Vimeo On Demand: "Ghost Tape #10"

I'm grateful for every teacher and student who invited Ghost Tape #10 into their classroom or onto their laptop these past several years. I learned so much about my methods and practices as a documentary filmmaker through the dialogues we shared. Now available exclusively through Vimeo On Demand, I hope that my film can help educate those following the footprints of war, and where those secret paths lead.

Special thanks to Ca Dao "Cookie" Duong, the Nguyễn Family and the guidance of my USC MVA mentors & professors Jenny Cool & Janet Hoskins.

Ghost Tape #10 from Sean David Christensen on Vimeo.

About the film: Created by the U.S. Army during the American War in Vietnam, "Ghost Tape #10" was one of many audio tapes engineered to psychologically terrify the North Vietnamese Army in its depiction of wandering souls lost in the Buddhist afterlife. By re-examining this weaponization of religious belief, reflections on this artifact of American propaganda lead to meditations on relationships between the living and the dead, asking what truths, if any, still echo within this recording.

Lauded as "...a haunting portrayal of U.S. militarism" by General Anthropology, this award-winning documentary by Sean David Christensen excavates these disturbing secrets of war through a dreamlike narrative that author David Biggs calls "Fascinating...considers elegiac currents through which people in Vietnam continue to reckon with war's ghosts."

"sad girl" by Dolan Chorng

I originally saw this arrestingly beautiful short by Dolan Chorng at the Marfa Film Festival in 2017. Captivating in its sharp attention to atmosphere within tightly composed tableaus, sad girl is an eerie comic meditation on teenage longing and burgeoning sexuality.

sad girl (2016) Dir: Dolan Chorng

"Dani" by Lizzy Hogenson - Vimeo Staff Pick

This ingenious animated film weaves intricate stop-motion together with documentary storytelling – a feat that becomes more captivating after every screening. Winner of the Jury Award for Best Animated Short at Palm Springs ShortFest, along with being shortlisted for the “Best Animated Short Film” Oscar at the 2019 Academy Awards, Dani by Lizzy Hogenson is a marvel of craft and imagination. Special thanks to Meghan Oretsky of the Ladies With Lenses Vimeo channel, supporters of this, and the best short films on the Internet written and/or directed by women.

Dani

Created by Lizzy Hogenson

Sound & Music - Ricky Lee Berger

Editor - Robert Panico

Scientific Advisor - Stephanie Shishido

Vimeo Staff Pick: "I'm Not Ready" by Cassie Shao

I’m thrilled for my friend Cassie Shao, awarded a Vimeo Staff Pick for her visionary reimagining of “I’m Not Ready” by Maggie Dave. Featured on “Ladies With Lenses,” a curated staff channel that celebrates the best work on the Internet by womxn behind the camera, Shao’s delicate and abstract expression of my lyrics makes the song new again with each viewing.

“I’m Not Ready” (2019) by Cassie Shao

“I’m Not Ready” (2019) by Cassie Shao

CREDITS

Directed & Animated by Cassie Shao
Produced by Sean David Christensen

“I'm Not Ready” written by Maggie Dave
Vocals & keyboard: Sean David Christensen
Synthesizers: Mark Christopher & Ricky Berger

Vocals engineered by Ricky Berger
Mixed by Ricky Berger & Mark Christopher
Mastering by Trevor Case

"Buzz" by Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe

Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe (Gulp Splash) are masters of the comedic slight of hand, concealing acerbic commentaries on the maniacal obsessions of domesticity beneath their whimsical comic fantasies. Having just returned from SXSW 2019 with their feature adaptation of Greener Grass, a dizzyingly off-kilter suburban nightmare, Buzz is the perfect example of their craft’s deliberate pace and control, trading simple punchlines for the types of laughs you’re afraid to make in a crowded theatre. From the filmmakers: “A codependent woman’s life is disrupted when her servile best friend wants to move out of their isolated mountain home to be with a man. She hatches an unusual plan to ensure she will never be alone.”

