Screenings and Past Events:
DURING THESE PANDEMIC TIMES WE ARE LIVING IN I HAVE NO PUBLIC SCREENINGS HAPPENING ANTIME SOON. EVERYTHING IS ONLINE THIS YEAR. LOOKING FORWARD TO 2021
PAST SCREENINGS:
a FILM CONTAINING TREES : a film by Jon Behrens
This is a film that went through several versions before I finally settled on this one. This was one of the very first films I shot on my newly purchased Arriflex S camera.
I shot a 100ft load of 250D off the deck of my home in one three minute take, I then back winded the roll to the beginning and shot again this time from a different angle and past my hand in front of the lens and blended the two images together. It was then double print with one exposure upside down. The sound was created from sounds recorded from the same deck a few months prior, and heavily processed. I already have two other new films for this year so I thought I would just give this one away, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.
This film will be screening at the Unseen Film Festival in September 7th at the Georgia Art Space : 952 Mariposa street Denver Colorado
for more information on the Unseen Festival click here
ABSTRACTIONS : The Films of Jon Behrens
A pioneer of the Northwest’s experimental film scene, Seattle filmmaker Jon Behrens has been making visually striking optically printed films for over 25 years, and is also known for his viscerally haunting soundscapes, which combine field recordings and ambient synthesizer tones. Join us as he presents a selection of his colorful work, ranging from Undercurrents (1994), which superimposes urban landscapes over naturally forming patterns, to The Colors of Boulder in the Summer (2015), in which airbrushed, kaleidoscopic images dance around a warm summer’s day. Shown as part of the Northwest Tracking film series.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3 2016 @ 7 PM
Portland Art Museum
Whitsell Auditorium
1219 SW Park Ave.
Portland, OR 97205
Behrens will be on hand to talk about his work and the experimental film community in the Northwest.
a Beginning a Middle and an End to screen at Crossroads 2015
My film from 2013 a Beginning a Middle and an End will be screening at CROSSROADS 2015
visitations, dreams of falls (watch them collapsing)
IN PERSON: Tommy Becker; Jon Behrens and Vanessa Renwick
FESTIVAL PASS AVAILABLE:
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LAYOVER (2014) by Vanessa Renwick; digital video, color, sound, 6 minutes, from the maker
—A swan song for the factory age. A vortex of swirling Vaux’s Swifts which layover for three weeks in Portland OR each fall on their migration to South America. Birds swoop over our demise, their relentless choreography signaling a new start. (Vanessa Renwick)
FIGURE—GROUND (2013) by Jean-Paul Kelly; digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes, from the maker bay area premiere
—Figure—Ground features hand-painted cels filmed in receding distance with a multi-plane camera. Derived from photographic sources, each illustrated scene depicts the aftermath of a death associated—tangentially or directly—with the 2009 global financial crisis. Bodies are excised from these sites and replaced by coloured squares and audio tones. (Jean-Paul Kelly)
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE FERNS (2015) by Basma Alsharif; digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes, from the maker north american premiere
—A horror nature film. “Primitive savagery meets the brutality of the modern world in Ruggero Deodato’s timeless slice of visceral horror.” Cannibal Holocaust is revived deep in the New Hampshire woods where apathy and violence are blurred. (Basma Alsharif)
SONG FOR AWE & DREAD (2015) by Tommy Becker; digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes, from the maker
—Song for Awe & Dread is a contemporary take on the vanitas paintings of the 17th century and an investigation into the emotional duality of our existence. It is AWEsome to be human and to be alive, but the evolution of human intelligence has also burdened our species with a self-awareness of life’s impermanence. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called these two uniquely human emotions “awe” and “dread.” Through its symbolic meditation on mortality, this work attempts to find meaning between the fleeting flavors of bubblegum and cultural programming that entrenches us in our denial of death. (Tommy Becker)
THE QUILPO DREAMS WATERFALLS (2012) by Pablo Mazzolo; digital video, color, sound, 11 minutes, from the maker world premiere
—According to the Comechingones natives, Quilpo River dreams of big falls at least once a year. Whoever is near the river at the time will be part of its dreams forever. (Pablo Mazzolo)
A BEGINNING A MIDDLE AND AN END (2013) by Jon Behrens; digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes, from the maker bay area premiere
—A hand-painted and optically-printed found-footage film. (Jon Behrens)
GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS (2015) by Ben Russell; digital video, color, sound, 29 minutes, from the maker bay area premiere
—Set between Swaziland and South Africa, in a region still struggling with the divisions produced by an apartheid government, Greetings to the Ancestors documents the dream lives of the territory’s inhabitants as the borders of consciousness dissolve and expand. Equal parts documentary, ethnography and dream cinema, Greetings to the Ancestors presents a world whose borders are constantly dematerializing.
Beginning in the seemingly infinite sprawl of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, nature resists nation as giraffe and zebra move fluidly between unmarked national borders. With the aid of the “African dream root,” the unconscious self likewise resists containment. The resulting dreams form the spiritual framework for Xhosa ancestral divination—they extend the liminal state into the waking life, moving the world further into (and out of) the self. Even white South Africans, whom the Xhosa claim “do not have ancestors,” have begun to train as sangoma healers in an attempt to divine a way forward.
In Swaziland, a country crippled by poverty and ravaged by a 25–50% HIV infection rate, the twilight state offers another way forward. For the congregation of the Jericho Church, dreams form the word of their prophet. The resulting all-night prayer vigils serve as a vehicle for transcendence, one in which the Holy Spirit speaks through the tongue of man. Dressed in bright cloth and adorned with an array of (un)familiar symbols, their bodies twist and contort as their voices growl and sing out in ecstatic praise.
Taken as a whole, Greetings to the Ancestors draws from subjects already deeply invested in the divine power of dreams to produce a work that is at once embodied, political and deeply hypnagogic. Greetings… takes on the challenge that the Surrealists outlined in the 1920s—for cinema to be fully realized as the waking state of dreams, one that we all can inhabit. (Ben Russell)
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Fragments of Distant Memories a new film for 2014 will be screening at the 8th Sydney Underground Film Festival on Friday Sept 5 at 10:30 pm. This will be the Australian premiere for the film.
Fragments of Distant Memories
The film is a porthole to a distant time long ago. Distant places , forgotten people hand manipulated and optically printed found 1920’s found footage film.
I am pleased to announce that one of my latest films – Revolve will be screened as part of the 40th annual Seattle International Film Festival on Thursday May 22nd at 9pm at the SIFF Uptown Theatre, durning one of their short films programs. It’s always nice to get to screen something locally for a change.
It is my hope that this film will screen at many film festivals and other screening events scattered around the would during the spring, summer and fall of 2014.
R E V O L V E
“Everything is moving everything is turning “
2014 , 16mm/35mm/HD 7:47
