Tuesday, August 19th at 8pm
BeBe Theatre, 20 Commerce St., Asheville
$5 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story (2011, 57 min., video)
Dir. Garrett Scott

In May 1995, Shawn Nelson, a 35-year-old plumber from Clairemont, California, emerged from an eighteen foot mine shaft he had dug beneath his backyard in search for gold. An ex-soldier and methamphetamine abuser, he stole a tank from a nearby National Guard armory and went on a rampage through the residential streets of his neighborhood, crushing cars and lampposts until the cops took him down.

A portrait of a San Diego suburb built on a booming post-WWII defense industry and its subsequent bust, the ravages of methamphetamine use, and how these histories come together in one tragic and unbelievable instance. CUL DE SAC provides extensive political, economic, and social context to this seemingly minor news story that ties Nelson’s life to the larger story of a working class community in decline.

“Truly extraordinary… a chilling X-ray of the despair in poor white suburbia. The film ambitiously frames its psychological autopsy and class analysis within the historical context of Southern California’s aerospace industry-fueled development and decline.” —The Independent Film & Video Monthly

This screening is courtesy of Icarus Films.

Tuesday, July 15th at 8pm
BeBe Theatre, 20 Commerce St., Asheville

Home is a Memory: Films by Lisa Danker and Georg Koszulinski

Que Se Acuerdes De Mi /Please Remember Me  (2011, 19 min)
Dir. Lisa Danker
This personal documentary is about Javier Navarrete, arrested in Cuba as a political prisoner in 1962 and who remained in prison for 18 years, told by his granddaughter, the filmmaker. Javier’s letters from prison to his exiled family in Miami are read over contemplative, carefully composed images of present-day Miami. Interviews with family members explore the hardships of exile in Miami; recreations of old photographs raise questions about the impact of permanent uprooting and of Javier’s extended absence from the family.

Last Stop, Flamingo (2014, 55 min)
Dir. Georg Koszulinski
The third installment of Georg Koszulinski’s Florida trilogy, Last Stop, Flamingo explores early visions of Florida, from the early 20th-century Koreshan utopian community, founded by Cyrus Teed in the swamplands of Florida, to the world’s largest planned subdivision—Golden Gate Estates—which projected a population of over 400,000 residents. Imagined landscapes give way to mythological creatures, from the Florida Skunk Ape to the mermaids who perform daily at Weeki Wachi Springs. Exactly 500 years after Ponce de Leon’s European discovery of Florida, Last Stop, Flamingo reflects on the many ways in which Florida’s landscapes have been irreversibly shaped by human desires.  This documentary was awarded the Best Documentary Feature prize at the U.S. Super 8 Film & Digital Video Festival.

Tuesday, June 10th

Doors 8:30PM | Films 9PM

Toy Boat Community Art Space

101 Fairview Rd., Asheville, NC 28803

$5 suggested donation

Experimental animators Kelly Gallagher, Lauren Cook, and Charlotte Taylor take to the road with their handcrafted films, bringing their award winning works across the east coast summer 2014. The lineup features short experimental animation on 16mm & video, and includes no less that TWO films in 3D!

Lauren Cook’s Films:

PXXXL (3 min/35mm/video) – Using century-old technology, PXXXL creates digital glitch from analogue process. It was animated directly on the celluloid without a camera in a darkroom using lights, objects, and handmade lenses shown in Rainbow Depth 3D.

Altitude Zero (5 min/16mm) – A feminist palimpsest of cinematic representation.

Handmade (3 min/35mm) – In stark contrast to video, Handmade, focuses on the grain of the celluloid and the organic nature of emulsion. It was created by contact printing images with a flashlight in a darkroom without the use of a camera, labs, digital editing, or any type of sound equipment.

Kelly Gallagher’s Films:

The Herstory of the Female Filmmaker (14min/video) – An eccentric, animated documentary on the “herstory” about some of motion picture’s greatest (and often overlooked) contributors.

Pen Up the Pigs (12 min/video) – A handcrafted, collage animation that explores connections between slavery and present-day institutionalized racism and mass incarceration.