FILMMAKERS

Created by: Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe (“Greener Grass” Sundance 2019)
Directed by: Mitch Magee (“Welcome To My Study” Funny or Die Presents, HBO)

Written by and Starring: Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe 
With Patrick Carroll as Buzz and James Pumphrey as Hank

Gulp Splash Productions & Alpen Pictures
Producer: Nate Vaughan
Supervising Producer: Matt Pittman
Executive Producers: Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe
Director of Photography: Daniel Kenji Levin
Production Design: Traci Hays
Editors: Taylor Gianotas, Chris Punsalan
Costume Design: Michelle Thompson
Hair and Makeup: Veronica Sinclair
Music Composer: Samuel Nobles
Sound Designer: Brian Goodheart

SACRED SHIT by Machete Bang Bang & Erin Granat

One of microcinema's treasures is the joy of discovering nuance just beneath its surface on repeat viewings. Much like the delight you experience upon discovering a new instrumental flourish buried within your favorite song after revisiting it, the comparable brevity of a short film sharpens its audience's senses, refocusing them to engage with, and pick up, new details. A short film's runtime tacitly demands a heightened level of awareness from its viewers, knowing there's only so much time to tell its story. You can always hit “repeat,” though.

Erin Granat glides across the 395 highway in Sacred Shit.

On such repeat viewings, the impishly clever hide of Sacred Shit wears away, its clever skin belying its truer nature: a meditation on friendship, dependency & loss. Filmmakers Machete Bang Bang & Erin Granat (dear friends of mine for transparency’s sake), weave their individual talents together to express their own unique artistic stake in the process, while never sacrificing the volume of either voice to placate the other. Without spoiling the film’s revelatory ending, it’s clear that this sense of mutual collaboration speaks to more than simply the mechanics of making art, but a deeper need for each friend to support the other in the face of mortality and its humorless smile. Life, after all, has a runtime too, though we never know how long we’ve got until it’s too late to demand a repeat button. Now that’s some “sacred shit.”

- - -

Credits:

Starring: Erin Granat, Machete Bang Bang & John Weselcouch as "Friend on Phone"

Created by Machete Bang Bang and Erin Granat

Edited by Machete Bang Bang

Sound Design & Mix by Tim McKeown 

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http://machetegoesbangbang.com/

https://eringranat.com/

I Was There Too by Joey Izzo

A haunting, sharply comedic tale of one man's craven manipulation of public tragedy, I Was There Too is a claustrophobic morality play, or in Darius's case (played by DeMorge Brown), a trap of his own making. Estranged from his daughter Max (Sunni Salazar), Darius is a father on the sidelines. Frustrated. We're introduced to his character arguing with referees at Max's soccer game, his outburst mollified by his ex-wife's new partner, Eric (played Eric Dadourian), with a weary sense of responsibility. "You can't come anymore, you know that, right?" Faced with the potential of being pushed further away from his daughter in an increasingly decaying orbit, Darius fabricates a story of narrowly escaping a mass shooting late one night, breathlessly describing it to Eric and Beth (Beth Lisick) at their doorstep.

Once inside, there's a sublime moment that occurs in-camera during a pivotal scene. Adrenaline still racing, Darius's pulse softens as he recalls a fond memory of his daughter Max's birthday, shared in the same living room he once again finds himself a guest in; Albeit, a self-imposed one. A bead of sweat rolls down his right temple at the exact moment he looks up at Beth for what sympathy he can wrestle from her concerned expression. It's a disturbing moment of serendipity, sweat gathering on the nervous skin of his story. We the audience, after all, know better than his captive audience. Darius wasn't there at all.

