Successful Southern Circuit Fall Season Concludes; Looking Forward to the Spring

The fall season of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers recently concluded with Ben Russell's "Five Experimental Ethnographies" and Scott Chamberlin Hoyt's "The Meaning of Tea." Take the opportunity to check out their insightful blogs about the Southern Circuit experience below.

I want to thank all of our filmmakers who have participated in the fall season of Southern Circuit, including Mohammed Naqvi, Jed Riffe, Adrian Belic, Aprill Winney, as well as Ben Russell and Scott Hoyt. Each of these filmmakers brought their quality films, unique perspectives, and valuable experience to ten host venues throughout the South. We are thankful for their willingness to travel, their enthusiasm for the program, and their passion for the craft of filmmaking.

In addition to the blogs, you can listen to audio interviews with each of the Southern Circuit filmmakers by visiting the Southern Arts Federation home page. (The podcast section is in the top right corner.) The interviews offer insight into the lives, careers, and films of the Southern Circuit filmmakers.

Meanwhile, we are looking forward to the Southern Circuit spring season, featuring Stewart Wade and Antonio Brown with "Tru Loved," Phoebe Ferguson with "Member of the Club," Victor Zimet and Stephanie Silber with "Random Lunacy," Michael Swanson with "All About Us," Rachel Goslins with "'Bama Girl," and Scott Galloway with "A Man Named Pearl."

Finally, the call for entries for the 2009-2010 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is now open. Go to Withoutabox and submit to Southern Circuit. Or pass the link on to filmmakers you know who may be interested in being part of the nation's only regional tour of independent filmmakers.

Southern Arts Federation wishes you all a safe and happy holiday season.

#10, and a Bit of Closure.

#10: The Arts Council of Central Louisiana, Alexandria, LA
And so it came to an end... Fittingly, another six-hour-long drive in our Pontiac Grand Prix through the flat fields and darkening skies of Central Louisiana. We chose highways over backroads, our bodies exhausted from doing so little (how is this possible?) for so long. A quick arrival seemed best, although quick is an operative descriptor.
The sun set over Alexandria in a curious foggy fashion, leaving us entirely uncertain as to what we were entering. There were pick-ups tailgating us, cops at every underpass, and the promise of an ending of some sort in sight. After a small amount of circling the seemingly empty streets of downtown Alexandria, we parked behind a police cruiser and crossed the street to the Giant and Beautiful Performing Arts Center that would serve as our final port.
My jaw dropped in entering this space, for while I'd certainly been to ballets and orchestra recitals, I'd never expected (or thought to want?) to see my own films playing in such a place. It seemed impossible - the screen was set far back on the stage from the audience, the sound system was better suited to concerts than mono sound, and it all felt rather proper. Hard to know how my underwear/mask recital would go down.
After a bit of technician-talking, my lens changed and all seemed possible, a redux of the August show in some hyperbolized fashion. As we'd been doing previously, we set the projector on a stand in the fourth row of the theater, ran a cable to the mixer, lowered the screen, and invited the audience to sit close close close.
The audience, as it was, was the oldest we'd had thus far - not a soul under 45 (except for the young girl with her mom, and they left during the performance). All of us were pretty excited about this fact, for while we'd gotten used to the variability of spaces and turn-outs and audiences on the tour, we'd yet to arrive at this particular constellation. The reggae-ish music from Suriname that we'd been playing before every show felt like a curiosity all of a sudden, and I could feel that sentiment creeping into my words as I gave my standard introduction to the films.
Eighty minutes later, the screening was over, and our host stood up to give one of the sweetest declarations that we'd heard thus far (please forgive the paraphrasing):
"Before we bring Ben and Brigid and Benjen up to answer your questions, I wanted to say something. Those of us in the Louisiana Arts Council frequently discuss the terms of art - what it is, who it's for, and how we go about supporting it, especially in these times. The work that is supported tends to be local and/or quite accessible, and the place of art for art's sake is less frequently addressed. We're proud to support the Southern Circuit tour for this very reason - to have the chance to bring these films to you, to have a guy in a Nixon mask wearing his underwear and speaking into a vocoder - if that's not unfamiliar and challenging in Central Louisiana, then I don't know what is. Thank you for your support."
While I might propose a bit of a more nuanced interpretation of what I would hope my art is up to (and the fact that the mask isn't quite of Nixon), the sentiment was really touching, and really telling, of the importance of not only our place in this tour but of Southern Circuit in general.
As an artist who's been touring with his films and performances for the last several years in America, Europe, and beyond, it's pretty clear to me what the challenges are to a program like this. Audiences aren't guaranteed, venues are erratic, hospitality is sometimes lacking (and sometimes overflowing - as was the case here with Nicole and David!), and need I point to the Long Drives again? However, as was apparent during our time traversing the South (and is more apparent now in hindsight), the opportunity to present a wide array of work to audiences that might never seek it out is a great one indeed. With exception to the Nickelodeon in Columbia, the venues we screened in are not spaces that I would have otherwise arrived at, and the heads that made it to the shows would likewise never have come across our work. This last point might sound elitist, but the fact of 16mm projection and distribution in an art-and-cinema context all but necessitates a self-selecting audience. The dialogue that sprang out of these screenings, between audiences and us and between ourselves and beyond, coupled with the chance for me to show my friend Benjen how his own filmic self lives on, was invaluable. May it continue to grow.
And so: closure. Thanks to our hosts and our new friends and all of those brave enough to ask questions. Thanks to Southern Circuit and Allen Bell for setting this up, and thanks for Benjen and Brigid for being a part of this. The reason I make films is rarely the same reason I have for screening them, and the same applies to touring. I travel with my films to see how they live once they leave my hands, and inasmuch as I made them, I tour with my films so that I can see the world that is watching them...

