- Description:
- DVD - Region 1. viewing copy. 2 videodiscs of 2.
- Notes:
- A collection of 16 films by Vivian Ostrovksy.
Supplemental materials include a 60-page booklet with articles by Amy Taubin, Frederico Rossin, and Vivian Ostrovsky, available at checkout.
Titles
+ Ice/Sea
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 32 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2005
- Language:
- French language with English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A celluloid aperitif for the summer, combining found footage of seashores using the filmmaker’s own archive of coastal material. Fun and free-associative, the movie ventures to Rio, Miami, Montpellier, the Dead Sea, the Black Sea, and elsewhere, keeping a visual diary of sun-seekers, boardwalk architecture, and celebrity sightings. A beach extravaganza starring, suicidal skiers, soaking tigers, plunging mermaids and much more.
+ UTA Makura (Pillow Poems)
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 20 minutes
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1995
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors, Documentary
- Notes:
- UTA MAKURA is a collection of humorous observations on modern-day Japan, ranging from waterfalls to shopping malls, from kids in kimonos to fresh makimonos, from ancient wisteria to teen-age hysteria, from homemade noodles to live painted poodles.
+ U.S.S.A
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 12 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1985
- Language:
- French language with English subtitles
- Genre:
- Female Directors, Experimental / Avant Garde, Documentary
- Notes:
- “USA + USSR = USSA. My film is about blurred boundaries, probably due to my own personal history. I was born in New York, to Russian and Czech parents, raised in Brazil and educated in France. As a result, the film is a cultural cocktail shot on super 8 in Moscow, New York, Milan, Berlin and Paris.” - Vivian Ostrovsky.
+ Eat
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 16 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1988
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Documentary, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A humorous observation of humans’ and animals’ table manners as they gulp down breakfasts, lunches, cocktails and dinners in a variety of situations.
+ American International Pictures
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 5 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1997
- Language:
- French language
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors, Documentary
- Notes:
- “’American International Pictures’ came about in 1996 after I went back over five or six years of my logbooks. The sequences I selected were mostly shot on Kodachrome - some are from the Côte Basque near Biarritz, others from Portugal, others from Brittany. This time I incorporated a new element: found footage. I added found sound as well, in particular a very stupid relaxation cassette I bought on a whim from a street vendor in New York. I was struck by how alluring the narrator managed to be even though his words were totally vacuous.” - Vivian Ostrovsky.
+ Work and Progress
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian; Beauvais, Yann
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 12 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1999
- Language:
- Russian and English languages
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A trip to Russia by two filmmakers, in 1990, ends up in a twin- screen projection using their super 8 footage mixed in with archival material and a sprinkling of classics such as Vertov and Eisenstein.
+ Tatitude
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2009
- Language:
- French language
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors, Documentary
- Notes:
- A delightful update of Jacques Tati’s classic Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Mr. Hulot’s Holidays). Seagulls squawk, waves crash and swimmers cavort in endless summer days spent on the beach. TATITUDE suggests that sand, water and sun are the basic elements in a happy, carefree life and maybe even the secret to eternal youth.
+ Public Domain
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 13 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1996
- Language:
- French language with English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A freewheeling caper involving Brooklyn boxers and bouncing balls, Catalan dancers, and Provençal dogs. The Douro, the Danube, Biarritz, and Brazil are captured on legendary Kodachrome 40 super 8 film. Nicolas Frize’s soundtrack uses voices from his own archives, remixed in ‘Frize-frame’ style.
+ Allers-Venues
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 14 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1984
- Language:
- English or French language with optional English or French subtitles
- Genre:
- Documentary, Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- In summer, a group of friends rent a house in Southern France. People come and go, making their way through chickens, dogs, and cats. The soundtrack features playful sounds and a whacky collage of music.
+ Losing the Thread
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- On the Fly Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2014
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- “Super 8 reels of Paris catwalks I shot in 1979/1980 that were supposed to become an experimental short meditation on couture culture. Its authority has unraveled some since. Deleuze’s definition of style: “creating a foreign language in one’s own language,” encouraged me to loosen the threads of this pursuit. To ponder how fashion and style are interwoven but also influenced by individual flare and whimsy, I stitched together Coco Chanel, Courrèges, Cole Porter and Kaiser Karl with vintage film moments.” - Vivian Ostrovsky.
+ Movie (V.O.)
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1982
- Language:
- English or French language with optional English or French subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Documentary, Female Directors
- Notes:
- With a super 8 camera, filming from Paris to Berlin, from Amsterdam to Rio, from Jerusalem to New York, shooting only at night. Hungarian crooners, Indian tribal chants, opera arias, and an occasional samba make up the soundtrack of this “hand-held” diary.
+ Title Was Shot, The
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2009
- Language:
- English or French language with optional English or French subtitles
- Genre:
- Female Directors, Exploitation, Animation
- Notes:
- Commissioned for a 2009 conference in Berlin entitled “The Cinematic Configurations of ‘I’ and ‘We.’” Composed of fragments from over 25 films dating from the 1920s to the 90s, this mischievous short features cowboys, Indians, and damsels in distress.
+ Wherever Was Never There
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 7 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2011
- Language:
- English or French language with optional English or French subtitles
- Genre:
- Documentary, Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- An intimate film made on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Ostrovsky’s father’s death, Re-collecting snippets of her first 8m and super 8 films, old photos, letters, and other memorabilia. A slow pan through her adolescent years, family trips, holidays, and every day scenes. Listening for lost accents, impromptu songs at the dinner table, and bits of conversation. A landscape of flickering memories somewhere between home movies and photo albums.
+ P.W. Paintbrushes and Panels
- Alternate Title:
- P.W. - Pinceis E Painéis
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 16 minutes
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2010
- Language:
- Portuguese language with English subtitles
- Genre:
- Documentary, Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- The video was made for an exhibition in Rio on Paulo Werneck, one of Oscar Niemeyer’s collaborators. Werneck was the first to introduce mosaics in Brazilian Modernist architecture. P.W. shows the context of the artist’s work in Rio and Belo Horizonte in the 50s and 60s as well as Brasilia at the time of its construction in 1960. It’s an inventive collage of archival footage, music, and Werneck’s modernist mosaics.
+ CORrespondência e RECorDAÇŌES
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 12 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2013
- Language:
- Portuguese language with English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors
- Notes:
- Based on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro. This vignette was meant to give an idea of the artist’s work and personality.
+ Copacabana Beach
- Director:
- Ostrovsky, Vivian
- Production Co:
- Jet Lag Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 10 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - Dolby
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 1983
- Language:
- English or French language with optional French or English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Female Directors, Documentary
- Notes:
- A humorous glimpse at what happens every morning morning on the wavy sidewalks of Copacabana beach. Physical fitness, Brazilian style, with a dash of soccer and hints of Carmen Miranda.