The November installment of Flaherty NYC is entitled Experiments with Animation and will feature short works by a number of artists prominent in the field, including Phil Solomon, Martha Colburn, Signe Baumane, and Jeff Scher.

Select filmmakers will be taking part in a post-screening discussion of their work.

Animated films come in all shapes and sizes. In the Experiments with Animation program, The Flaherty will bring together a broad spectrum of animated works, ranging from quirky and humorous to dark and haunting, and often falling somewhere in-between. The program is sponsored in part by the Leo Dratfield Endowment, honoring the late Charles Samu, an ardent supporter of animation.

Featuring Works By:

· Jesse Epstein (in person)
Jesse Epstein was selected for “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, for her series of short films on physical perfection, the latest of which, 34×25x36, was broadcast on P.O.V. this summer.

· Steve Subotnick
Steven Subotnick’s animated films are associative explorations of themes found in history, folklore, and his own unconscious. He has worked as an animator, director, illustrator, author, and has taught animation at numerous institutions, including Rhode Island School of Design and Harvard University.

· Jeff Scher (in person)
Jeff Scher lives and makes films in Brooklyn, NY. His films may be seen on The New York Times blog, The Animated Life. Time Out New York said his “quicksilver shorts are like Muybridge motion studies for the MTV generation.”

· Phil Solomon
Phil Solomon is an American experimental filmmaker and professor at Colorado University. In 2007, The Village Voice named Rehearsals for Retirement one of the top ten experimental films of that year.

· Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung (in person)
Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung makes socially conscious art using Hi-Definition video animation, video game, net.art, digital graphics and mixed-media installations. In 2008, Ken Johnson of The New York Times described Hung as a “fierce, funny and inventive political satirist.”

· Martha Colburn
Born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania (USA). Based in Holland and New York since 2000, Colburn is a self-taught filmmaker who has completed over 40 films since 1994. Her films have screened at Sundance, Rotterdam International and New York Film Festival, MoMA, and Cannes.

· Signe Baumane (in person)
Signe Baumane began her New York career working in the studio of Bill Plympton before starting her own studio in 2002. She has produced and co-produced, written, directed and designed more than 9 independent animated shorts, which have screened at such prestigious festivals as Tribeca, Sundance, Berlin, and Venice.
TICKET INFORMATION:
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General admission tickets to the Flaherty NYC series at the Anthology Film Archives are $9. Tickets are $7 for students with valid I.D., and $6 for Anthology members with membership card.

Tickets can be purchased at the Anthology box office the day of the show. For more information, call the Flaherty at 212-448-0457.
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Anthology Film Archives is located in the old Second Avenue Courthouse building in the East Village at 32 Second Ave. at the corner of 2nd Street.
Contact Information
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The Flaherty/International Film Seminars
email: ifs@flahertyseminar.org
phone: 212-448-0458
web: www.flahertyseminar.org
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Sign of the Times, November 7, 2009 – January 9, 2010
group show featuring Kim Beck, Máximo González, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, Michael Patterson-Carver and Carrie Schneider

opening reception: Sat Nov 7th, 4-7pm

Sign of the Times
is a group exhibition exploring the current global economic crisis. This show was initially inspired by Carrie Schneider’s most recent photos “Recession” and “Miss America.” Acting once again as her own subject, Schneider set out to explore elements of physical comedy and its greater psychological repercussions. But as an American working in a foreign land (Helsinki), during a global meltdown, not-to-mention being bombarded with headlines about Miss California Carrie Prejean, Schneider could not help feeling personally responsible and embraced the topical nature of work. Taking this cue, Sign of Times hopes to convey the multiplicity of thought in regards to our current situation: from solidarity to parody, from economic to environmental, and of course from the political – both left and right. Kim Beck’s drawings from the series “Everything Must Go” are the precious versions of their printed and handwritten counterparts currently overwhelming the commercial landscape. As unique hand-drawn pieces, they signal the more personal repercussions of the economic collapse on the employees who make or hang these ever-perky, ever-optimistic signs. These signs announce an amazing, momentous, but also catastrophic, clearance event. Máximo González’s meticulously made collage-murals are entirely constructed of devalued currency. The work conflates the “political machine” with the reality of the “economic machine” that bankrupts developing nations. Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s own website announces art+design+activism. In a John Heartfield-meets-Monty Python style, his animated, neon-hued, cut- and-paste montages gleefully skewer all politicians from all sides, including President Obama, Hillary Clinton,Timothy Geithner, Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, President Bush, Valerie Jarrett, Felipe Calderón, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladimir Putin, Benazir Bhutto and Kim Jong-Il to name a few. Michael Patterson-Carver’s brightly colored drawings feature placard-carrying protestors from his “We Need Work” series illustrating optimism in activism. In his artist statement, Patterson-Carver says “In the course of my life and activism, I have learned a few things- including the fact that in order to succeed at anything the first step you must take is to BELIEVE. This is the reason that everyone in my demonstration scenes is smiling- they are confident of success.”