Screening #9, Revisited.

#9: Mobile Arts Council, Mobile, AL
Mobile was great. After the long dry spell that all of our shows between Charleston and Jackson had offered, we arrived at the waterfront of Mobile (in the daylight!), totally excited to have the opportunity to see historic revitalization in full effect. We'd passed through any number of backroad highway strip malls on the trip so far, always making the effort to wend into the Main Street or the Old Town of wherever, finding a sad stretch of beautifully decrepit old buildings with as many empty windows as thrift store and haircut shops. The toss of a town and its proximity to what came later seemed to be as clear a determinant of the state of Main Streets as the current economic slump, but still: Mobile was lively, alive.
It always helps to have a good host, and ours was more than excited to show us around the city that he'd adopted two decades ago.
As was the case in Columbia, we got a walking tour of the city in its various incarnations, had a delicious sit-down meal (oysters and crawfish!), saw a giant model train railroad on the second floor of a busty-Sphinx-decorated temple, and made it to the venue in plenty of time. Our screening space here was in an old library theater, glowing with the kind of austerity that lends itself well to our touring collection of 16mm films. The theater filled in bits and pieces, and while a few of our viewers walked out during the short that preceded our program (probably just as well), the rest stuck around till the glorious end.
A great local filmmaker (hello Carson!) and two ladies from Belize and Togo, respectively, went out for drinks with us afterwards, and we talked and ate Southern Sushi until the later hours of the night. Again, and as was the case in Columbia, we were lucky enough to stay with Carson and his wife (and their hilarious dog) and to hold onto Mobile as a bright point in this long and winding tour.

Screenings #7-8, Recollected.