Charlotte Taylor’s Films:

The Edge of Summer (4 min/16mm) – A stereoscopic, silhouette animation about a girl who falls in love with the sun. Shot on a handmade animation stand, using a custom designed 3D optical system.

Secrets (3min/16mm) – Shadows and photograms hand-processed and contact printed with found optical sound.

Leaf (3 min/16mm) – A leaf is place on a glass plate… found footage and direct animation.

Aurora and the Sea (1min/video) – The animated story of a girl and her journey to the sea.

Sunday, May 25th at 8pm
BeBe Theatre, 20 Commerce St., Asheville

Home is a Memory: Films by Lisa Danker and Georg Koszulinski

Que Se Acuerdes De Mi /Please Remember Me  (2011, 19 min)
Dir. Lisa Danker
This personal documentary is about Javier Navarrete, arrested in Cuba as a political prisoner in 1962 and who remained in prison for 18 years, told by his granddaughter, the filmmaker. Javier’s letters from prison to his exiled family in Miami are read over contemplative, carefully composed images of present-day Miami. Interviews with family members explore the hardships of exile in Miami; recreations of old photographs raise questions about the impact of permanent uprooting and of Javier’s extended absence from the family.

Last Stop, Flamingo (2014, 55 min)
Dir. Georg Koszulinski
The third installment of Georg Koszulinski’s Florida trilogy, Last Stop, Flamingo explores early visions of Florida, from the early 20th-century Koreshan utopian community, founded by Cyrus Teed in the swamplands of Florida, to the world’s largest planned subdivision—Golden Gate Estates—which projected a population of over 400,000 residents. Imagined landscapes give way to mythological creatures, from the Florida Skunk Ape to the mermaids who perform daily at Weeki Wachi Springs. Exactly 500 years after Ponce de Leon’s European discovery of Florida, Last Stop, Flamingo reflects on the many ways in which Florida’s landscapes have been irreversibly shaped by human desires.  This documentary was awarded the Best Documentary Feature prize at the U.S. Super 8 Film & Digital Video Festival.

Sunday, April 27th at 8pm

Dusty Stacks of Mom: the Poster Project (2013, 41m, 16mm/DV, col., sound.)
Dir. Jodie Mack

Interweaving the forms of personal filmmaking, abstract animation, and the rock opera, this animated musical documentary examines the rise and fall of a nearly-defunct poster and postcard wholesale business; the changing role of physical objects and virtual data in commerce; and the division (or lack of) between abstraction in fine art and psychedelic kitsch. Using alternate lyrics as voice over narration, the piece adopts the form of a popular rock album reinterpreted as a cine-performance.

Location:
BeBe Theater
20 Commerce Street, Downtown Asheville

Short Films about Love and Heartbreak

Friday, February 14th at 8pm

First Congregational United Church of Christ
20 Oak Street, Downtown Asheville
$5 Suggested Donation (No one turned away!)

Join us for our 2nd annual Valentine’s Day show. This program celebrates love in all its weird, lonely, sweet, sad, beautiful strangeness.  Chocolate will be provided. But bring your own illusions of love.

Thursday, November 14th @ 7pm
Fine Arts Theatre
36 Biltmore Ave., Asheville, NC
Admission: $10 (This is a fundraiser for the Media Arts Project celebrating 10 years of community programming!)

We’re excited to co-sponsor Compress Fest featuring media shorts (5 minutes or less) created by over 20 regional media-makers. A broad selection of genres showcases the creative diversity of the region, including movie trailers, glitch, avant-garde, claymation, documentary, music videos, cell phone videos, artist profiles, mash-ups, a little horror, and a good dose of humor.

Participants include: 

Join us for Home Movie Day!

Saturday, October 19th
2pm – 4 pm
Wall Street Coffee House
62 Wall Street, Asheville, NC 28801

Members of the public are invited to stop by between 2-4pm and bring their home movies to our local event where they will be inspected by HMD projectionists and shared with an enthusiastic audience in a celebration of amateur filmmaking and home movie preservation. We will show your home movies on Super 8mm, Regular 8mm, 16mm film, VHS, VHS-C, or miniDV!