During the opening reception, Máximo González’s alternative/informal economy project El Changarrito will be situated outside the front of the gallery. The changarrito is a small push cart, likened to that often seen in Mexico (or the streets of Chicago for that matter) that sell various items from fresh fruit to black market goods. As a means of intervention or critique, González’s Changarrito has been situated in front of major art fairs, museums, and flea markets –most recently the Venice Biennale– using it both as a platform for emerging artists as well as a satire of the art market. This time around, El Changarrito will feature the work of Jacob Goudreault and Robert Reinard, two local emerging artists without gallery representation. 100% of sales from El Changarrito go directly to the artists.

Filmmakers today have new tools available to tell their stories and realize their vision, from cheaper digital cameras to the latest 3D technology. But how they tell their stories is also being affected by other changes – the rise of short-form and user-generated content online; video gaming; interactive technologies and virtual worlds allowing for more audience participation and soon, Twitter is launching a television show where the outcome can be influenced by audience tweets. Many audiences are also expanding their approach, no longer just making a film, but rather making a project of which a film is just one component of many. Hear how storytelling is changing from leaders in the field.

Panelists include Thomas Allen Harris, filmmaker and founder of Chimpanzee Productions, currently working on the multi-media documentary project Through a Lens Darkly; Jay Randolph, activist and video blogger aka Jay Smooth; Nina Paley, filmmaker and former cartoonist and Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, visual artist whose work is at once socially-conscious and irreverent. Moderated by Kelly DeVine, Artistic Director of the Global Peace Film Festival and consultant to Tribeca Film Institute’s web-based initiative Reframe.

Today’s visionary storytellers employ the latest media tools and formats, no longer confined to film and theaters. The way they tell their stories has been shaped by the rise of short-form and user-generated content, video games, and virtual worlds that invite audience participation. At the same time, audiences are expanding their role by contributing pieces that collectively define larger, interactive projects.

Info:
Tuesday, September 22  7:00 PM
The New School’s Wollman Hall - Eugene Lang Building, 65 West 11th Street, 5th Floor (Enter at 66 West 12th Street)
Free -  No tickets or reservations required
More Info:
http://www.tribecafilminstitute.org/home/about/59463737.html

A new panel series, “New Visions for Film and Media Arts,” launches this fall, co-sponsored by the Tribeca Film Institute and the Department of Media Studies and Film at The New School, inviting leaders from the field of film and digital media production, financing and distribution to present and discuss the current and future trends of where film and media production are heading. Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff founded the Tribeca Film Institute in the wake of September 11th to educate, entertain, and inspire filmmakers and film lovers alike. The Institute creates innovative programs that draw on the power of film to promote understanding, tolerance and global awareness. TFI also supports the cultural and economic revitalization of New York City and Lower Manhattan through arts-based initiatives.

http://openmuseum.berkeley.edu/media/files/Kenneth_Hung/46

This time rather than showing the video on HDTV, we will project the video with a very nice HD Projector so please come and check it out!

July 7 – August 8, 2009

Opening reception Tuesday, July 7   6-8pm

Gallery 2

KENNETH TIN-KIN HUNG

“In G.O.D. We Trust”

“In G.O.D. We Trust” (G.O.D. is a stand-in for Global Obama Domination) is a new digital video by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung. Born in Hong Kong and now living in New York,  Hung has been called “the John Heartfield of the digital era.” His meticulously researched collages and animations composed entirely of imagery appropriated from the web deliver a biting political satire. “In G.O.D. We Trust” presents global and domestic challenges facing the new Obama administration with the savior president cast as different deities (Jesus Christ, Mohammad, Krishna, prophet Abraham, Yoruba Orisha Trickster God Elegua/Eshu, Buddha, and Guadalupe). In addition to the video, a large outdoors banner of “Buddha Siddartha Obama” will hang on the gallery’s façade.

Simultaneously In Gallery 1 we will be presenting “The Thousand and One  Nights” - a show of contemporary artists from Palestine curated by Mary Evangelista with Michael Connor

A painful chapter in Chinese history. This June 4 incident contributes to part of the reason why I am in US now. PBS had this one great documentary “TANK MAN“, watch it!

On June 5, 1989, one day after the Chinese army’s deadly crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, a single, unarmed young man stood his ground before a column of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Captured on film and video by Western journalists, this extraordinary confrontation became an icon of the struggle for freedom around the world.

Seventeen years later, veteran filmmaker Antony Thomas goes to China in search of “The Tank Man.” Who was he? What was his fate? And what does he mean for a China that today has become a global economic powerhouse?

Drawing on interviews with Chinese and Western eyewitnesses, Thomas recounts the amazing events of the spring of 1989, when a student protest that began in Tiananmen Square, the symbolic central space of the nation, spread throughout much of the rest of China. Several weeks later, when the government sent in the army to end the demonstrations, the citizens of Beijing poured into the streets in support of the students. “You had a million people on the street, minimum. … That was unprecedented, definitely in modern Chinese post-revolutionary history,” says John Pomfret, who was in Beijing at the time, reporting for the Associated Press.

