Ericka Beckman: Out of Hand

Out of Hand

Out of Hand

(1980, Super-8 to 16mm; color, sound; 30 min.)

Produced, directed, shot and edited by Ericka Beckman; Music and vocals by Beckman/Brooke Halpin; Starring Paul Mc Mahon; Featuring James Welling, Matt Mullican, Nancy Chunn, April Gornik

“Out of Hand is a search film, where a small boy returns to a house that is being evacuated, to search for something that he left behind. His method is to follow hidden clues in this house and to respond to the hidden aids in his memory. Back and forth, between inquisition and logic, he constructs a search with two unknowns – ‘What it is’ and ‘Where it is.’ Each object he chooses has multiple functions, which extend both into the physical space of his search, and into the imaginary world of his perception and memory.” --EB, 1980

You the Better

You the Better

 (1983, 16mm; color, sound; 30 min.)

Produced, directed, shot and edited by Ericka Beckman; Starring Ashley Bickerton; Music and vocals by Beckman/Brooke Halpin

"You the Better is a film based on games of chance, and as games such as roulette, or craps go, this one is closed – meaning that the player cannot really affect the outcome. A team of uniformed players, led by the artist Ashley Bickerton, performs the mechanics of a game servicing an off-camera betting entity, the ‘House.’ Although the game keeps changing and players are swapped out, one thing remains the same, the ‘House’ is hidden and controls the bets, the ‘chance’ of winning is nil. The game, in fact, is not between the players, but rather between the ‘House,’ and the ‘Bettor.’” --EB, 1983

“As one of the protagonists, against all odds, repeatedly wins at the wheel of fortune, his adversaries grow hostile and jealous--the very moods provoked in Beckman’s NY Film Festival audience, who were busy feigning not to understand. Beckman’s was the one truly vanguard achievement in the Festival, and the only analysis and indictment of the competition that keeps the wheel of fortune spinning. Beckman made an art movie, when the audience clamored for Art.” --Carrie Rickey, Artforum, December 1983

Hiatus

Hiatus

(1999, 16mm; color, sound; 30 min.)

Produced, directed, shot and edited by Ericka Beckman; Starring Madi Distefano and Daniel Ruth; Sound Design by Bruce Darby

Produced with funds from The National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council on the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Experimental Television Center

Hiatus features a woman playing a VR interactive game with logged-on game players and game identities, which confuse and trick her into consciousness. In this game, MADI, a female player, enters Level One, where the player has been asked to create a habitat that she feels most comfortable in, that she has complete control over and which empowers her. MADI creates a “virtual garden” and a construct of herself (called WANDA) to move around in his world. In Level Two she enters an “identity game” using technological power for the benefit of the entire community rather than her own gain. Here she encounters an adversary, “WANG,” who threatens her field, property, and power with his own aggressive and expanding encoded architecture… A virtual reality sketch of WANG’s Palace was built in CAD, rendered and modeled on AVS software and runs off VR software written for DEC Alpha system 5000 workstation.

Tension Building

Tension Building

(work in progress, 16mm to HD; color, sound; 9 min.)

Shot and edited by Ericka Beckman

Tension Building is a composite of linked architectural spaces, some are real and some are models. It combines stop motion and live action filmmaking shot at the Harvard University Coliseum in Boston (1935) and the Municipal Stadium in Florence (1932), built in by Luigi Nervi. It features Boston Symphony Orchestra percussionist Richard Flanagan, and the U Mass Minute Man Marching Band. I used my camera like a surveyor's transit and created some rules for its path around the stadium. Funding in part by the LEF Foundation of New England 2007.