From: Ken Bawcom (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2007 - 22:19:01 PDT
The PXL 2000 toy video camera celebrates its 20th year, and PXL THIS
film festival director returns to Michigan for this unique screening
and workshop. Gerry Fialka was raised in Flint, attended UofM in Ann
Arbor, and has lived in Venice CA since 1980.
For Immediate Release Contact: Donald Harrison 313-961-9936
email suppressed
(before July 26)
Detroit Film Center proudly presents PIXELVISION: ELECTRONIC FOLK ART
on SAT, Aug 11 at 7pm at 1227 Washington Blvd, Detroit, MI, 48226,
313-961-9936, admission $5. detroitfilm.org
Gerry Fialka will present the interactive workshop "Pixelvision:
Electronic Folk Art" at 7pm, followed by a 8pm screening of BEST of PXL
THIS 13-16, a 90 minute compilation of films made with the Fisher Price
toy video camera from across the world.
Press ready stills (300 dpi hi-res) available from:
1- http://members.cox.net/l.m.sabo/photos.html for GESTURES by L. M.
Sabo 2- indiespace.com/pxlthis for Alfred Benjamin still of Gerry
Fialka with the PXL 2000 camera
3- http://www.members.aol.com/bunchastuf/souvenir.html press kit for
SOUVENIR, email email suppressed for still
Pixelvision: Electronic Folk Art - Gerry Fialka, Director of the PXL
THIS festival, presents an interactive workshop on the Fisher-Price
PXL-2000 toy video camera. He explores the significance of this raw DIY
moving image art tool through the percepts of Marshall McLuhan, George
Seaurat, Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Frank
Zappa & more. James Wickstead invented the plastic camcorder and
Fisher-Price produced it from 1987 to 1989. It records picture and
sound directly onto audio cassettes, which creates its grainy look.
Another distinguishing feature is its "in-focus" capability from zero
to infinity. The "in your face" attitude restores a certain human
vitality to the overpowering sensory overload that bombards us daily.
It illustrates Marshall McLuhan's percept that television is tactile -
you can practically touch the dots, all 2,000 of them (as opposed to
the 150,000 you normally see on TV). Orson Welles said that a movie
studio is "the biggest electric train set a kid ever had." On the other
end of the spectrum, the PXL-2000 video camera is the cheesiest failed
toy ever -- a train crashes in the playpen. Yet, in the hands of
visionary video-makers, it has become an essential tool of cutting-edge
creativity. www.indiespace.com/pxlthis and www.venicewake.org
"I have participated in Gerry Fialka's interactive workshops at the Ann
Arbor Film Festivals in 2006 and 2007.
He is willing to enter in new discussions even if they go against his
current views. Fialka's multilayered delivery of ideas encourages the
search for new questions and new paradigms that extend beyond. He is
well-informed, off-beat and articulate - one of the most fascinating
people I've met at the AAFF." - Keith Jeffries, Ascalon Films
"I am very impressed by Gerry Fialka's energy in bringing together
groups of people to think about ideas. That is very much in the McLuhan
spirit to create and foster interdisciplinary, living, educational
projects in which people can talk about ideas. He creates forums that
bring together a plurality of critical perspectives into one
multivalent conversation. " - Janine Marchessault, author of MARSHAL
McLUHAN: COSMIC MEDIA.
BEST OF PXL THIS 13-16 (90 minute compilation of 14 PXL shorts from
across the world compiled from the PXL THIS film festivals from 2003 to
2006)
1-SOUVENIR (Stephen Rose, 5minutes) "plays like Guy Maddin directing a
Charlie Kaufman script inside a snow globe" - LA Times. "Proof that you
don't need fancy electronic gizmos to make a film. The makers used a
Fisher-Price PXL 2000 toy camera to make this lovely and poignant look
at existence and loneliness." - Santa Fe Film Festival.
2-GESTURES (L.M. Sabo, 2m) "chronicles U.S. involvement in Iraq with
short bits of text accompanied by appropriate hand gestures ? thumbs up
and down, an okay sign, the finger and so on; short and punchy, the
piece artfully captures five years of misguided policy in two minutes"
- LA Weekly.
