A POTENTIALITY (2020, digital, 16mm film, 16 minutes)
Winner of the Alice Guy Prize Special Mention at FID Marseille 2020. Notes from the Jury: A film which meticulously reflects upon the materiality of time following specific histories. While focusing on details, the images prevent us from accessing the whole. This gesture reflects the subject where voice has been violently stripped from the people, left silenced. The Special Mention for Prix Alice Guy goes to “A POTENTIALITY” by Dana Berman Duff.
A POTENTIALITY is a continuation of my interest in using film to shoot printed material, as in the Catalogue series. I'm especially interested in the equivalence of the film grain to the halftone print dot at the base level of the construction of reproduced image and language.
This piece is built on a graphic project by Susan Silton in which she reprinted five pages of the New York Times from the 1930s. Her project has a disturbing resemblance to present day newspaper reports.
Opera "The Emperor of Atlantis" composed in 1944 by Viktor Ulmann, libretto by Peter Kien.
2-MINUTE TRAILER
Catalogue Vol.6 (2016, 11:30, B&W, sound, 16mm film on digital scan)
The sixth film in the Catalogue series. Catalogue is a suite of 16mm black-and-white films and videos that consider the time it takes to look at desirable objects presented in a catalogue of knock-off home furnishings photographed in staged rooms imitating the style of film noir. Each film takes one volume of the 13-volume mail order catalogue as its subject.
Catalogue Vol.6 was shot with audio clips from a horror movie that mention the words "house" or particular rooms, or "upstairs" etc. playing in the studio so that each shot acquired a random diegetic "soundtrack". Then the film clips were organized as a "tour" through the rooms of a house: foyer, living room, dining room, kitchen, study, bathroom, and ending with the bedroom. 16mm film on digital scan.
Screenings:
ULTRACinema, Puebla, Mexico
Antimatter [Media Art], Victoria, Canada
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin in Berlin
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin in Paris
Experiments in Cinema Film Festival, Albuquerque
Martinique Film Festival
Tabor International Film Festival, Croatia, curated program by Michael Pattison
Alchemy Film Festival, Harwick, Scotland
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles
Visions in the Nunnery, Bow Arts/Nunnery Gallery, London
Festival Ecrã, Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janiero, Brazil
What Have We Here? Design Within Reach, San Francisco, curated by Gina
REDCAT, Los Angeles