Fresno Famous

FIRST FRIDAY FILMS
finding a home in the world while moving across it

Enjoy four exciting and free evenings of experimental films, videos, documentaries and animations. This year's First Friday Films explores the notion of home in the context of a global world. The program ranges from stories exploring the intimacy of family life to narratives unfolding across time and continents. The selected films are imaginative and honest, cheerful and distressing.

The first evening in June presents stories, which take place at home, in the kitchen, on the farm, and in the living room. The films creatively explore family relationships and reinvent the chores and traditions relating to the home.

at home — june 1

Feed the Starter, 2005, 2.15 min.
Meany, 2006, 3 min.
On the Farm, 2005, 3.30 min.
Sarah Klein
The videos, animations, performances, and drawings by Sarah Klein explore the domestic world with its many rituals and protagonists. Much of her early work focuses on the making of bread as a social and economic activity. Feed the Starter documents a group of children having fun while romping through the kitchen as they learn the basics of making bread from a yeast "starter." Meany takes a more somber look at the behavior of kids ousting their peer; being a child and being different can be a painful experience. On the Farm returns to the delightful aspects of the home, this time conveying the pleasures of imaginative farm life with a dog and a chicken sitting around the dining table.
(music by Orange Sherbet)

Moby Dick, 2000, 12.35 min.
Guy Ben-Ner
Guy Ben-Ner has creatively balanced his role as artist and father by producing videos that star his own children. In Moby Dick Ben-Ner and his six year old daughter use simple props, such as a rope and a pole, to transform their kitchen into a make-believe ship. It becomes the stage for the reenactment of the classic tale written by Herman Melville, in which the commanding Captain Ahab leads his crew on a hunt for the great whale Moby Dick. A silent slapstick performance, the video explores the complex power relations of domestic family life while never loosing sight of the simple joy of a father playing with his daughter.
(silent, courtesy Postmasters Gallery)

Our Changing Family Life, 1957, 20 min.
Knickerbocker Productions
This educational film looks at how the American family has changed by comparing customs from the 1880s to the contemporary 1950s. The film emphasizes the importance of traditional family values, but also provides a glimpse of the slowly transforming gender roles during the 50s — the father stays at home playing bridge with friends while the mother leaves for her women's group. In the decades after the Second World War, films about family life providing guidance on proper social behavior, relationships, and child development proliferated. Their agenda was to prevent social disintegration feared to ensue during the aftermath of the war.
(b&w, from the Prelinger Archive)

My Name is Oona, 1969, 10 min.
Time Being, 1991, 8 min.
Gunvor Nelson
Experimental filmmaker Gunvor Nelson poetically captures such intimate subjects as childhood, aging, and death. My Name is Oona depicts in lyrical and fragmented images Nelson's daughter as she runs through the woods and rides on horseback. Superimposition, slow motion, and intense contrasts of light are juxtaposed with the rhythmic sound of the girl calling her own name creating a mesmerizing dream-like world. Produced more than twenty years later, Time Being is a silent and delicate portrait of Nelson's dying mother. Long periods of black, the old woman lying motionless in bed, and moments of refracted light create a simple yet deeply moving image.
(b&w, sound/silent, 16mm, courtesy Canyon Cinema)

Location: Reeves ASK Science Center, 933 Van Ness Avenue, Fresno
Starts: 2007 Jun 1 - 8:30pm
Ends: 2007 Jun 1 - 10:30pm
Website: http://fresnomet.org