gum and Tea as a piece for radio, but took a detour into Samuael Topiary's video laboratory where it inspired animated collages. It is a collaborative meditation on intimacy and US currency.

Samuael Topiary is a Brooklyn-based video artist and performer. Her single-channel video works have screened in many festivals including at Lincoln Center and the Walker Art Center and have been broadcast on WNET Channel 13. She has created music videos for the band Le Tigre and video designs for dance pieces by Miguel Gutierrez and David Dorfman Dance Company. Residencies include: MacDowell Colony and Media Arts Fellowship at Dance Theater Workshop. Her character, “Technopia” was the host of Shtudio Show at Chez Bushwick from 2006-07. Topiary has also curated video programs for MIX/NY and toured the US with SF's Sister Spit’s Ramblin’ Road Show in the 90's. She holds an MFA in Film/Video from Bard College and currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts. For more info: www.topiaryfilms.org

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KATHY HIGH is Head and Associate Professor of Video and new Media at the Department of the Arts at Rensselaer Polyechnic Institute in Troy, NY. She teaches digital video production, history and theory and has been working in the area of documentary and experimental film, video and photography for over twenty years. She produces videos and installations posing queer and feminist inquiries into areas of medicine/bio-science, science fiction, and animal/interspecies collaborations. She has also recently started the BioArts Initiative at Rensselaer, a collaboration between the Arts Department and the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies.










Her Videos:
EVERYDAY PROBLEMS OF THE LIVING
2000-05 (12 part series, video, 26 min.)

Project about anxieties surrounding living and dying – a meditation on mortality. High, thinking that she might die at 45 in the year 2000, decided to “perform her death,” recording a tape around the topic each month. Her own pets also play a major role in the events that occur each month, as she projects her own fears and anxieties onto them.

SHIFTING POSITIONS
1999 (video, 28 min.)

SHIFTING POSITIONS is a semi-autographical/fictional trilogy, exploring becoming queer later in life, my father's dementia and our mid and end-of-life crises.

THE ICKY & KATHY TRILOGY
1999 (super 8 film to video, 9 min)

This trilogy is about twin sisters who “act out”. At the age when a young girl might discover her own sexuality, they explore themselves in their "games" and playtime together. In a study of adolescent sexuality, the girls engage in slightly illicit acts together.


If you are interested in hosting a screening or submitting work to Eye Am, please email eyeam@earthlink.net