The demonstrations ended in a massacre on the night of June 3-4, when the government sent the troops into the city with orders to clear Tiananmen Square. Eyewitnesses recount what happened — from the first shots fired in the city’s outskirts, to the students’ withdrawal from the square in the early hours of June 4, to the Tank Man’s courageous stand the following day.

From there, Thomas looks at what the Tank Man’s life might be like in today’s China. China observers and scholars, including Orville Schell, talk about the turning point the nationwide unrest of 1989 represented. “After the massacre of 1989, [Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping] in effect said, ‘We will not stop economic reform; [but] we will, in effect, halt political reform.’”

Almost two decades later, the educated elite who led the protests of 1989 have benefited handsomely from China’s rapid economic growth, but many Chinese workers still face brutal working conditions and low wages. “A lot of factories do not even have one day off,” says labor expert Dr. Anita Chan who has been researching working conditions inside China for 15 years. “That means seven days a week, 13 hours a day.”

In fact, some experts see the emergence of two Chinas: one modern, wealthy and urban; the other rural, poor and disenfranchised. There is evidence that unrest among workers and peasants is growing; in 2005, there were more than 87,000 “civil disturbances” in the country.

“China is on a knife’s edge,” says Dr. Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch. “If we in the West are not aware of this, the leaders in Beijing are very much so, and this is their top concern. They know that the stability is very fragile.”

The Chinese government has responded to this threat by cracking down on dissent, and on the media. The regime has managed to erase the Tank Man’s image, famous throughout the world, from Chinese memory. Thomas shows the iconic picture to undergraduates at Beijing University, the nerve center of the 1989 protests; none of them recognize it. Central to the regime’s struggle to control information is its filtering of the Internet, a complex undertaking that raises serious issues about the role of Western IT companies in China’s censorship strategy.

In the face of official silence about 1989 and the Tank Man, the program concludes with Thomas’ quest to find out what became of the Tank Man and who he was. In the end, his identity remains a mystery, but the symbolism of his act of defiance continues to have power. “That story … is not getting weaker because of time. Because we don’t know who he is, it’s actually getting stronger,” says Xiao Qiang of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley. “In the long frame of history … human freedom, courage, dignity will stay and prevail, and that’s what that picture will testify [to] forever.”

Beyond the Reel: Explorations in Media

APRIL 28, 7:45-9:15PM @ THE APPLE STORE IN SOHO (103 PRINCE STREET)

In an age where you can watch a blockbuster on YouTube and a rooftop can become a movie theater—the way that we view films and filmmaking will never be the same again. The internet has transformed how people watch and interact with moving images, while galleries and new venues for video art have created the chance for multi-screen projections. By bringing together four very different but extremely exciting artists who are expanding the definition of “filmmaker”—this interactive event will give students the opportunity to meet with artists like acclaimed hip-hop video blogger Jay Smooth, video/ game artist Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung and mashup masters Wreck & Salvage. Join us for this experimental evening as we explore spliced archival footage, vlogging, film installation, and video games.

Both of my video works Gas Zappers and Residential Erection are in this show in Manchester’s popular URBIS center, England! Please go and check it out!!! SuperMucoThankYouShoutOut for Paul Luckraft’s invitation!

A chance to see the very latest contemporary art coming out of one of the world’s most exciting cities – New York – the capital of the contemporary art scene and hot-bed of cultural creativity.  With contributions from16 artists (including four new commissions) the exhibition features painting, performance, video and installation. Political and social satire abound, with highlights including Manchester’s statue of Abraham Lincoln dressed as a Hip Hop Fan (Leon Reid IV) an autobiographical installation fusing rock ballads, video, sculpture and drawing (Matthew Lutz-Kinoy) and an animated take-off of the recent US presidential election process (Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung). Audiences can expect the unexpected from these young artists.

I am gonna debut my new series “In GOD We Trust” at Galerie Guy Bärtschi, Geneva , Switzerland. The new series include a 5 min Hi-Def 1080p30i video, with amazing audio by Australian national treasures MR CLOAK AND DAGGER along with seven large digital prints on canvas. Please come to see what my carpel tunnel has creates! We will be there at the openings and gain weight on fondue. The show opens on March 19, 2009 and will run until May 8, 2009.

Here’s the artist statement:

“In GOD We Trust” remixes the political and economical hardships Barrack Obama has to overcome within various religious contexts. In the series the 44th US president keeps reincarnating into seven various prophets, spiritual leaders and deities in order to heal the world, including Jesus Christ, Buddha, Elegua, Lady of Guadalupe, Krishna, Mohammad and Abraham. The series uses the pillar belief, remix the important stories and substitute the key elements of the religious texts with current political and economical climate. Rather than idolizing Obama, “In GOD We Trust” examines the hope and changes the popular 44th US president promises to deliver and the obstacle along the way.

The title of the series appropriate the US national motto, but with a twist. “In GOD We Trust” the word “GOD” is an abbreviation of “Global Obama Devotion”. Contrary to the artist previous works that criticize the manipulation of religions in politics, “In GOD We Trust” starts from the religious’ teaching and reinterpret the moral values with current affair. The result is a spiritual journey that even Atheist cannot deny it.