ChathamArts Sustainable Cinema Screens Cucalorus Showcase April 19, 2011

TAR HEEL SHORTIES with Cucalorus Film Festival Director Dan Brawley.

In April we're bringing a super NC-made short film sampler from Cucalorus, an international celebration of filmmaking in Wilmington, North Carolina that attracts thousands of attendees for five days of films, workshops and social events. The Cucalorus Film Festival held each November was recently selected by the Brooks Institute as "One of the Top Ten Film Festivals in the US" and named one of the "25 Coolest Film Festivals" by MovieMaker Magazine in 2009.

Cucalorus Film Festival's Director Dan Brawley is a cum laude graduate of Duke University and the founder of Jengo's Playhouse & Wabi Sabi Warehouse - a studio compound in downtown Wilmington with 15 resident artists working in film, music, paint and metals. Dan is also an active studio artist who works in sculpture, film, installation and performance. He is also the treasurer of Alternate ROOTS, an organization serving 14 southern states and supporting artists working for social justice. Maybe Dan will reveal his secrets for how he has time to do all that and be a leader in renegade festival making for over 15 years in the Tarheel State!

FILM SELECTIONS:

Pickin’ and Trimmin’ by Matt Morris: the inner world of a Drexel, North Carolina barbershop where musicians come from miles around for lively bluegrass jams.

Notes by Marc Russo: Frame by frame, stop motion, and pixilation animation all happening at the same time, oh yeah - and a lot of post it notes.

Daphne 2.0 by Francesca Talenti & Marc Russo: In this imagistic short, animators Francesca Talenti and Marc Russo use an old myth to ask new questions about nature versus technology, human versus non-human, and what kind of bodies we want to live in.

Icthyopolis by Andre Silva: a short psychedelic technomation, occupies a realm where high-camp, the absurd and the esoteric intersect.

Ringo by Dave Monahan: This experimental musical Western starring John Wayne and Roy Rogers tells a classic love story: Cowboy finds gunslinger, cowboy loses gunslinger; cowboy becomes gunslinger. Set to the tune of Don Robertson’s 1964 hit song of the same name.

1. Stop 2. Jump 3. Go by S. Cagney Gentry: The story of a person obsessed with numbers, measurements, and calculation. These compulsions help one to make order out of the disorder of life. But, when even the regimented day to day becomes too much, how do we escape the counting?

Treading Water by Russ Roe: Treading water is a short experimental animated documentary showing the perspective of different male surfers at different points in their lives.

First Sunrise by Kenneth Price: Betham is an American teaching in Japan, immersed in the work of daily life while learning a new culture. When she takes a trip to the Pacific Ocean to witness the first sunrise of the year, she begins to feel the stir of acceptance. Subtle and beautifully shot, First Sunrise captures the small breaks in routine that can take us in new directions.

Plastic Bag by Ramin Bahrani: Struggling with its immortality, a discarded plastic bag ventures through the environmentally barren remains of America as it searches for its maker.