WELCOME:

This 4th year of the MilkBar International Film Festival features films from around the globe, around Oakland and five newly commissioned world premier interdisciplinary works exploring the relationship of film, music, performance and installation including Dutch Classic by Matthias Bossi, Eric Koziol, and paige starling sorvillo; short films about water by Evelyn Ficarra and Ian Winters; Finding Aurora by The League of Imaginary Scientists including George Cremaschi, Carolina Bäckman, Emma Nordanfors, and Lucy HG; A Clear Story by Merlin Coleman and Katherin McInnis; and Modern Times by Liz Allbee, Dan Plonsey, and the Daniel Popsicle Ensemble.

WHERE ::

This year's festival is presented at the new Noodle Factory Performing Arts Center in West Oakland.

(1255 26th St. at Union)

Buy tickets ONLINE (through brownpapertickets) or at the door.

For a press release describing the MilkBar festival and complete artists list.

SCHEDULE OF SCREENINGS AND SHOWS::

Friday September 12th
Café open at 5pm
5:30 to 7:00pm International Festival Screening – Evteeva Retrospective
7:00 to 8:00pm Installed Film Works
8:00 to 10:00pm Main Program: Commissioned Works and MilkBar Festival Program
10;30pm on… live music by Dan Cantrell’s Mini Mega Band

Saturday September 13th
3:30 to 5pm International Festival Screening – St. Petersburg’s Open Cinema Festival
Café open at 5pm
5:30 to 7:00pm International Festival Screening – Love and Anarchy Festival
7:00 to 8:00pm Installed Film Works
8:00 to 10:00pm Main Program: Commissioned Works and MilkBar Festival Program
10:30pm on… live music by Sylvain Carton and Friends

Sunday September 14th
3:30 to 5pm International Festival Screening – MilkBar Second Shorts Program
Café open at 5pm
5:30 to 7:00pm International Festival Screening – Evteeva Retrospective
7:00 to 8:00pm Installed Film Works
8:00 to 10:00pm Main Program: Commissioned Works and MilkBar Festival Program

PRESS INFORMATION

WHO ::

A partial list of artists -- full list coming soon

• Filmmaker:      Nazli Eda Noyan and Daghan Celayir

  Title of Film:    The Children of the Other Lands

• Filmmaker:      Cara Marisa Deleon

  Title of Film:   Aurora

• Filmmaker:     Tony Gault

  Title of Film:   Not Too Much Remember

• Film / music:     Katherin Mcinnis and Merlin Coleman

  Title of Film:   Not Too Much Remember

• Film/ Music: Ian Winters and Evelyn Ficarra

  Title of project:   short films about water / submarine

Filmmaker:      Nazli Eda Noyan and Daghan Celayir

Title of Film:    The Children of the Other Lands

Length:            04min

Format:           Video

Synopsis:         What were our favorite moments from childhood?  What were our nightmares?  What about the children of the other lands and their memories?  A 2D animation made up of collages from illustrations, drawings, etchings and photographs.

BIO:

Nazli Eda Noyan was Born in Izmir, 1974, studied design on scholarship and earned her bachelor and master degrees at Dokuz Eylul University, Bilkent University and University of Florida. Daghan Celayir, born in 1978, finished his studies in visual arts and visual communication design in Bahcesehir University, Istanbul Turkey.

Filmmaker:      Cara Marisa Deleon

Title of Film:   Aurora

Length:            02:30

Format:           Video

Synopsis:         Using hand animation on live film, the film explores the imperfection of revisiting what is lost.

BIO:

Cara Marisa Deleon received her MA in film studies from the University of Iowa and her MFA in film production from Savannah College of Art and Design.  She is an experimental artist who explores the body, women and ideology within time-based media. Her work has been shown through out North America and Europe.  She currently lives in Chico, California and is an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at California State University, Chico.

Filmmaker:     Tony Gault

Title of Film:   Not Too Much Remember

Length:            12min

Format:           16mm

Synopsis:         Maybe it’s the CIA and the LSD they gave “Richard,” or America and its vast imagery screwed into our brains and restructuring our identity.  Whatever “it” is, get ready for a found footage film that deconstructs the mighty power of narratives and their pervasive effect on the formation of consciousness. The film has screened and received awards at many festivals and venues, including Ann Arbor Film Festival, Cinema Texas, Anthology Film Archives, New York Underground, Tribeca Film Festival and the New Orleans Film Festival, where it won Best Film in the festival.

BIO:   

Tony Gault is currently working on a film about language and how it influences our perception of reality.

He is also one of five candidates selected for President Bush’s manned Mars expedition.

Filmmaker:      Aysegul Guryuksel

Title of Film:    Nobody’s Pet

Length:            06min 31sec

Format:           Video / Experimental Film Art/ Physical Theatre

Synopsis:         Experimental Film Art/ Physical Theatre “Nobody’s Pet” returned with the “Best International Avant Garde Film” award from the New York International Independent Film Festival 2007 and after over 50 screenings, it is now in the Cannes Film Festival Catalog 2008.

BIO:               

Born in 1980. She graduated from MSU Istanbul State Conservatory of performing Arts in 2001.

Aysegul Guryuksel is a choreographer, performer, and founder of subvoid.  In 2006, She created an evening length work and later on with her strong interest in editing, she decided to transform her stage-art work into an experimental film-art production with this film, she has become an award winning director in New York

Filmmaker:      Henry Gwiazda  

Title of Film:    Claudia and Paul

Length:            04min 14sec

Format:            Digital Video

Synopsis:         Claudia and Paul is an experiment to discover what artistic event would occur if we could see all the activity around us in the next couple of minutes juxtaposed.  Would our actions appear more meaningful?  Would a hidden choreography suddenly emerge? Is the motion around us better observed by extending our memory into the past and future simultaneously?

