3rd Ward (map)

Films, food and live performance that focus on sustainability and deliciousness.

Our return to 3rd Ward will be equal parts BBQ, screening, and live cooking show. Featuring a sneak peak at American Meat by Graham Meriwether, a live demonstration of the Brother Mark cooking show and the chef’s at Mable’s Smokehouse and Banquet Hall plus a collectively-prepared, locally-sourced BBQ meal by members of Umami: People + Food. Graham Meriwether and Brother Mark will participate in a Q&A following the show.

Presented as part of the Farm City Festival and the French Institute Alliance Française: Crossing the Line Festival.

Featuring

American Meat by Graham Meriwether

American Meat explores the complexities embedded in the highly debated practices of the American meat industry. As the economy drives a contraction of conventional chicken, pork and beef operations, we hear the innovative methods of the charismatic, Virginia-based farmer, Joel Salatin. Joel, who is a leader of the growing niche of people who are opting for animals raised outside and without the use of antibiotics, believes that if more people become sustainable farmers, the movement could fracture centralized commodity production. Conventional farmers argue that small-scale farming can’t expand production enough to adequately meet the demands of the nation. As the dialogue ensues, Salatin signs a deal with fast-food chain Chipotle in a surprising move, with widespread implications for the industry.

Brother Mark’s BBQ- Mark Bernal & Matt Rivera

Brother Mark, a chef who looks like he just came in from the Appalachian Trail but cooks with an appreciation of smoke and flavor befitting an urbane foodie, will be screening episodes of his comedy cooking show and preparing a special masterpiece live.

Umami: People + Food

Laura Braslow and Chloe Bass of Umami: People + Food will be working the grill, providing a collectively-prepared and locally-sourced meal that won’t strain your wallet. Umami is a break-even project dedicated to fostering community around what we eat, how we eat it, and who we eat it with. (photo by Lee Manvil)

Mable’s Smokehouse and Banquet Hall

Conceived by Jeff Lutonsky and Meghan Love, Mable’s Smokehouse and Banquet Hall is a new BBQ restaurant and bar in Williamsburg Brooklyn serving a menu of simple country fare found in the roadside BBQ joints of the South.

Farm City Festival: Where Are You Growing?

Over three weekends, Farm City celebrates Urban Agriculture and explores the possibilities of a new agrarian future within the current urban reality. Components include: Farm City Fair, Farm City Film, Farm City Tour, and Farm City Forum, spotlighting the work of artists, farmers, activists, planners, architects, chefs, and foodies, all devoting themselves to feeding the city both culturally and agriculturally. Farm City is co-curated with Derek Denckla, editor of thegreenest.net and founder of FarmCity.US.

French Institute Alliance Française: Crossing the Line

Crossing the Line, the French Institute Alliance Française’s inter-disciplinary contemporary arts festival presented each fall, is conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of transdisciplinary artists working in France and New York City.

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A brand new site-specific dance film by Zena Bibler of the Dance Film Lab that is an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of the park made up of 10-second to one-minute clips filmed by the community at the park this summer. Scroll down to see a the new video map of the park. The screening includes a short live performance and a dance film by Itziar Barrio. Click here to view the video map.

Featuring

The Sternberg Project- Zena Bibler

The Sternberg Project will be an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of July in Sternberg Park and its surrounding area. The project is an assemblage of short videos made on anything from an HD camcorder to a camera phone that capture and create the movement of the park including dances, conversations, home runs, images, narratives, stills, sounds for the month of July 2010.

Zena Bibler is a Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer, and experimental filmmaker. She holds an MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and a BA in History from Yale University. Her latest projects include The Union Square Experiments, an expanding set of site-specific, geo-tagged, Google-Mapped, public dance performances with Katie Schetlick and Ashley Hannan and Little Dances Everywhere, a series of short, site-specific dance films that function like postcards from particular moments and situations. See the full film here.

Here’s the map:

View The Sternberg Project in a larger map

(Ballad of) Knowville- Itziar Barrio & Elena Demyanenko

Shot in abandoned industrial locations in New York City, (Ballad of) Knowville attempts to explain our present world through the murder ballad aesthetic. This aesthetic is a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form (often an American version of an older European ballad), that relays details and often consequences of crimes of passion but with the elements of supernatural retribution removed. In this video piece, the murder ballad is an entry point into a world that conjures tension, intrigue, and mystery and where death is decorative, lyrical, and aestheticized. (Ballad of) Knowville teeters on the edge of a dream-state, repeatedly falling into dance-induced lyricism only to abruptly regain the stark reality of self-awareness.