3-HELEN POSSERT: A WWII ROSIE (Michael Possert, 6m) "has the unmediated
authenticity of something photographed through one of the bomb sights
its subject assembled" - SF Weekly.
4-SOMNIGRAPHIC TRACES OF THE OTHERWISE UNDOCUMENTED FRIEDKIN INSTITUTE
FOR SLEEP DISORDER RESEARCH (Struan Ashby & Roy Parkhurst, 15m, from
New Zealand) "offers glimpses into the dream states of several patients
as a way to test the aesthetic limits of the camera. In the opening
sequence of this fake documentary, a person suffering from
hallucinations following a drug overdose witnesses lovely abstract
patterns of shimmering light and dark, while another patient, with
hydrophilic compulsion, enjoys watery dreams with undulating colors and
blurred figures. A patient who has ?violent tendencies? endures
horrific dreams filled with high-contrast images of worms, bodies and
knives, and a melancholic dream featuring birds in chiaroscuro
silhouettes and other classically nostalgic images. Ashby and Parkhurst
achieve extraordinarily beautiful images using multiple visual styles,
and it?s a pleasure to see the PXL camera?s many abilities displayed in
one video" - LA Weekly.
5-I'M IN THE MOOD (Bryan Konefsky, 5m) uses a dual-projection technique
to present a colorful portrait of Ann Arbor, Michigan's legendary
street performer, Shaky Jake, as he serenades pedestrians.
6-ABOUT FLOWERS (Juniper Woodbury, 4m) Always an audience favorite,
this eight-year-old's detailed lesson from a "bee's-eye view" is an
example of the PXL-2000 camera finding its way back into the hands of
the consumers for which it was originally intended.
7-SLEEP (Doug Ing, 4m) PXL pioneer explores the past time's past-time.
8-DOUBLE-DUTY INTERROBANG (Gerry Fialka, 10m) Robert Dobbs reswindles
Menippean memory with new punctuation.
9-FISH (Joe Frese, 5m) poignant pondering as aquatic pets reflect.
10-PXL MANIFESTO (Ross Craig, 5m) "hilarious sendup of Denmark's
self-righteous and purity-demanding Dogme 95 movement (no color!
hand-held camera!)" - SF Weekly.
11-BABBLEFESTO #2 (Steve Craig, 4m) The LA Weekly proclaimed it "packs
one hell of a kick" by combining automated customer service messages
and structuralist cinema.
12-A STAKE TO THE HEART: THE LAST PXL MOVIE (Ross Craig, 3m): an
engrossing cut and paste mashup.
13-RUGRAT (Lisa Marr, 6m) " a meditation on William Randolph Heart's
passionate, if short-lived, interest in Navajo's weaving as the
signature motif for his retreat at San Simeon, the fragmentation
inflicted by the PXL process on the geometric patterning of the Indian
blankets serves nicely as a metaphor for the fickle newspaper mogul's
wandering field of attention." -LA Weekly..
14-ZERO (Eli Elliott, 15m): multi-form, semi-autobiographical piece
deeply probes a farcical appointment with the artist's comic self.
PXL THIS, started by Gerry Fialka in 1991, spans many genres:
documentary, poetry, drama, art, music, political activism, cinema
povera, comedy and the avant-garde. The irresistible irony of the PXL
is that the camera's ease-of-use and affordability, which entirely
democratizes movie-making, has inspired the creation of some of the
most visionary, avant and luminous film of our time.