BIO: 

Henry Gwiazda is a composer/new media artist.  Since 1986, he has worked with sampling and sound effects to create a unique musical language that is derived from the interior musical characterizes of noise itself. His recent work is concerned with creating with creating immersive musical works and computer multimedia. Performing live with sampler, guitar, and tape, he has given concerts, workshops, and lectures throughout the united states, Canada, and Europe.

Filmmaker:     Sarah Klein

Title of Film:    Wanderlust

Length:            05min 10sec

Format:            MiniDV

Synopsis:         In this short animation Daily routine motivates the modern day woman to take a trip around the world.

BIO: 

Sarah Klein’s work examines the contrast between the domestic and public worlds.  In her videos, drawings and performances, she explores the conduct and codes that define these two realms. Sarah received and MFA from Mills College, Oakland California (1999) and has exhibited her work widely in galleries and museums, on television, and in film festivals.

Filmmaker:     Ellen Lake

Title of Film:    I look forward to it and  " I was never glamorous, I was just around" (2006)

Length:            01min / 2min

Format:           16mm film & cell phone video

Synopsis:         A short conversation between two people sharing the screen yet situated seven decades apart.  Rotary phone to mobile phone, this brief exchange comments on the passing of time and the evolution of technology.

  Synopsis:         A short mediation on balance, preservation, time and technology.  This diptych connects images of an old woman walking with a cane (shot with a cell phone) to images of her former youthful self skating with friends seventy years earlier (shot on 16mm film in the 1930s)

BIO: 

Ellen Lake received her MFA from mills College in Oakland, California in 2002, where she studies sculpture, film & video, and installation.  She is currently working on a body of work incorporating images from cell phone and digital media with clips from 16mm films from the 1930s and 40s.  She was the recipient of Bay Area Video Coalition’s 2005 Mediamaker Award.  Work from this series has been shown at the Walker Art Center, Exit Art, Crawl Underground Film Festival and Madcat film Festival, CyberArts Festival, and Axiom Gallery. Additional work has been shown internationally at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel.

Filmmaker:     Richard O’Sullivan

Title of Film:    The Other Image

Length:            05min 19sec

Format:            MiniDV

Synopsis:         ‘The Other Image’ attempts to isolate some of the different images that lead through to a moment of perception, and seek to bring them into dramatic conflict.

Filmmaker:      Richard O’Sullivan  

Title of Film:    Transit

Length:            02min 05sec

Format:            DV

Synopsis:         In this very short simple piece, a spotlight is moved over a jar of American coins.  The glare of the light blossoms and fades over the curves of quarters and pennies shot using a tiny CCTV wireless camera. 

There’s something paradoxical about the treatment of the money in this vide.  The piece is clearly fetishistic as it fixes on the shiny surfaces of the coins in the light;  the tiny camera makes the coins seem larger than normal. But the dirty degraded images, the burnt-out glare and the dark recesses of the pile all imply something unpleasant.  The grand American symbols on the coins are belied by the dank, grubby visual treatment of these now-worthless pennies.

Filmmaker:      Kate Pelling

Title of Film:    In Pursuit of Elvis (Elvis’ Blow Job)

Length:            06min 08sec

Format:           Video

Synopsis:         In Pursuit of Elvis (Elvis’ Blow Job) explores Elvis’ in terms of sexuality and performance, Elvis describes the thrill of performance and the receiving of blow jobs at the end as a reward, but Elvis is in drag and the gender of the performer contradicts what Elvis is saying, questioning the performative nature of sexuality and the purpose of performance.

BIO:

Kate Pelling is a UK based artist who uses language, costume, video, drawing and theoretical research.

Ongoing project ‘In Pursuit of Elvis’, consists of a multidisciplinary sketchbook using Fine Art, Queer theory, Performance theory and Psychology, all of which form a body of work due to be completed in 2008.  Kate Pelling has exhibited her work internationally; she studied at Birkbeck, University of London in October 2008

Filmmaker:     Sarah Sass

Title of Film:    This is a dance

Length:            18min

Format:           Installation Performance / Video

Synopsis:         “This is a dance” is performance-based piece that examines and deconstructs both the space and time of the dances as it happens. By incorporating both ore-recorded and live video feed, the piece expands the “stage” space while utilizing technology to create time delays. The live video feed is sent through a laptop and maintained by Christian Gainsley during the performance.

BIO:

Sarah Sass earned a BFA in modern dance and choreography from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. In 2002, she formed peck peck dance ensemble (PPDE) in collaboration with Sean McMahon. Christian Gainsley has been living in San Francisco since 2003 and playing in video art just as long.

Filmmaker:       Laura Zaylea

Title of film:     Flower Fall

Length:            04min 05sec

Format:           16mm / Silent / Color / 2007

Synopsis:         ‘Flower Fall’ is a meditation on vibration and color, Inspired by the chakra system. 

Super-8mm Ektachrome film has been hand-processed, optically printed on to 16mm Ektachrome, and hand printed again. 

The result is a film celebrating the essence of luminosity and movement.

This film is designed to bring viewers into the moment – as art and meditation. 

BIO:

Laura Zaylea holds an MFA in Film from San Francisco Art Institute and a BA in Art-Semiotics from Brown University. 

Her single-frame animated films cherish the spontaneity and intimacy of hand processing in and optical printing techniques, And her “queer girl magic movies” celebrate the quirky psychology of introverted characters and the gritty, colorful texture of video pixels. LZ sees her moving image work as an offering: a landscape to dream into, a breath-rate to get you there, and colors and characters to play with when you arrive.