- Description:
- 1/2 in., VHS, NTSC. reference copy.
Titles
+ Third Known Nest
- Director:
- Kalin, Tom
- Running Time:
- Compilation. 37 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - monaural
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1991
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Sexuality, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- "Third Known Nest is a collection of nine short works completed approximately one per year from 1991 to 1999. Interwoven with nine quotations from some of my favorite writers, the eighteen short entries in Third Known Nest function as an intimate visual diary—fractured pictures from my day-to-day life. I carried a Super-8 camera with me whenever and wherever I traveled, and also at home—just running errands or in the garden. I shot nearly a hundred fifty-foot reels of film.
Six of the pieces in Third Known Nest were shot on Super-8; two on 16mm and one on mini-DV. With the exception of Nation, I edited them on an off-line 3/4" editing system (cuts only) in order to elaborate an intricate, layered collage. Partially provoked by music video, each entry in the cycle of tapes pairs a literary touchstone with a song. They're somewhere in between formal 'experimental film' montage and the bombardments of our noisy pop culture. Though individual works are distinct in tone, the overwhelming impact of the program is emotional, nostalgic. Above all else, Third Known Nest works as a gallery of portraits in flux—myself and the people I love: some living, some dead.
As a counterpoint to feature films, these short pieces are pure liberation—a cheap, fast escape into the joys of the camera and the edit. No scripts, no production meetings: heaven. I've long admired the art of Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, his audio recording of the Ursonate and most of all the visionary, life-sized Merzbau collage which eventually threatened to engulf his home. Like many others of his time, he remained a nomad after the war. I hope Third Known Nest shares something with Schwitters's graceful balancing act of "high art" against "low culture"—beauty in the gutter, bumping up against the flotsam and jetsam that clutters our world." - Tom Kalin
+ They Are Lost to Vision Altogether
- Director:
- Kalin, Tom
- Running Time:
- Short. 14 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - monaural
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1988
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Sexuality, Documentary
- Notes:
- Made in 1989, They are lost to vision altogether is an erotic counterstrike to the Helms Amendment, the U.S. government’s refusal to fund AIDS prevention information explicitly for gay men, lesbians, and IV drug users. Kalin paints a portrait of the national fear and hysteria that has usurped compassion and care for people with AIDS. With Kalin’s usual visual finesse, the tape eloquently conveys the need for a sane and human response to the crisis that still acknowledges passion and sexuality.
+ History and Memory
- Alternate Title:
- History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige
- Director:
- Tajiri, Rea
- Running Time:
- Short. 32 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - monaural
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1991
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Documentary, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- “A search for a non-existent image, a desire to create an image where there is none,“ leads to Rea Tajiri’s composition on recorded history and non-recorded memory. Framed by the haunting facts of the post-Pearl Harbor Japanese internment camps (which dislocated 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II), Tajiri creates a version of her family’s story through interviews and historical detail, remembering a time that many people would rather forget. This video surveys the impact of images (real images, desired images made real, and unrealized dreams) on our lives, drawing from sources such as Hollywood, U.S. Dept. of Defense films, newsreels, memories of the living, and spirits of the dead. Relics of the camps, contrasted with human efforts to forget their existence, create a sense of taxonomic insistence that these camps were indeed real.