NEW MAPS OF THE NEW WORLD
experimental shorts by Roger Beebe
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tour dates longer film descriptions
WHAT:
As part
of his 55-day East Coast tour, filmmaker/programmer/professor/video store owner
Roger Beebe will be presenting a program of his short films and videos. These films and videos attempt to marry
experimental forms with a documentary interest in a cinema as a means of
engaging with pressing issues in our everyday lives. If the works are diverse in subject matterÑcovering such
disparate topics as women in the air force in World War II, the origin of
Shaquille OÕNealÕs last name, and the horrors (and beauties) of suburban
sprawlÑand are equally diverse in formatÑwith work in both film (16mm, super
8mm, regular 8mm) and videoÑthey are united by their use of an ironizing
poetics to cast a sidelong glance on some often overlooked realities of 20th
and 21st Century Americana.
"[BeebeÕs films]
implicitly and explicitly evoke the work of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand and
Lee Friedlander, all photographers of the atomic age whose Western photographs
captured the banalities, cruelties and beauties of imperial America." --David Fellerath, The Independent
Weekly
"Beebe's
work is goofy, startling, and important." --Daniel Kraus, Wilmington Encore
ABOUT ROGER BEEBE:
Roger Beebe is a
professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Florida. Beebe has screened his films around the
globe at such unlikely venues as McMurdo Station in Antarctica and the CBS
Jumbotron in Times Square as well as more traditional venues such as the Museum
of Modern Art and the Pacific Film Archive in addition to numerous festivals,
among them Sundance, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and New York
Underground. He has won dozens of
awards including a 2006 Individual Artist Grant from the State of Florida and
Best Experimental Film at the 2006 Chicago Underground Film Festival. In addition to his work as a filmmaker,
he is also a film programmer: he
ran Flicker, a festival of small gauge film in Chapel Hill, NC, from 1997-2000
and is currently Artistic Director of FLEX, the Florida Experimental Film Festival. (If that isnÕt enough, he also owns Video
Rodeo, an independent video store in Gainesville, FL.)
ABOUT THE FILMS:
TB TX DANCE (2006,
16MM, 2 min. 30 sec.)
A cameraless film made
in a balck & white laser printer with an optical soundtrack made of dots of
varying sizes provides the backdrop for revisiting Toni BasilÕs appearance in
Bruce ConnerÕs 1968 film ÒBreakaway.Ó
S A V E (2006, 16mm, 5 min.)
A study of a disused
gas station provides the occasion for a reflection on our interest in the
decaying monuments of mom & pop capitalism. "An elegant, elegiac
filmÉThe "SAVE" sign acquires the dignity one ordinarily would assign
to an old poplar tree, struggling for life against the ravages of time and the
elements." --David Fellerath, The Independent Weekly
(rock/hard
place) (2005, 16mm, 6 min. 30
sec.)
Two
massive structuresÑone manmade, the other naturalÑsit on opposite ends of a
causeway in Morro Bay, California, waiting for someone to put them in the same
frame.
The
telephone game (a.k.a. ÒgrapevineÓ) gets a new twist as scriptwriters and
filmmakers take turns attempting to faithfully reproduce a cynically patriotic
Tommy Hilfiger commercial.
A hyperflat exploration of the limitations of our binary thinking about race, featuring appearances by stars of sport & screen. "There just aren't enough films out there like Roger Beebe's 'Famous Irish Americans,' a graphic lecture insisting that black celebrities with Irish last names really are Irish." --Kimberly Chun, SF Bay Guardian
A
strange homage to Mondrian, featuring McDonaldÕs restaurants stretching from
Gainesville, FL to Oakland, CA, culminating in an appearance by every McDÕs in
the East Bay. "Astoundingly hilarious" --Matthew Holota, Artvoice
(Buffalo)
A
Woman, A Mirror (2001, 16mm, 15
min.)
A anti-dance film dance
film about gender and technology and the Òtechnologies of gender. ÒEssential viewing for anyone
interested in true visual experimentation.Ó --John Citrone, Folio Weekly
The
Strip Mall Trilogy (2001, super 8,
9 min.)
A look straight into
the heart of the most postmodern of architectural forms, the strip mall, shot
in a mile-long parking lot that could be Anywhere, USA. ÒHe has actually managed to bust apart
the mind-controlling code of relentlessly commercial space and reconfigure it
into a landscape of beautiful colors and forms. It is a remarkable piece of
Super 8 alchemy." --David
Finkelstein, Film Threat