Dance Film Lab

The Dance Film Lab is moderated and organized by Zach Morris (Third Rail Projects) in cooperation with the Dance Films Association. Hosted by Dance Theater Workshop, this salon brings dance filmmakers together to present raw footage, drafts, works-in-progress and newly finished films to their peers for constructive feedback, to share information, and address technical, practical and artistic challenges. The lab is free and open to the public, though reservations are necessary.

Sternberg Park (map)

A moving documentary tells the story of activist single mothers who managed to be parents and effect broad-based social change at the same time. Plus Latino selections from the Ultra Short 30-Second Film Festival: Art By Chance

Featuring

A Crushing Love by Sylvia Morales

The film honors the achievements of five activist Latinas: labor organizer/farm worker leader Dolores Huerta, author/educator Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, writer/playwright/educator Cherrie Moraga, civil rights advocate Alicia Escalante, and historian/writer Martha Cotera and considers how these single mothers managed to be parents and effect broad-based social change at the same time.

Questions about reconciling competing demands are ones that highly acclaimed filmmaker Sylvia Morales, a working mother of two herself, pondered aloud as she prepared this documentary. Historical footage and recent interviews with each woman reveal their contributions to key struggles for Latino empowerment and other major movements of our time. Both they and their grown children thoughtfully explore the challenges, adaptations, rewards, and missteps involved in juggling dual roles. Scenes of Morales at work and at home, often humorously overlaid with her teenage daughter’s commentary, bring the dilemma up to date. Chicana continues to be used in classrooms more than thirty years after it was made; A CRUSHING LOVE is a memorable sequel which offers us indelible portraits of unforgettable women, including one of Morales herself.

No Time by Carolina Arce Herrero

This video intends to propose that perhaps, there is no time like an unidirectional succession of realities, and maybe, what we know as present past and future, could be the same time in different spaces.

Women Make Movies

Established in 1972 to address the under representation and misrepresentation of women in the media industry, Women Make Movies is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women. The organization provides services to both users and makers of film and video programs, with a special emphasis on supporting work by women of color.

Art By Chance

The ultra-short film festival that takes place on digital signage in more than 20 countries every May.

Sternberg Park (map)

Films that feature the characters, textures, and changes in North Brooklyn.

This is our neighborhood at its best, its most complicated and its most beautiful. It has our people from a wizened life-long denizen to a precocious transplant, even a schizophrenic man who yells at passersby. It has our places from a construction site filled with the destructive boom of a backhoe to the blissful oasis of rooftop. These films explore how the community celebrates itself and tackles the issues of loss, renewal, and coexistence.

Featuring

Brooklyn Love by Chris King

A film intended to be the visual equivalent of a Manhattan jackhammer to the head, and the a beautiful end of the day sigh. A love letter to Brooklyn.

Study For “A Moral Society” by Russel Fong, Victor Jeffreys II & CK Swett

The filmmakers had seen (and heard) Lawrence around for years before finally mustering the courage to chat with him. And discovered that beneath the bellicose veneer (a symptom of his extreme paranoid schizophrenia) there was actually a lot more that connected us than divided us. He had a mom and dad and siblings. He’d fallen in love and fathered four children. He’d served in Vietnam and made his share of mistakes. He laughed easily and was a natural raconteur. He was worried about the future and hoped for a better world in which to live. Through their afternoon together, the filmmakers captured on film the spirit of a man both deeply disturbed and misunderstood, but a man like us nonetheless. They hope the resulting portrait inspires others to approach Lawrence with, if nothing else, a measure of empathy and understanding.

Open House by Diane Nerwen

Readily visible under the thin veneer of real estate ads pushing Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s future as a destination for the moneyed, yet “hip”, classes is an urban renewal project on a scale not seen since Robert Moses’ “slum” clearance of the 1960’s. Documenting the brutal nature of the development spree which occurred as a result of the neighborhood’s re-zoning from light manufacturing/residential to the loosening of codes that allowed for forty story towers on the waterfront, Nerwen’s video offers stark evidence against the cheerful notion that the unrestricted laws of free markets are “good for everyone”. With images of a neighborhood being literally torn apart by outside developers capitalizing on a frenzied housing market, and locals under pressure to “sell out” while the price is right, this work documents aspects of an incredible drama that has been woefully underreported in the mainstream media..

