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
WORK SAMPLES 2021-22 Guggenheim
Mockup of installation and live performance: Sabina in the Afterworld (2023) Oratorio with animated projections, live chorus, and cello quartet.
Lament for a Lost Bird, work in progress (2022), CGI. 38-second clip from 3-minute video in the Birdsong installation at Barnsdall Park, Los Angeles: a gallery installation for one viewer to rest and listen to bird songs—with video of an original song for the extinct Santa Barbara Song Sparrow sung by a mouse. Outside in the park, mockingbirds will learn to imitate the song sparrow's call from recorded simulations, bringing the lost bird back to life (with assistance from the Cornell Ornithology Lab). https://www.danaduff.com/bird-song-room
3-minute simulation of 2019 installation in Chicago and Hawick, Scotland of What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes . Collaboration with Sabina Ott on the theme of her impending death from cancer. Simulation showing the action across two screens with viewer at center. Sound: A.J.McClenon; haiku: Stephanie Barber.
Image: Installation shot from 2019 What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, Apect/Ratio Chicago. 2-channel video with sound, plus sculptures. Collaboration with Sabina Ott (1955-2018), who died during the planning of the exhibition.
Clips (01:42-minutes) fromThe Gringas (2013, HD digital video, 60 minutes)
A highly subjective record from the filmmaker's friendship with the family of a teenage German-American-Mexican girl who is growing up in poverty in rural Mexico; set around the planning of her quinceañera and its aftermath. https://www.danaduff.com/the-gringas
A POTENTIALITY (2020, digital, 16mm film, silent and sound, 16 minutes) (Note: First 7.5 minutes are silent)
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."
Video still: Catalogue Vol.3, (2017, Digital, CGI, sound, 02:43). Third in a series of thirteen films exploring a controversial print catalogue using film.
Film still from Catalogue Volume 10, (2017, Digital video and 16mm film, color and B&W, sound, 05:40). Text from George Perec's "Things: a Novel of the Sixties"
Still from Catalogue Vol.6 (2016, 11:30, B&W, sound, 16mm film on digital scan) Shot using the RH “Interiors” catalogue while audio from a horror movie played in the studio. The film clips were then organized as a tour through the rooms of a house: foyer, living room, dining room, kitchen, study, bath, ending at the bedroom.