#7: Capri Theatre, Montgomery, AL
This screening would serve as a good example of the less successful bits of the tour thus far, although there were a few shining lights, to be sure. Our voyage from the wonders of Columbia to Montgomery was the longest thus far and likely the least enjoyable. We'd been on the road for ages, and would've been completely late to the screening if not for the magic of Central Time. Which is to say, we crossed an invisible line and gained an hour, but still arrived under the cover of night. We were fortunate to have two good friends (from Suriname!) meet us there, a working Xenon projector in the theater, and a really enthusiastic audience member or two (there were only 10) in the screening - she got us to talk about the fundamentals of our work in a way that the previous 6 screenings hadn't. Why did we go? What did we learn? What did Benjen and the other actors get from the experience? Why is this work important?
Aside from the questions and the friends, my gripe about this screening is that we (the filmmakers) felt more than a bit superfluous. I felt like we were gigging - showing up at a space, setting up, breaking down, and leaving as we'd come. The excitement, interest, and aura (hospitality?) that we'd felt in other places was lacking, and staying in an anonymous highway motel after the show certainly didn't help. Montgomery? Sadly, it's as if we were never there.

#8: Millsaps College, Jackson, MS
We crossed the border to Mississippi unknowingly, each previous border crossing met with a "Goodbye _____" chorus, and the first building we came across was a self-described General Store/ Town Center. Built 160 years prior and demolished at some point in its lifespan by winds and rain, this General Store had an incredible collection of 1930s children's shoes, still in their boxes. The proprietors were talkative and sharp, calling me to task for my ignorance of Andrew Jackson's Native American scout (to which I responded "Andrew Jackson who?").
Millsaps offered another university-screening, with a kept audience of students who alternately slept, walked out, or stared wide-eyed at the movie screen. This show wasn't my favorite, either, as we were forced to screen off of DVD for the first time in the tour and I was trapped in the far corner of the room and couldn't leave when the radical artifacting of THE WET SEASON began. In spite of this, our hosts were friendly and talkative, and the Q&A was a bit sharper than normal, thanks to the presence of some academic-sorts in the room (I'm an academic-sort, as well). It would've been great to continue that conversation beyond the screening, as that's where one can begin to dig deeper than what a public platform offers (especially after the 8th Q&A for the same set of films), but alas. It was a university show, after all, and our hosts all had to work the next day...
We managed to find some fiddle players and a boyfriend/girlfriend cover duo on the side streets of Jackson, rubbed elbows with the locals and conjectured as to whether the broader terms of Southern Hospitality extend to Mississippi as well (surly bartenders, hotel employees, and falafel servers all).

Screening #6, Recalled.

#6: Nickelodeon Theatre, Columbia, SC
Oh what a difference a day off makes! After a seemingly unending series of hours on picturesque country roads (and nights of sleeping 3 to a room), we at last had a day to park on the roadside and move into the forests and fields that we'd been zipping by. Good intelligence led us from Augusta to a stone's throw south of Columbia to the Congaree National Park, where we took the above-marsh bridge-paths into the wilder bits of this old-growth forest. Benjen, a fellow who'd grown up in the tropic jungles of Suriname, filled with snakes and dense undergrowth, was amazed at the space that existed between the trees, as well as the fact that we didn't need a machete to protect ourselves.
As a mostly-Northener, it was odd being in a forest that was equal parts New England Fall (golden leaves littering the ground) and Southern Swamp (small bodies of black water sucking at the trees and roots). We walked for hours, listening for birds and feeling our eyes adjust as the sun set and the colors left the trees. Dusk brought owl hoots and bounding families of deer, smiles on all our faces.
Happily, these smiles stayed through the next days - we had the good fortune of staying with the director of the Nickelodeon Theater in his house, which meant that city tours and hot breakfasts and amiable drinking sessions were all part of the deal. Thanks Larry! We also got to see the new Nickelodeon Theater that was on the path to construction - an old movie palace that was somehow hidden within a downtown beauty shop. It'll be a gem!
The screening, as promised, was sold out (both Larry and Andy brought their classes to the show), and the Q&A was accordingly spirited (extra credit for questions asked). As filmmakers traveling with film and screening on film, it's been part and parcel of the discussion to talk about such things, and I do hope that my explanations for this particular set of films to be on film makes sense... Most of the conversation continues to center around TJUBA TEN and TRYPPS #3, films which are close enough to documentary to make their movements away from it distinct and curious.
Needless to say, we were sad to leave Columbia and certainly hope to make it back there again. Small arthouse cinemas are #1 in my book!