L to Canarsie by Alice Cox

A, who am I and what am I doing here? film. Ella, an aspiring photographer, follows her musician boyfriend, Raj, to NYC. With his unexpected death their first night, the film follows Ella’s experience of coming out of her pain to connect with her unfamiliar environment and community.

Daisy Blooming by Jeremy Lopez, Joshua Carrero, and Manuel Delacruz of New Children New York

Daisy, a teenage girl who has been neglected by her mother, turns to the media’s influence. In doing so she isolates herself from everyone around her, and as a result, she manages to numb her emotions through overexposure to the violence of horror films. She is then unable to register violent acts as wrong. Danny, her only friend who knows nothing of all of this, tries his best, although stupidly, to make her smile. But how exactly will Daisy react to this?

Sternberg Park (map)

Four brand new films featuring the life and work of the artists of Bushwick.

Every year hundreds of artists reveal their worlds for the Bushwick Open Studios festival, produced by Arts in Bushwick. In 2010, four filmmaking teams, each including a prolific local filmmaker and a youth artisan from Reel Works, created short movies capturing the life and work of one or more of the dynamic artists and spaces that make up the festival.

The results will premiere at CinemaParque with a conversation with the filmmakers and artists. Filmmaking teams include Graham Meriwether & Negesti Cantave, Manuela Viera-Gallo & Isaac Shrem, Leat Klingman & Yanil Santana, and Albert Beniada. Featured artists include Jill Sigman/Thinkdance, Noa Charuvi, and the Merzbush installation at venerable gallery Norte Maar.

This program is presented in partnership with Arts In Bushwick & Reel Works Teen Filmmaking.

Featuring

jill sigman/ thinkdance by Graham Meriwether and Negesti Cantave

Jill Sigman

Founded in 1998 by choreographer Jill Sigman, jill sigman/thinkdance presents conceptual dance that asks questions through the medium of the body. Following in the tradition of European dance theater, Sigman creates work rich in bold images and multi-media elements. She transforms simple actions like walking on eggshells, sliding down the stairs, and eating hot pink roses into complex statements about self, society, and human experience.

Graham Meriwether

Graham is part of Leave It Better, a video-based online magazine committed to sharing ideas about how we can improve our environment and take action to green the neighborhood. Leave It Better’s first feature film, American Meat, is a solutions-oriented look at the U.S. meat industry.

Negesti Cantave

Negesti Cantave is an 18 year old Brooklyn native and film maker . She is a Graduate of Reel Works “The LAB” class and a 2010 Tribeca Film Institute Film Fellow Graduate as well.

Immigration, Women & Art by Manuela Viera-Gallo & Isaac Shrem

A short documentary film about female American and immigrant artists, how their art differs and how it is an extension of themselves.

Manuela Viera-Gallo

Born in Rome, Italy, in 1977 where her family lived in exile, came back to Santiago Chile in 1984 when the military regime was strong in power. She studied art in the Catholic University, when the democracy returned to Chile. Since 2004 residing and working in New York. She recently had her first New York solo show at Union Gallery.

Isaac Shrem

Isaac Shrem is a Brooklyn, NY based documentary filmmaker. Over the last 5 years Isaac’s film “The Other Side Of The Picture” and his other films have won numerous awards, from festivals ranging from as close to home as New York, all the way to South Korea. Last year his 30 minute short film “Over Here” aired on PBS Channel 13, opening up for the Ken Burns World War II documentary series “The War”. He is currently directing and producing a television series titled “Reel Works with Byron Hurt,” airing on NYCTV’s LIFE Network, Channel 25 and 22, Friday’s at 9:00PM.

Noa Charuvi by Leat Klingmann & Yanil Santana

Noa Charuvi

Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Noa moved to New York City to pursue a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts. After completing her studies Noa stayed in Brooklyn where she currently lives and works. In 2010 Noa has been awarded participation in the AIM program at the Bronx museum. This spring Noa attended to the Corporation of Yaddo artist residency in Saratoga Springs, NY and she will participate in the international artists workshop at Triangle Arts Association in Brooklyn, NY this coming fall. Her is part of the group show “Heat Wave” in Lombard Freid Projects in June-July 2010. Recent group shows including her works took place in Parker’s Box gallery in Brooklyn, NY and the Affordable Art Fair in New York, NY. An article featuring Noa’s work, “’Finding Contemporary Beauty in Postmodern Painting’ by Leah Triplett was recently published in the Boston-based online art magazine “Big Red and Shiny”.

