A still from E.J. Barnes' animated short, The Leatherwing Bat |
Last Saturday's mixed-bill affair at the Papercut Zine Library was a strange hybrid of contemporary salon, multimedia talent show, and impromptu modern-dance class (with instructions to move our bodies "like fire"). Around these parts, such an event may be possible only at Papercut, the volunteer-staffed 'zine-lending venue that occupies the creaky, wood-paneled first floor of the Democracy Center on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square.At first, wandering in felt like trespassing on a stranger's house party. Folding chairs littered a back room where the performances took place, the audience strolling in and out in the course of the evening. When Zine librarian Rachel Suskewicz instructed us to sing along with one of her sparse folk tunes, we did so ungrudgingly. After her set, a man in a gray hoodie assured us with endearing concern: "In case you're confused, don't leave yet! There are plenty more acts to come."
And there were. Librarians passed around coffee filters filled with popcorn before projecting three short films - one a documentary from locals Jessica Schumann and David Uber about WMBR DJ John Funke, another an inspired animation by E.J. Barnes that the audience unanimously agreed to watch twice. "The Leatherwing Bat" displays vivid, painted imagery of birds morphing and shape-shifting while the filmmaker sings the title folk song. Sporting salt-and-pepper hair and an Indiana Jones hat, Barnes was humble in introducing her effort, the product of three years' work, as she created 1100 gouache paintings and recorded the song in her living room. (This type of DIY ethos was another theme of the evening.)
Feminist 'zine author Cindy Crabb, the billed headliner, spoke about her autobiographical 'zine, Doris, and her quest as an abuse survivor to make abuse a non-taboo conversation topic. Later, a dwindled assembly head-bobbed to Crabb's screamo mostly-girl band Sister Shuffle. "This is a song about the things we're afraid of," she announced as she gripped a crimson electric guitar. "And how those are the things we need to learn to love."
Related:
The Best of Ottawa 2005, The Ingmar imbroglio, Screenings + seminars + ScriptBiz, More 
- The Best of Ottawa 2005
Animated shorts — at least the ones assembled for the MFA’s three-part animation program — tend toward the macabre.
- The Ingmar imbroglio
There hasn’t been such a stir among film critics for years.
- Screenings + seminars + ScriptBiz
Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Rhode Island International Film Festival has developed quite a reputation as a particularly filmmaker-friendly festival.
- Flickers
The hour's worth of film and dance that followed my absurdist journey offered flashbacks, edges, mysterious messages, and a thunderstorm. In 1924, Tristan Tzara described Dada as a resistance to the pretensions of art, "a snow of butterflies released from the head of a prestidigitator." I left Inman Square feeling energized.
- Local color
Michael Corrente will be presented with the Creative Vision Award for his influential and ambitious work next week at the 10th Annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.
- Creative manifesto
"Is it fair to say we're a Marxist city in spirit if not law?"
- Cinemania
It may be in Little Rhody, but the 11th Annual Rhode Island International Film Festival is the biggest film festival in New England.
- Paris je t'aime
The concept for this anthology was a short film representing each of Paris’s 20 arrondissements, from the Jardins des Tuileries (#1) to the Cimitière du Père Lachaise (#20).
- Chlotrudis Short Film Festival
It's a well selected bunch that range from Chekhovian revelations of the everyday to exercises in narrative stillness.
- Oscar Nominated Shorts
Do these live-action and animated shorts really represent the best of the year?
- Teach a woman to fish...she'll never want to leave
The cluster of small shacks that comprise Jim's Smelt Camp in Bowdoinham look like a tiny shantytown; were that it was so — I would move right in.
- Less
Topics:
Live Reviews
, Entertainment, Music, Media, More
, Entertainment, Music, Media, Movies, Magazines, Folk Music, Indiana Jones, Short Films, Libraries, John Funke, Less
