Month: March 2015

Tuesday, April 21 @ 8pm
The BeBe Theatre
20 Commerce St., Asheville, NC
$5 suggested donation

Rocks in My Pockets (2014, 88 min.)
Dir. Signe Baumane

Presented in partnership with the Asheville Radical Mental Health Collective!

In the new animated gem Rocks in My Pockets, Latvian-born artist and filmmaker Signe Baumane tells five fantastical tales based on the courageous women in her family and their battles with madness. With boundless imagination and a twisted sense of humor, she has created daring stories of art, romance, marriage, nature, business, and Eastern European upheaval—all in the fight for her own sanity.

Employing a unique, beautifully textured combination of papier-mâché stop-motion and classic hand-drawn animation (with inspiration from Jan Svankmajer and Bill Plympton), Baumane has produced a poignant and often hilarious tale of mystery, mental health, redemption and survival.

We will have a Skype Q & A with filmmaker Signe Baummane following the film!

Monday, March 16 at 8pm
BeBe Theatre, 20 Commerce St, Asheville
$5 suggested donation

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: The Smyth Brothers
Creative destruction is an economic concept that describes the paradox of progress by attaching evolutionary theory to capitalism. “It’s the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” The dualistic nature pairs well with who we are as twins and the stories we try to tell- tales of a people and their pursuit of money. How does this pursuit mutate now that change is the only constant in capitalism?

Por Dinero (2012, 31 min., 16mm to video)
Quotes from an ancient Mayan hero tie together the life of an undocumented Mexican, his indigenous family, and their dying language.

Rice for Sale (2013, 31 min., 16mm in-camera edits)
An experimental tale distorting Bali’s modern world into a historical account depicting the demise of its former cultural motto, “Rice is Life.” Ten wordless vignettes, all in-camera edits, are strung together to compose a two-part mythological venture down the heavenly mountain toward the demonic sea, culminating at the site of the 2002 terrorist bombing.

About the Smyth Brothers
Brendan and Jeremy Smyth are 16mm experimental documentary filmmakers who explore the globe in search of cultural oddities. Their interest in visual anthropology has sent them from Mexico to Indonesia showcasing the economic plight of workers through unique methods of storytelling. The twins’ work has won multiple awards and screened at notable festivals/venues including Anthology Film Archives, Antimatter, Atlanta, Big Muddy, Chicago Underground, FLEXfest, Edinburgh Int’l, and Indie Grits. The two are the directors/programmers of the Haverhill Experimental Film Festival in Massachusetts with submissions open for the third annual event. Currently, the Smyth brothers live in Durham, NC, where they curate a monthly experimental film series known as UNEXPOSED.