Leat Klingmann

Leat Klingman is a puppeteer-filmmaker. She was born in Israel and currently lives and works in New York. She received her BFA at the University of Haifa, and her MFA at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. Leat has transformed herself from a fine artist to a puppeteer-filmmaker with much joy! She concentrates in creating and telling the stories of magical, fanciful puppets and their realms, such as that of Mister Pink- the sweetest animalish creature, and the graceful white Horsy. Mister Pink & Horsy were recently added to Volume 4 of Handmade Puppet Dreams (Heather Henson’s company). Recent screenings include- Puppet Blok at Dixon Place in NYC; NYC Best Short Filmmakers at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn; Video for the Public at Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Sweden; V-Dance, International Festival for Video Dance at the Cinemateq in Tel-Aviv, Israel; Cowtown Puppetry Festival at Hip Pocket Theatre, Texas. A premiere of her next film, Wolfy’s Journey – a musical, will take place in January 2011 at 3rd Ward.

Yanil Santana

Yanil Santana currently attends James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York as an uprising Junior. She has recently graduated from the Reel Works Teen Film-making program, The Lab. Her first film, “Forever Young”, was recently screened on April 17, 2010. She enjoys filming more than anything else and wishes to produce and direct many more films in the future.

The Merzbush: elegies to Kurt Schwitters by Albert Beniada

The Merzbush: elegies to Kurt Schwitters

In the years following World War I, the cubist Kurt Schwitters coined the term “Merz” in reference to his life ambition to “make connections between everything in the world.” Through the use of painting, sculpture, collage and graphic design, Schwitters hoped to unify life and art by incorporating non-art into his work. Schwitters is well known for his collage, but the artist also altered interiors of living spaces. The most famous of these being The Merzbau, which utilized hundreds of found materials, took over 10 years in the making, and transformed a family house into a living walk-in sculpture. Schwitters’ The Merzbau was the pioneer of installation art.

For Bushwick Open Studios 2010, Norte Maar will present THE MERZBUSH featuring the creative genius of several artists who will revisit Kurt Schwitters ideal to ‘make connections between everything in the world.” The project will transform rooms of an apartment into living sculpture.

Albert Beniada

Albert is a filmmaker and a tutor. He holds a B.S. in computer science and has studied film production at USC. His love of learning and passion for creativity permeate both his teaching and his films, which run the gamut from narrative to documentary to music video.

Arts in Bushwick

Arts in Bushwick is an all volunteer organization that serves and engages artists and other neighborhood residents through creative accessibility and community organizing. It is our goal to create an integrated and sustainable neighborhood, and to bring together all Bushwick residents and stakeholders to counter development-driven displacement.

Reel Works Teen Filmmaking

Reel Works Teen Filmmaking is centered of the conviction that every young person has a story to tell and an important contribution to make our world. We believe that filmmaking holds within it essential disciplines of literacy, communication, creative and critical thinking, storytelling and teamwork that young people need to effectively express their unique visions. In the process they gain self-esteem, master state-of-the-art technology and are transformed from passive consumers to active creators of media. We say to teens: You have a voice. Use it!

Founded in 2001 at the Prospect Park YMCA, Reel Works is a full-time nonprofit arts organization that serves over 150 teens each year through five core programs: The Lab, The Master Class, Reel Impact, Reel Works Productions and the Summer Lab.

(Top photo by David Crespo)

3rd Ward (map)

We split our screen four ways and give one section to four uniquely talented VJs: Daniel Hai, Holly Danger and Shinje Murakami and our very own VJ Clay Franklin. Watch as each artist visually interprets live music from four different performers side-by-side on the same screen. Music by Xylopholks, Viva Nada, La Guadalupe, & a special guest. Sure to blow your mind!

Featuring

Daniel Hai

Daniel Hai is a live video performer that blends generative video with real world elements.  He mixes illustration, clay props and everyday objects to create striking visual sequences.

Holly Danger

Holly Danger is a designer, videographer and VJ, who has a passion and obsession for textures, layers, and collage, and how they relate to beats, rhythms, sound and energy. She lives and breathes for traveling with her work to far corners of the universe and spends most of her time working on graphic design, movie trailers, documentaries, festival installations, and live synchronized audio/visual performances for bands and DJs.

Shinji Murakami

Shinji Murakami is a New York based 8-bit video game artist, VJ, muralist and much more. When VJ’ing he mixes a variety of refined and playful animations which are carefully composed of his own freehand drawn characters and shapes.

