2013 United States Super 8 Film + Digital Video Festival at Rutgers University this weekend – Part 2!

2013 United States Super 8 Film + Digital Video Festival – Part 2
Now in its 25th year, the United States Super 8mm Film + Digital Video Festival is the largest and longest running juried Super 8mm film and digital video festival in North America. The festival encourages any genre (including animation, documentary, personal, narrative, and experimental) made on Super 8mm/8mm film, Hi 8mm/8mm, or digital video.  The 25th annual United States Super 8mm Film + Digital Video Festival will be held on February 15-17, 2013 at Voorhees Hall #105, beginning each evening at 7 PM, on the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.  The Festival will include a different program each evening. 

All of the submitted works were screened by a panel of fifteen jurors comprised of media professionals, journalists, students, interns, and film scholars. The panel included: Nia Allen-Lee, Yasmeen Ali, Alexandra Chin, Erika Conty, Ryan Dembek, Rugved Deshpande, Daniel Fisher, Irene Fizer, Victory Furniture, Allyson Hensley, Albert Nigrin, Matt Riddle, Johanna Ruiz, Allie Steiger, and Andrew Zrebiec. The nineteen finalist works were selected from over 166 works submitted by filmmakers from around the world. In addition, the jurors chose the Prize Winners in conjunction with the Festival Director.  During the three days of the festival, audience members will participate in the judging process by voting for their favorite works via the "Audience Choice Prize." All of the award-winners will be publicly announced after the closing-night screenings on Sunday, February 17, 2013. In addition, there will be special tribute programs for two Super 8 filmmakers -- Sanjiban Sellew and Anne Robertson -- who won many awards at our Festival.  We join their families and friends in mourning their untimely passing as we celebrate their remarkable work.

2013 United States Super 8 Film + Digital Video Festival Schedule

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Holiday - Tony Lawrence (Sydney, Australia)
In this experimental short film a beautiful girl sees beyond her reflection in the mirror. 2012; 7 min.

Don’t Break Down - Matt Meindl (Columbus, Ohio)
An intriguing experimental documentary about garbage.  2012; 7 min.

The Art of Forced Collaboration – Jet Wintzer (Old Bridge, New Jersey)
A depressed artist visits Jackson Pollock’s home and grave in East Hampton, New York hoping to gain inspiration. 2013; 10 min.

Last of Our Kind - Reed O'Beirne  (Seattle, Washington)
Weaving together film, music, and poetry, this film transforms the memory of a lost love into a ritualistic incantation of longing. Action is exaggerated and time seems to blur, as the lovers’ tale unfolds poetically into a modern interpretation of the Persephone myth. Featuring an original soundtrack created by Cocteau Twins' founder, Robin Guthrie, interwoven with a voice-over recitation of Rick Linville’s poem. 2012; 13 min.

Ecstasy of St. Agnes - Slawomir J. Milewski (Lidzbark Warminski, Poland)
A short experimental film on the inability to communicate and a short movie about love. 2012; 20 min.

Diary of Dreams: Volume One - Daniel Abad (Madrid, Spain)
An experimental film about the contemplative state in which one might find oneself whilst dreaming. 2012; 24 min.

A Tribute to Anne Charlotte Robertson, Film Diarist (1949 – 2012)
Anne Charlotte Robertson filmed herself, her day-to-day existence, and tribulations that most of her audience could grasp or had lived. She set down the beat, wanting what many people want: to be loved, to be happy, to be thin, to be disciplined, to be in control of life, imaginary and real. She recorded on Super 8 film like an obsessed person might keep a diary, intimately, exhaustively, and in a manner closer to a poet or writer locked in a closet than to her contemporaries in experimental film. Like many women who keep a diary, she did not shrink nor shirk. She succeeded in leaving a pile of films and many pieces of her puzzle. She lived both in harmony, and disharmony, with her mother, in the "looney bin" and finally, somewhat contentedly, on her own. She relied on the kindness of friends, strangers, the so-called safety net of our civilization, and not the least, she drew on a reserve of courage and boldness and honest, bald-face looking and documenting that is remarkable. These reserves of courage and honesty are on parade at all times in her films. Anne went to art and film school, graduating from Massachusetts College of Art with an MFA and honors in Filmmaking in 1985. She earned her BA, magna cum laude, from The University of Massachusetts, Boston in Art and Psychology. Later, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in Filmmaking. She shot Super 8 film as that was the affordable, portable choice for artists in those decades. She made both short and long films, and is best known and recognized for her monumental 37-hour work called Five Year Diary, which she began creating in 1981.  Each segment of Five Year Diary is a 26-minute film, containing 400 feet of Super 8 original film with sound on film. She often added sound from audio cassette tapes and usually performed with the film at screenings, doing live voice-over. The last reel of the Five Year Diary was made in 1997 on film. A long diary on videotape followed but only Super 8 film had enduring appeal to her as a medium. The short films chosen for this special tribute can give only a hint of Anne's massive artistic output. She left her film collection to Harvard Film Archive where more films will be issued for study about this important woman filmmaker.

Film selection:
1. Magazine Mouth (1983) 7 min.  Through animation and stop-motion techniques, Anne illustrates her feelings about life in America during President Ronald Reagan’s first term.
2. My Cat, My Garden and 9/11 (2001) 6 min.   Anne's adopted cat gets sick, 9/11 happens, and her garden goes to winter.
3. Apologies (1990) 16:47. Anne's most well-known film, in which she names everything that she is sorry about. A significant feminist manifesto. 

Saturday—February 16, 2013
7PM
Voorhees Hall #105, Rutgers University,
71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey
$10=General; $9=Students+Seniors; $8=Rutgers Film Co-op Friends

Jimmy John’s of New Brunswick will be providing free sandwiches prior to this screening!

More info is available at www.njfilmfest.com or 848-932-8482!