Triangle Trade
Mythical forms embodied in puppetry and cinematic spectacle.
Also Directed by Cauleen Smith
A young woman (Toby Smith) in a photography class begins taking pictures of black men out of fear they will soon be extinct.
Second of three films relating to American conceptual Land Art of the 1970's and American histories and traumas.
“Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron) is less a depiction of 'reality' than an exploration of the implications of the mediation of Black history by film, television, magazines, and newspapers. Using her alter ego, Kelly Gabron, Smith fabricates a personal history of her emergence as an artist from white-male-dominated American history (and American film history). Smith collages images and bits of text from a scrapbook by 'Kelly Gabron' that had been completed before the film was begun, and provides female narration by 'Kelly Gabron' that, slowly but surely, makes itself felt over the male narration about Kelly Gabron (Chris Brown is the male voice). The film's barrage of image, text and voice is repeated twice, and is followed by a coda. That most viewers see the second presentation of the imagery differently from the original presentation demonstrates one problem with trusting any media representation.”
Three monologues adapted from the groundbreaking book, Black Women in White America, edited by Gerda Lerner.
Sun Ra’s anthem Space Is the Place performed by The Rich South High School Marching Band in Chinatown Square, Chicago. Cauleen Smith organised and filmed this energetic flash-mob performance, showing the unsuspecting passers-by who gather to listen. The young men and women let nothing, not even rain, bring the performance to a halt.
A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.
Personal pilgrimages to three sites of extreme creativity, invention, and generosity: Alice Coltrane's Ashram, Watts Towers, and Watervliet Shaker Community
Sine at the Canyon Sine at the Sea began as a video designed to be background eye-candy at an outdoor performance event and evolved into a protest against the reverberations of the neo-fascist nonsense percolating in American culture.
H-E-L-L-O translates the famous musical sequence from Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind into a greeting for sites around New Orleans loaded with the histories of music and procession.
A found footage assemblage of epic proportions. Produced on residency at Chicago Film Archives, with music by The Eternals.
