Mar 19
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March 19, 2006, 7:00 pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Follow Me To Certain Death:
An Evening with Vanessa Renwick
I hour 35 minutes total running time
In the intense personal documentary work of Portland-based Vanessa Renwick edgy and grim poetry informs a deliberate and steady stare at extreme states of existence. Humans and other animals are forced to take decisive action. Everything is a matter of life and death. Daniel Menche’s thundering soundtrack propels Renwick’s latest wildlife epic Hope and Prey. 9 is a Secret ponders mystical visitations from crows and ravens after Renwick changes her name . The found footage gem, Britton, S. Dakota is constructed solely of haunting portaits of children filmed standing in the street of a desolate town in depression era America. Rounding out this show are three special selections by Renwick: two Viet Nam era artifacts—Travis Wilkerson’s harrowing and hopeless National Archive, v. 1 and Warren Haack’s jarring protest piece SSS— -and Dani Leventhal's Draft 9, a moving expression of a kind of North American post-structuralism humanism.
1.The program begins with Renwick’s Britton, South Dakota, (8 min Vid.)) a mesmerizing film constructed solely of haunting portraits of children filmed standing in the street of a desolate town in 1930. The footage (obtained from Prelinger Archives)was shot by the owner of the town’s movie theater to be screened before the features as a promotional gimmick to bring in the local folks. 70 years later the sometimes smiling, sometimes tortured faces of these children seem to tell everything that has happened since that windy, sunny day in South Dakota. The film is made all the more melodramatic by Portland artist Johnee Eschleman's emotive score. The lack of narrative invites dressing these cinematic dolls with futures, now histories. The melancholic drone of the accompanying organ music tends to lead them into sad tragic finery. (Awarded Best Experimental Film at the NW Film Festival by James Benning in 2003/ Gecko Award, Cinematexas 2004)
Selective Service System –(13 min. 16mm)
A film by Warren Haack .
Since 1956, the United States had been involved in a ground war in Asia. The American commitment had led to an ever increasing involvement in that area of the world - despite growing dissatisfaction here at home. To implement this country's mobilization, the draft system had been stepped up. This system made virtually no exemptions for those who felt this war was immoral and unjust. These young men either had to serve in a war in which they did not believe, or face the bleak alternatives to service. Some chose prison. Some sought refuge in other countries. This film documents another alternative. There was no attempt to alter the proceedings that took place.
Travis Wilkerson's National Archives V.1, (15 min) (Screened at the Viennale in 2001) A daring exercise in agit-prop that utilizes imagery obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, in which gun-camera footage of U.S. bombing runs over Vietnam is disturbingly and poetically juxtaposed with a soundtrack created by Sonic Youth’s Jim O'Rourke. The footage of lush blue-green jungle passing below the jet is superimposed with the pilot’s electronic gun site. The constant gunning creates a trance-inducing rhythm that is syncopated by simple intertitles that name the targets. Converted from raw documentation into sublime meditation, much like Bruce Conner’s atomic mushrooms in Crossroads, the film becomes an ethical bomb, exploding issues of hi-tech imperial warfare that we are faced with again.
9 is a Secret, (6 min. Vid.).,
an experimental essay about a time that Renwick had many crows and ravens enter her life. A graphically stark, metaphysical diary on helping a terminally ill friend die.
Draft 9
Dani Leventhal (28min. Vid.)
A beautiful, powerful and difficult meditation on human ties to animals, nature and death in autobiographical clips that meld together to create this demanding and riveting story.
Hope and Prey
The screening climaxes with Renwick’s new 25-minute, 3-screen projection piece Hope and Prey which features stunning wildlife cinematography of animals hunting and being hunted. In composing 3 reels to play side-by-side in a panoramic view Renwick notes, “The view is like that out in nature, it’s a wide landscape where a predator could come at you from anywhere. It is also playing with the fact that predators have eyes on the front of their heads, while prey have eyes on the side of their heads. In this movie the audience definitely has to keep an eye out for danger.” The adrenal-pumping dramatic and sometimes brutal nature cinematography is transformed and elevated through black and white high-contrast recomposition and a hyper-dynamic score by Portland’s infamous underground composer, Daniel Menche.
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VANESSA RENWICK
Born in Chicago, Illinois. Film / Video / Installation artist. Lives in
Portland, Oregon
Vanessa Renwick is a cinematic rabble-rouser. Her iconoclastic work reflects
an interest in place, relationships between bodies and landscapes, and all
sorts of borders. Working in experimental and documentary forms, she
produces films, videos and installations that explore the possibility of
poetry in contemporary society.
For more on renwick, check out her site at the Oregon Department of Kick Ass
http://odoka.org/
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Vanessa Renwick Britton, South Dakota
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