2012 MFA Project Showcase
May 1, 7:00pm
At International House Philadelphia
Kiss The Paper (2011)
By Fiona Otway (Current MFA 2nd year student)
20 mins/ Non-fiction
A poetic documentary contemplating the revival of the centuries-old craft of letterpress printing. As the few remaining letterpress print shops close down day by day, younger generations are eagerly collecting the relics of dusty equipment and nearly-forgotten letterpress lore that are left behind. In an increasingly digital world that prizes instantaneousness and economies of scale, why preserve such a slow and heavy tradition? What does this wave of nostalgia reveal to us about a broader cultural transformation that is underway? A letterpress printer for over 50 years, Alan Runfeldt invites us into his print shop to discover some answers.
Apnea (2011)
by Manuela Martelli (Current MFA 2nd year student)
9 mins/ Fiction
Six year old Claire and Maria, her Ecuadorian nanny, kill time waiting for Claire’s mom.
Not In Rivers, But In Drops (2011)
By Alessandro Zangirolami (Current MFA 3rd year student)
11 mins/ Doc-fiction
Not In Rivers, But In Drops is an attempt to narrate trauma and the events that caused it. In this case, a natural disaster. By using a particular obsession for shared memories and forgotten sounds, and the struggle of retelling the non-direct experiences of such events, trauma and its consequences become embodied/reenacted in a fictional human presence dealing with this shared imagery.
Chase (2011)
By Malia Bruker (Current MFA 3rd year student)
13 mins/ Non-fiction
In a world where corporations reach us more easily and often than our loved ones, what can one girl do? She can crusade against the travesty of junk mail, calling her elected officials and picketing corporate headquarters. Or she can let the corporate courtship sweep her off her feet, saving and cherishing each written word that reaches her mailbox. A humorous blend of performance and documentary, Chase is both a playful reaction to the absurdity of corporate marketing and a heartfelt yearning for simpler ways of communicating. Director Malia Bruker brings you into her world, where music, art and romance live big and reality hides in a corner.
Pigment (2011)
By Alexis McCrimmon (MFA 11’)
12 mins/ Doc-Animation
Pigment Is a 12-minute experimental documentary film that explores, through the use of performance, first-person narrative and digital collage animation the medical and mythological origins behind the disease known as vitiligo.
When We Get Together (2010)
By Hector Falcon Villa (MFA 10’)
20 mins/ Fiction
Dragging a suitcase around the deranged streets of Philadelphia, Ana is a Mexican lawyer slipping away from her husband Eu, a Mexican chef looking for success in the city. But Ana cannot walkout on him like that. Only together they might find out if it is time to take different paths.
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MFA Project Festival Selection
May 7, 7:00pm
At International House Philadelphia
I Run Slow (2012)
By Naomi Levine
7 mins/ Documentary
I Run Slow is a documentary portrait about my father, Richard Levine, who since I was a young girl has claimed that he invented jogging. The piece, shot on Super 16mm, is a quietly funny meditation on personal mythology. Through the myth we understand that exercise has long been constitutive of Richard’s identity, and affects everything from his daily practices to his philosophical beliefs about the mind and body. I Run Slow is a funny, and at times mournful reflection, on how an activity that should have engendered a democratic exercise spirit, became exclusive and competitive, and how Richard himself has coped.
Illness Magnified (2010)
By Julia Fuller
17 mins/ Documentary
Illness Magnified is an experimental documentary about the experience, language, and spaces of illness from the perspective of both patients and physicians. It contrasts personal and institutional conceptions of illness and the body by exploring how they are visualized, documented, and described. Using voiceover interviews, medical imagery, and handmade recreations of the internal body, the film addresses the complexity of these representations and unveils the often unacknowledged lived experience of the patient as well as the emotional experience of the physician.
Impermanence(2012)
By Brandon Watz (MFA 12’)
3mins/ Experimental-Animation
a moment
tiny
passing always
(still)
vast