Screening #5, Remembered.

#5: The Imperial Theatre, Augusta, GA
After a night's rest in an old un-haunted house, we drove into Georgia via backroads and antique shops, barrelling into the quiet-ish streets of Augusta in time to check out one of the better-curated junk stores I've ever seen. Hotdog saucers next to Hamburger soap dispensers, etc.
It's hard to have a sense of a place after only a few hours of being in it, and for what it's worth Augusta felt like the daylight twin of Old Charleston. Mostly empty, mostly silent, broad streets and a James Brown statue.
The screening took place in the beautiful Imperial Theater, which we quickly repurposed for a much smaller projection/crowd than its 250-odd seats would have offered. The 16mm Eiki projector we've been carrying in our rental car was set up 100' from the screen, a 1/4" cable running out of the back into the mixing board (run by a long-haired fellow with a Styx tour t-shirt, I think). It's a good strategy for touring in places where experimental film/video audiences aren't built in - move the projector close so the crowd clusters in closer, making for a community of viewers who stick around to ask questions afterwards...
The strategy worked, the films lit up that silver screen, and my minor terrors at appearing in mask-and-red-underwear (for the live narration of THE RED AND THE BLUE GODS) began to subside. The after-conversation was equally grand - the 30-odd folks who came out that night seemed taken with TJUBA TEN especially, inquiring into the terms of ethnography and representation, trying to sort out how and where we (the filmmakers) located ourselves in the work.
We had drinks at THE BEES' KNEES afterwards with some local filmmakers, talked about film film film and how to keep it alive. The quick answer is that we needn't worry - "the death of film" is good for film.
Somehow, Brigid and I ended up at THE FOX'S LAIR in the later hours - Benjen retired to his room while we went downstairs to take in the best Prince cover songs I'd ever heard. Michael Jackson as well - perhaps the purple suit and long locks of the singer/guitarist brought the magic out. Not perhaps - it did.

The Return to the North and An Initial Recap (#4).

After two short/long weeks of wandering about the Southern states, I've returned to my Chicago apartment, complete with a chill cold enough to make a fellow long for days spent wandering through swampy fall forests and sitting in gulfport movie theaters. As such, this posting is meant to take up from where I left off (somewhere in South Carolina?) and arrive to the present, via a screening-by-screening overview. Fingers crossed.

#4: Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC
The upstairs space in the Halsey seemed quite lovely, and we arrived early enough from our long drive from our friend's double-wide trailer in Leicester (outside of Asheville) to have a sense of what the city might be like. By the way, I highly recommend waking up in the glorious mountains of North Carolina, walking up paths to feed wildish horses wild apples, and watching the sun cut a line across the reddening trees as it moves up into the sky...
The crowd at the Halsey was mostly college-aged, a similar feeling to the Cullowhee show, although this one suffered from a great number of walk-outs during the screening. Sigh. Free admission + long single takes of village life = a tough tonic for the youth of today. Having said as much, the room was full at the start and half-full at the end, and those who stayed seemed rapt and enthusiastic. Hypnotized, perhaps.
Questions about gun traps (and how to make them), cassava bread (and how to cook it), and ones that were tougher to translate into Saramaccan were directed at Benjen upon my urging, and he did a remarkably good job for a fellow who's not done a lot of public speaking in foreign countries. Totally great.
Afterwards, we took a nice tour through the gallery and then wandered out into the Charleston moonlight, somehow stumbling across the Old Part of Town in all its gloriously revived architectural stylings. The streets were ghostly, history hanging heavy in this part of the country.