GERRY FIALKA, film curator, writer, lecturer, and media ecologist has
conducted interactive workshops from UCLA to MIT, from the Ann Arbor
Film Festival to Culver City High School. Fialka gave two major
lectures at The 2001 North America James Joyce Conference at UC
Berkeley. His public interview series MESS (Media Ecology Super
Sessions), with the likes of Mike Kelley, Alexis Smith, Abraham
Polonsky, Mary Woronov, Paul Krassner, Ann Magnuson, Heather Woodbury,
Norman Klein, Chris Kraus, P. Adams Sitney, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp,
Kristine McKenna, Ann Magnuson, John Sinclair, Firesign Theatre's Phil
Proctor among many others, began in 1997 and continues at different LA
venues including Beyond Baroque. Fialka's interviews have been
published in books by Mike Kelley and Sylvere Lotringer. His MARSHALL
McLUHAN-FINNEGANS WAKE Reading Club www.venicewake.org has explored
media and literature at the Venice Public Library since 1995. His PXL
THIS film festival has explored media and literature at the Venice
Public Library since 1995. His PXL THIS film festival
www.indiespace.com/pxlthis has celebrated the PXL 2000 toy camera since
1991. Film Threat's Chris Gore deemed PXL THIS one of the ten best
video festivals. Fialka's DOCUMENTAL series (at the Unurban in Santa
Monica www.myspace.com/sevendudleycinema) started at Midnight Special,
the oldest political bookstore in the world, ran for 8 years, and was
praised as "L.A.'s pre-eminent documentary and experimental film
showcase...the holy grail"-LA WEEKLY. In RES magazine, Holly Willis
declared Gerry Fialka the "Los Angeles-based independent media hero."
In the Independent Film & Video Monthly, Willis proclaimed Fialka an
"exemplary devotee of cinema. Thanks to Fialka's penchant for the weird
and wild, L.A. gets to see material we wouldn't otherwise." The LA
TIMES calls Fialka "the multi-media Renaissance man." His 7 DUDLEY
CINEMA series (www.81x.com/7dudley/cinema) continues the tradition of
DOCUMENTAL at Sponto Gallery in Venice, where the beats used to read
poetry (Venice West Cafe). Fialka has worked for Frank Zappa (for
nearly ten years as an archivist), George Carlin and Filmex. He has
interviewed the likes of Carla Bley, Horace Silver, Jon Hendricks,
Annie Ross, George Clinton, Amiri Baraka, Paul Plimley, Oscar Brown Jr,
Ben Watson, Grace Lee Boggs, Craig Baldwin among others for AMASS
magazine, LA Jazz Scene, Jazz News, Bird, Flipside, and PACIFICA's KPFK
radio.
"I showed my film Hippies From Hell at one of the most special venues
in the world, 7 Dudley Cinema in Venice, CA. Curator Gerry Fialka is a
wonderful host, able to create a joyful relaxing and concentrated
atmosphere. During the Q&A he showed himself as a very eloquent critic
asking deep and serious questions- always with humor, knowledge and
full of energy." - Ine Poppe, Professor at the Willem de Kooning Art
Academy, Amsterdam
Gerry has long been a friend of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and I'm
sure this will all be very interesting. So, if you are in the area,
I'll see you there!
Ken B.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
Here's the details on Gerry's August film screening and workshop. I am grateful for any press leads. Thanks
We are grateful for listing the following event. Please consider a feature article as the PXL 2000 toy video camera celebrates its 20th year, and PXL THIS film festival director returns to Michigan for this unique screening and workshop. Gerry Fialka was raised in Flint, attended UofM in Ann Arbor, and has lived in Venice CA since 1980.
For Immediate Release Contact: Donald Harrison 313-961-9936 email suppressed
or Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330 email suppressed (before July 26)
Detroit Film Center proudly presents PIXELVISION: ELECTRONIC FOLK ART on SAT, Aug 11 at 7pm at 1227 Washington Blvd, Detroit, MI, 48226, 313-961-9936, admission $5. detroitfilm.org
Gerry Fialka will present the interactive workshop "Pixelvision: Electronic Folk Art" at 7pm, followed by a 8pm screening of BEST of PXL THIS 13-16, a 90 minute compilation of films made with the Fisher Price toy video camera from across the world.
Press ready stills (300 dpi hi-res) available from:
1- http://members.cox.net/l.m.sabo/photos.html for GESTURES by L. M. Sabo
2- indiespace.com/pxlthis for Alfred Benjamin still of Gerry Fialka with the PXL 2000 camera
3- http://www.members.aol.com/bunchastuf/souvenir.html press kit for SOUVENIR, email email suppressed for still
__________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <(address suppressed)>.