VJ Clay Franklin

VJ Clay Franklin mixes live feeds, found footage and stuff he made himself to create the right mix of sound and projection.

Moviehouse is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Moviehouse may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

3rd Ward (map)

A new exclusive Moviehouse experiment in video and sound. First, three filmmakers: stop-motion animator Nathan Punwar, illustrator Kieran O’Hare, and video artist Manuela Viera-Gallo create new silent films. Then three composers: VJ Clay Franklin, Phil Weinrobe and Michael Boss each orchestrate a separate soundtrack for each film. The results will screen in succession in one very tasty night of three films each with three different soundtracks. Experience firsthand the collaboration of sound, video and a bit of experimentation.

Featuring

The Cannibal by Manuela Viera-Gallo

A bizarre character goes through the wild experience of breaking fancy porcelain and domestic dishes with people passing by in a public space in the city of Prague

Prologue to a Cyclops by Nathan Punwar

Francis, a modern-day cyclops embarrassed of his single eye, hides away from the world until he is lured out of seclusion by Lina Rae, delivery girl and photographer extraordinaire. Inspired by her camera, he becomes obsessed with creating a two-eyed device to make him appear normal, but it threatens to sacrifice his unique vision.

Reflection: City Cemeteries by Kieran O’Hare

A semi-animated short about a stroll through a graveyard and the transformation of a tree branch into a stick.

3rd Ward (map)

Films that make us think about the nature of what we see, what we don’t see and where movies can take us that reality can not.

Featuring

Burr by Alexander Maxwell

Burr is a film about a violent culture and how it can maneuver and influence the minds of angry and imaginative young kids. Each scene reveals a different layer of how honor is misconceived in today’s society and how problems are taught to be resolved though through aggressive confrontation. Burr contests the idea that violence is a natural human characteristic but rather a distortion that has been created.

Desi is a teenager who looks younger then his years. He is the victim to constant harassment from a group of kids at school. Desi never reacts but instead bottles his emotions inside with his only relief being dramatic, Wild West fantasies that he plays out in his head. One day while with his only friend Byron, Desi confides in him and says that he plans to bring a gun to school and avenge the mistreatment he receives. Byron has made a promise to Desi that he wont tell anybody and he intends to keep his promise but devise an alternative that will hopefully keep his friend from ruining his life and others.

The Photographers by David Mason

A woman at the beach appears to be upset when a photographer casually takes her picture. The situation seems to be resolved through friendly conversation, but there is something not quite right; she seems to go along with everything a little too easily. What is she concealing? Shot on the legendary super 8 home movie format, The Photographers is a meditation on the still image. The characters are roughly composed and speak about images in an elementary way. Who owns them? Why create them? Motives are unclear and manipulation seems likely in this sketch of a woman’s obsession with the photographic image.

3rd Ward (map)

Get Your Heart On! Moviehouse is celebrating our three year anniversary on Valentine’s Day. And even though it’s our birthday, it’s you that gets the gifts.

Just for you we challenged our favorite filmmakers, our intrepid staff and even a couple of diehard fans to make us a 3-minute romantic movie that followed 3 simple rules. See the results with brand new films by puppet-master Leat Klingman, dashing documentarian Daniel Ross, graceful dance film director Marta Renzi, sketch projector Shantall Martin the ceaselessly entertaining Carlotta Propersi, fancy first time filmmaker Sarah Baker, master of sound Austin Duggan, the severely thought provoking crew of CK Swett, Victor Jeffreys II and Russel Fong, animated specialist Matt Choi, the creative playmakers of Zebra Crossing: Chloë Bass, Natalya Krimgold, Jonah Levy, Gabriel Willow & Ken Yapelli and more than a few more.

How can you participate? It’s easy! Just get your friends together and make a three-minute romantic video (it is Valentine’s Day, after all) that follows these three simple guidelines.

The movie should include a reference to one or more of the three wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil)

The movie should include celebrity death (which always come in 3s).

The movie should include something uncontrollable.

Anyone is eligible to make a movie. In fact, first time filmmakers are especially encouraged to make one. Your film will be screened along side those of Moviehouse staff and filmmakers. Finished films are due by February 7.

They can be sent on DVD to Moviehouse at 3rd Ward, 195 Morgan Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11237 or via email to moviehousebk@gmail.com.

Thanks for 3 years of fun! Can’t wait to see what you come up with!