| May 2008
Toy Camera fest celebrates its 20th
year
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 |
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Photo by
Ned Sloane of Solomon
Turner & MX Farina's PXL video
(shot entirely on audio
cassette) entitled
UTOPIA, which captures
Venice Boardwalk
performer "The Snakeman"
rapping transcendental
righteousness.
|
For immediate
release
Contact: Gerry Fialka
310-306-7330
pfsuzy@aol.com
PXL THIS 17,
the 17th annual Fisher Price
toy camera film festival,
screens on Thursday, May 22 at
8pm at Echo Park Film Center,
1200 N. Alvarado St (& Sunset
Blvd), LA, CA 213-484-8846,
echoparkfilmcenter.org
admission is $5, More info:
310-306-7330
www.myspace.com/sevendudleycinema
and www.indiespace.com/pxlthis Scroll
to the end of this press release
for more screening info and PXL
News.
PXL THIS 17 highlights include:
The youngest Pixelator ever
Donovan Seelinger (4 years
old) divulges GEARSTORY.
Terrence Handscomb's DER
HIMMEL UBER KALIFORNIEN is a
sardonic critique of
Californian culture tropes -
a fascination with the body,
cosmetic surgery and the
prolongation of youth,
science-fiction mysticism
and the suspension of death.
He stirs them into a thick
mix of low resolution
Hollywood-Noir stylistics.
Watch it at www.terrence.org and
stills at
http://www.terrence.org/der_himmel/press/
L. M. Sabo's cinema verite CATACLYSM
captures a bustling metropolis
suddenly engulfed in catastrophic
violence. Press ready stills at
http://members.cox.net/l.m.sabo/CATACLYSM-Stills.html
Audie Harrison's FUN GUN is a silly
little game of murder and mayhem.
Press ready stills at
www.audieharrison.com/fungunstills.
Watch it at
www.audieharrison.com/fungun.
Preteen Juniper Woodbury gets
shaking in THE LIVELY DOLLS.
Geoff Seelinger's A TOOL IS A TOOL
plays a little game with light and
time on a Brooklyn bike ride.
Roy Parkhurst & Struan Ashby's
HAMMOND'S ARCANA, OR THE PARADISE OF
BIRDS is a glimpse into the strange
world of The Book Of Hammond,
William Hammond's heretical but
visionary prophecy. From New
Zealand, this is one of the greatest
PXL ever made.
From Canada, Jason Margolis' THE
STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN RUDY
CAME HOME EARLY FROM WORK & CAUGHT
JACK IN A COMPROMISING POSITION
utilizes naughty puppets in intense
drama.
Michael Possert Jr's MICHAEL POSSERT
- A WWII SOLDIER captures his Dad's
recollections of being wounded and
arriving at Nordhausen concentration
camp. Press ready stills- http://www.flickr.com/photos/2007pxl/
Solomon Turner & MX Farina's UTOPIA
captures Venice Boardwalk
performer "The Snakeman" rapping
transcendental righteousness .
Theresa Hulme's SOULGASM transverses
high consciousness.
Joe Nucci recalls his revealing
encounter with Frank Sinatra in ME,
JILLY & THE CHAIRMAN.
Gerry Fialka's REMEMBER TO
FORGET? expands the function of
remembering as not the opposite of
forgetting.
Freya's THEY WERE ONLY NUMBERS is an
abstract film that operates in the
margins of ambiguity. A haunting
soundtrack steadily and persistently
builds and fades. Images in motion
suggest that a wider canvas has been
fragmented and is struggling to be
seen. From the UK. Press ready
still http://freya.atspace.com/images.html
Will Erokan & Ian Sonnemann's
REALITYSHIFT finds suburban youth
discussing authority and shamanism.
Michael Dunnigan & Rod Poole's
GUITAR DISCARNATE fuses microtonal
experimentations and Hendrixy
Frippatronics to create an
unforgettable sonic landscape.
Also included: King Kukulele, Paul
Bacca and Lisa & Paolo's latest PXL
gems
"PXL THIS 17...Surprising
beauty...In Geoff Seelinger’s lovely
video A Tool Is a Tool, a
wrench suspended in front of a
camera attached to a roving bicycle
renders a cubist cityscape.
Realityshift, by Will Erokan and
Ian Sonnemann, marries a nonstop
(and annoying) monologue about
perceptions of the world to
fast-cut, high-contrast images of a
city to create a chaotic vision of
contemporary consciousness. Mono-monikered
director Freya’s strangely
compelling They Were Only Numbers
features a series of brief shots
of green-tinged abstracted planes,
folds and textures that pulse and
shift in time to undulations of
sound. It’s a simple but powerful
piece, as is L.M. Sabo’s
Cataclysm, in which images of
what looks like a model city become
eerily timeless in the gray murk of
the camera’s trademark grit. Fialka
deserves credit for his unflagging
belief in the potential of the PXL
camera to render something amazing"
- Holly Willis, LA Weekly.
http://www.laweekly.com/film+tv/short-run/pxl-this-17-the-bad-and-the-beautiful/17698/
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-gd-moviescandy15pxlnov15,0,1824835.story?coll=cl-movies
http://www.smdp.com/site/archives/111607.pdf (see
front page spread and scroll to page
10)
"PXL THIS is something that has to be seen
and experienced at least once in a
lifetime." -Santa Monica Mirror
"All the PXL THIS videos reflect festival
organizer Gerry Fialka's commitment to the
freedom produced by making art without
financial constraints. PXL THIS is a welcome
highlight in the Los Angeles media scene
celebrating the rich lexicon available in a
tool which might initially seem rather
limiting. PXL THIS represents Fialka’s
dedication to showcasing unheard voices and
supporting a truly democratic art form" -
Holly Willis, LA Weekly.