Home Movie Day events provide the opportunity for individuals and families to see and share their own home movies with an audience of their community, and to see their neighbors’ in turn. It’s a chance to discover why to care about these films and to learn how best to care for them. Information about film preservation and video transfer facilities in our area will be available at the event! Bring your home movies to share, or just come enjoy the memories!

Home Movie Day is a worldwide event, find out more at www.homemovieday.com

We’re pleased to collaborate with the Media Arts Project and and Window (re/production|re/presentation) on a symposium about appropriated art.

STEAL THESE FILMS

Introduction and Q & A by Mark Hosler of Negativland

This screening will consist of shorts that appropriate images and sound into videos with new meanings and messages that subvert mainstream media culture. Including found footage, corporate monolith cartoon characters, vidding, clips of documentaries about copyright and remix culture, and a pinch of North Korean propaganda parody.

One night is not enough time to throughly represent the history of appropriation in film, however, we will give you a taste of the process and legal challenges over recent decades. We hope, after viewing, you will feel compelled to steal some footage and make your own re-mix masterpiece.

Saturday, August 17th 3pm-8pm

SCREENING AT 7PM
at Apothecary
39B South Market Street, Asheville, NC 28801

FILM LINE-UP

Uso Justo (2005, 20 min.)
Dir. Coleman Miller

Gimme the Mermaid (2005, 5 min.)
Dir. Tim Maloney and Negativland

Sonic Outlaws Clip (1995, 5 min.)
Dir. Craig Baldwin

Copyright Criminals Clip (2009, 5 min.)
Dir. Kembrew McLeod

Rip: A Remix Manifesto Clip (2009, 5 min.)
Dir. Brett Gaylor

Walt Disney’s Taxi Driver (2011, 5 min.)
Dir. Bryan Boyce

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade (2002, 6 min.)
Dir. the St01en Collective

Great Man and Cinema (2009, 4 min.)
Dir. Jim Finn

Detachable Penis (1997, 3 min.)
Dir. Media Cannibals

Buffy Vs. Edward: Twilight Remixed (2009, 6 min.)
Dir. Jonathan McIntosh

The Animated Heavy Metal Parking Lot (2008, 2 min.)
Dir. Leslie Supnet

Wouldn’t It Be Nice (2001, 3 min.)
Dir. Laura Shapiro

Favorite Things (2007, 2 min.)
Negativland

Details about the entire event below or at this website.

The Heroines of Handcrafted Cinema
July 6, 2013 at 8pm
The BeBe Theater
20 Commerce Street, Asheville, NC
$5 Suggested Donation (No one turned away)

Mechanical Eye will present “The Heroines of Handcrafted Cinema” at the BeBe Theater, as part of this year’s Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts (ILSSA) conference taking place July 5-7th. For this program, we’re teaming up with filmmaker Kelly Gallagher, the curating genius of Philadelphia, to present films by women who labor for their art impractically.

Film line-up:
Altitude Zero – Lauren Cook
Removed – Naomi Uman
Peeks – Jo Dery
The Body Besieged – Kelly Sears
Yard Work is Hard Work – Jodie Mack
Nothing’s Wrong – Charlotte Taylor
Ceallaigh at Kilmainham – Kelly Gallagher
L’eye – Xander Marro
Quick and Easy – Lauren Gregory
Night Hunter – Stacey Steers
Arbor – Janie Geiser
Myth Labs – Martha colburn
Like a Lantern – Lille Carré

The heroines of “handcrafted” cinema animate moving images that are literally and tangibly created by their own hands — images that are crafted, painted, torn up, spit up, chewed out, glittered up, collaged, drawn, painted, puppeteered, sewn, hand-processed, bleached, scratched, made with love, made with hate, and made with everything in between.

This cinematic exploration is political on two explicit levels: the politics of “handcrafting” a film and the political topics that each piece explores. These exuberant heroines create cinema that is richly political, often times militant, sometimes comedic, other times serious, yet *always* colorful and as strong and varied as their different tools and weapons of *craft!!!*