Check Out Our Recent Southern Circuit Audio Interviews

Audio Interview with Ben Russell
Ben Russell is an itinerant photographer, curator and experimental filmmaker whose works have screened in spaces ranging from 14th-century Belgian monasteries to 17th-century East India Trading Company buildings. A Guggenheim award recipient, Russell began the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island. He has a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. His films have won awards at the Festival EntreVues in Belfort, France, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Silver Lake Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Fest, Onion City Film Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. His projects have received funding from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, the Forbes Fund, and the New England Moving Image Fund. He currently resides in Chicago, Illinois.

The interview explores Ben Russell’s work in Bendekondre, Suriname, his beginnings as a filmmaker, his filmmaking techniques, and his “Four Experimental Ethnographies” which will be on the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers from November 3-14, 2008.


Audio Interview with Scott Chamberlin Hoyt
As founder of Tea Dragon Films, Scott Chamberlin Hoyt brings a wealth of experience to a film project about a ritual he has treasured since childhood – tea. His perspective is augmented by years of travel throughout the world and deepened by decades of exploration into Eastern thought. Hoyt is on the board of directors for Global Learning Across Borders, a member of the Directors Circle for the American Botanical Council and serves as President of the Tibetan Classics Translators Guild of New York. He holds both a BS in Business Administration and an MBA from NYU. “The Meaning of Tea” is his first feature film.

The interview explores Hoyt’s approach to the world’s second most popular beverage in “The Meaning of Tea” and the process of creating this visually stunning film. The recording also includes music from the film, including “Living Easy” by Eric Czar and Danna Rosenthal, “Marco Polo” by Loreena McKennitt, and “Tea, South Dakota,” “Tea Ceremony,” and “Atlas Mountain Mint” by Joel Duek & Eric Czar.

The Midway Point.

It's 10:00pm in Montgomery, Alabama, and after a good week on the road, I've at last managed to carve out a bit of time for some long-overdue blogging. Seven days of movies and long drives and fall leaves and good conversations, all topped off by a rather monumentous sea change for America. These are exciting, heady times, indeed.

I left Chicago, IL last Monday for Jacksonville - a 16mm projector, 80:00 of films, a rubber mask and a vocoder, and my Surinamese friend Benjen Pansa in tow. An actor in my films DAUME and TJUBA TEN, this is Benjen's first visit to the USA, and it's been quite an experience trying to translate the intricacies of the American election, the history of the South, and the vagaries of experimental film into Saramaccan for him. I'm certainly getting better at it.

After landing under grey and windy Florida skies and taking a brief turn towards the Atlantic ocean, we set up for our show in the auditorium at the Florida Community College in Jacksonville - a rather formal space with podiums, wood paneling, and a tall ceiling. The space proved a bit tough to fill, but those who traded my Experimental Ethnographies for pre-election night festivities seemed to be totally excited to be there. There was talk of documentary and ethnography and DIY ethics, among other topics. An indication of things to come.

Tuesday found us en route to Louisville, Kentucky, a town that I'd never visited but that my Southern friends seemed to be rather fond of. The streets smelled of horse and hay and the light was orangeish, all tall buildings and 24-hour skate parks and an electric charge that seemed to have everything to do with Obama vs McCain. We were staying in the Galt House, a two-tiered hotel that faced the river steamboats and was the site of a Republican celebration. Happily, we didn't have a show in Louisville until the following night, so Benjen and I wandered the city streets and drove to the (relatively) Bohemian quarter, drinking red-and-blue microbrews as the election results crawled slowly across TV screens and radio speakers. Back at the Galt House, we tried to check out the Republican party but were handedly rebuffed by security - an initial strike against Southern Hospitality, I suppose...