"PXL is the ultimate people's video." - J.
Hoberman, Premiere Magazine
"Gerry Fialka's PXL THIS festival snaps,
crackles and pops off the screen with the
funky, user-friendly energy of real
first-person cinema. Goofy, gorgeous, and
altogether groovy, his provocative program
of pieces produced with the Fisher-Price PXL
2000 toy video camera is not only downright
entertaining, but more, its blipping and
buzzing black 'n' white picture-bits
coalesce into a veritable inspiration to all
those who cherish the playful, spontaneous
gestures and low-cost of electronic folk
art." -Craig Baldwin.
Established in 1991, Clap Off They Glass
Productions supports independent
do-it-yourself video-making by sponsoring
the annual PXL THIS Festival, which is the
oldest of its kind in the world. Even with
no corporate sponsors, no color brochures,
no big shot movie director board members, no
ticketmaster access, PXL THIS has been
featured on PBS, IFC and NPR, and most
recently screened at MIT. PXL THIS spans
many genres: documentary, poetry, drama,
art, music, political activism, cinema
povera, comedy and the avant-garde. The
unique Fisher-Price toy camcorder PXL 2000,
which records sound and image directly onto
audio cassettes, continues to empower
artists. This failed toy was only made in
the US from 1987 to 1989. The magical PXL
2000 restores a certain humanity to the
overpowering technology of video. The
irresistible irony of the PXL is that the
camera's ease-of-use and affordability,
which entirely democratizes movie-making,
has inspired the creation of some of the
most visionary, avant and luminous film of
our time.
Films featured in past PXL THIS festivals
are archived and available for viewing at
the Academy Film Archive in Hollywood. For
viewing appointments and information, please
call (310) 247-3016 x 387, or visit the
archive's web site at
www.oscars.org/filmarchive.
"In past years, PXL THIS gave us some
fascinating work...definitely an out-there
experience. In the last few years, PXL
videos have made it to such hallowed domains
as the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of
Modern Art, Sundance, and the London Film
Festival, where they have been admired for
their characteristic spontaneity, highly
personal perspective, visual uninhibitedness
and raw, grainy truths." - Mary Beth Crain,
LA Weekly.
"PXL THIS is worthy of
praise...spellbinding. The shifting bricks
of light and dark that form the Fisher-Price
PXL 2000's picture lend themselves well to
personal essays, creating an invigorating
mesh of ambiguity and intimacy in every
frame." - Paul Malcolm, LA Weekly.
"Since the start of the 21st century, I've
attended the annual screenings of the PXL
THIS toy camera festival at San Francisco's
OTHER CINEMA. I have discovered several
patterns of Pixelators that are similar to
the pioneering video artists of the 60's.
One, they reclaim film as a one-person
project. Contrary to the popular belief that
filmmaking must be collaborative, the solo
vision is dominant and documented here. Two,
in PXL-land, personal and deeply
individualistic issues - frequently in the
form of confessionals - are dominant.
Pixelvision forms a quiet sub-genre within
the larger category of the 'personal essay'
film, an intimate art-world of privacy,
whose entries frequently resemble
message-in-a-bottle intimacies. These
patterns show that expanding the vocabulary
of moving image art is still possible - and,
indeed, is growing." -Steve Polta, San
Francisco Cinematheque curator.
According to filmmaker Bryan Konefsky: "Pixelvision
is the haiku of cinema: the minimum of means
delivering the maximum of meaning. The PXL
2000 toy camera's limited image-quality
forces moviemakers to focus on essentials,
and thereby to produce a richly connotative
cinematic experience. In fact, PXL may be
the best instantiation of Stan Brakhage's luminous
quote: 'The true meaning of cinema can be
found between the frames.'"
"In the spirit of Andy Warhol's experimental
films, the PXL THIS Festival inspires
independent artists to create, explore, and
discover the magic of cinema. As a video
gallery installation, these works were a
curious and wonderful revelation to museum
visitors." - Charles Gentry,
Curator of Film & Video Art, Flint Institute
Of Arts, screened The Best of PXL
THIS from March 6-April 1, 2007.
In spirit, the PXL-2000 toy camera resembles
the cheap throwaway still camera, known as
the Holga. Writing in ESQUIRE, Joshua
Liberson called the Holga: "The world's most
unserious serious camera...the Holga takes
strangely beautiful, dreamlike pictures. Its
two-part interlocking design allows light to
bleed through constantly from the sides,
making it almost impossible to take a boring
picture, regardless of the subject matter."
"Most exciting art movements have been
reactions against technical sophistication.
Many have gone 'backwards' to find honesty
and truth, the essence of things." - Guy
Maddin
Andrea Nina McCarthy's 2005 MIT thesis
"Toying With Obsolescence: Pixelvision
Filmmakers & The Fisher Price PXL 2000
Camera" is essential reading.
***********************************
New PXL THIS 16 reviews and articles:
d) voice memos are boring and
too “generic”
Another big problem is the main character – the Doom Guy. We don’t
know anything about him; he’s not even an archetype, since they couldn’t
manage to follow the Hero’s Journey. In terms of Drama, the game is
stale as a Jerry Bruckheimer flick. |