While I was setting up for the show in the upper floors of the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, my co-director of TJUBA TEN, Brigid McCaffrey, was arriving by airplane from Los Angeles. She'd recently been in Suriname with myself and Benjen and an Irish Steadicam Operator working on a rather long 16mm film, and it was totally great to find ourselves reunited under Kentucky skies. Our first screening as a trio went down quite well - in addition to the tech details, I've been performing live narration to THE RED AND THE BLUE GODS (in the aforementioned rubber mask and _____), and still felt a bit nervous about standing in front of a relatively unfamiliar audience, but everything was all right. The crowd was enthusiastic and inquisitive, and the three of us began to figure out our own Q&A dynamic - who answers what, how much Saramaccan do I translate, etc.

Tom Trudgeon of the Kentucky Center proved to be an A+ host, and showed us the finer parts of the Louisville late-night food/drink/art scene. Cloud machines, Kara Walker prints galore, and a really well-made Manhattan or two. It was a great balance to the day's earlier encounter with a gregarious antique dealer and his impromptu tour of Lousiville architectural strategies - shotgun houses, camelbacks, etc.

The next day promised a long 6-hour drive from Louisville to Cullowhee, so we did our best to turn in early at the Galt, anticipating a sidetrip through the Great Smokey Mountains along the way...

What luck to be in this part of the world! The trees have been totally startling, a bold swatch of golds and reds and oranges, and our arrival in the GSM coincided just barely with the golden setting sun in North Carolina. Benjen was slack-jawed at the sight of rolling mountains and brilliant colors (the trees where he lives don't tend to lose their foliage), as was I. Less thrilling was the long stretch of Tennessee tourist traps that led up to the mountains - some sort of precursor to Dollywood, dinosaur rides and water parks and all.

Western Carolina University was on the other side of these mountains, past the Cherokee reservation and a great number of faux wigwams and Moccasin shops that I wish we'd had the time to investigate - the commercialization of culture is such a trap on any level, but given the particular histories at play here, it seems pretty vital to address these issues directly. Perhaps in the future.

After the Florida auditorium and the Kentucky screening space, I found myself thoroughly unable to anticipate what the next space/audience might have to offer. Touring with films and performance has been a significant part of my practice over the last few years (this being the 5th tour I've been on, but only the 2nd in the USA and the 1st that someone else has set up for me), so I'm a bit used to the unknown, but I usually get in touch with the venues myself so I have some indication as to what the set-up will be. Having said as much, it was a great surprise to find outselves in a campus theater equipped with stereo sound and a 35mm platter projector. More than we needed and were able to make use of, but certainly exciting nonetheless.

This was the third screening of this particular constellation of films and film-performance, and Brigid and I were beginning to get a good sense of What the Program Is. Questions in the after-moments tended to circulate around TJUBA TEN and issues/notions of representation, queries that I was becoming more skillful at leading towards Benjen so he could speak of his own experience as an actor/collaborator. Good stuff. The Anthropology Club sponsored the reception (though only their leader stuck around), and I found myself becoming more conscious of how my/our films were reading to audiences who were mostly unfamiliar with the terms of experimental cinema and contemporary art. Over the last decade of making films/videos, I've had a pretty good run of showing my work to people who are much more versed in its particular language, and it's been quite lovely to see these films vicariously through brand new eyes.

Okay. That's all I've got for now - more to follow...

Southern Circuit Welcomes Filmmaker Ben Russell

Southern Arts Federation welcomes Ben Russell and his "Four Experimental Ethnographies," including "Daumë," "The Red and The Blue Gods," "Black and White Trypps Number Three," and "Tjúba Tén" ("The Wet Season"), to the 2008-2009 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers beginning Monday, November 3, at Florida Community College of Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida, and concluding on Friday, November 14, at the Arts Council of Central Louisiana in Alexandria, Louisiana. Joining Ben on his journey are Benjen Pansa, who appears in "Daumë" and "Tjúba Tén," and Brigid McCaffrey, who co-directed "Tjúba Tén."

More about Ben Russell, "Four Experimental Ethnographies" and the tour schedule

Web site for Ben Russell films

Audio interview with Ben Russell

Southern Circuit MySpace Page