Izzo deftly handles the increasing tension by never fully revealing how much is truly believed by Darius's family, nor how much time is left before they discover it's all an act; Or if they discover it at all. Beautifully photographed by Arlene Muller, the film glides through the twilight hours of a man running out of time, and his desperate attempt for a second chance at becoming the father he may have never been in the first place. Reminiscent of Bresson's Pickpocket, Izzo is fast becoming a new master of portraying human frailty, and the tragicomic circumstances that tighten around wayward souls believing they are either too deserving of salvation, or too clever to outwit their inevitable judgment.

I Was There Too is available for streaming on Vimeo and was named Short of the Week.

Single Mother Only Daughter by Ellie Wen

At NewFilmmakers LA earlier this month, I was honored to share the screen with director Ellie Wen's Single Mother Only Daughter, a lovingly-crafted portrait of her relationship with her mother. Stitching new connections between analog memories culled from her collection of home movies, diaries and childhood photographs, Wen traces the synchronous orbits of two lives circling closer together with age. As the film navigates through a collage of VHS footage chronicling birthday parties, ballet recitals and impromptu Mother/Daughter karaoke performances, their bond is strengthened by the film’s aural foundation; A recorded phone conversation between the two. Auspiciously, Wen's husband, Greg Katz began filming her end of the line one evening, capturing her moments of realization & revelation with their shared past that would’ve otherwise remained in the dark.

Naturally, I find a kinship with Wen's work, as much of my directorial efforts are traced along similar lines of connecting the past with the present, and the web of dreams/memories that form between its many points. Both my latest film, The Duel and Single Mother Only Daughter attempt to reconcile childhood mysteries with a waking adult life that refuses to shake them free, perhaps motivated by a duty to forgive or better understand their parents. Film is one of the rare art forms in that respect, as it grants the artist the tools to fold time in on itself to form new strength in re-examining the power of memories and the role they continue to play in shaping their lives. For Wen, Single Mother Only Daughter is a beautiful effort in striving for that new understanding.

Director Ellie Wen relates the creative challenges of Single Mother Only Daughter to the NewFilmmakers LA DocuSlate audience on December 2nd, 2017 at the South Park Center. From the left, cinematographer of The Duel, Aaron Gambel & I look on.

"Clara" by Jordan Kim

Fine-grained memories about friends cling to me, like sugar on the end of my fingertip. Tiny white dots form a small pattern that speaks to a larger system, an innate mechanism that helps defines their character. For director Jordan Kim, it was his attention to detail. "I spent way too much time on this," he bashfully admitted, opening up a window on his computer in 2004. I was looking at a poster for Bicentennial Man 2, Kim's harder-edged sequel to the wholesome Chris Columbus film featuring Robin Williams as a robot Pinocchio. Adding an intricate, gold cybernetic visor to his face and draping him in a trench coat while an oppressive, Gibsonesque megalopolis in coral pink towered over this new, hardened detective incarnation of the former cyborg butler, Kim confessed to me he should’ve spent his evenings in a more constructive way. Yet, whether it was goofing around or getting down to the business of directing, his impishly subversive dedication to calibrating each element of his vision applied to both the frivolous and more cinematic of pursuits. 

Whether it’s his hauntingly beautiful and playful homage to Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu in his Vimeo Staff Picked music video for Toro y Moi, or the cackle of live that vibrates through each magical sidewalk crack in Clara, Kim is still just as fastidiously attending to his craft as he was when I first met him at San Francisco State University almost fourteen years ago. Clara is a deceptively innocent fairy tale full of big bad man-children in wolves' clothing, envious magic spells and jaded princesses of Silverlake locked away in the shadows of their condos. The film hums with softness and humor though, stimulated by a glowing performance from Hannah Kasulka as the timid, titular witch, brimming with hysterical coiled menace that springs loose in hilarious bursts along her winding journey through the banal enchantment of a Los Angeles-esque city dream. I won’t spoil the plot, describing it would be nearly as fruitless as describing the details of Kim’s Bicentennial Man 2 poster again. Just watch this. Pour yourself a hot cup of tea and absorb the patterns that form. There’s magic in them too. 

Visit Jordan Kim and see more his work on Vimeo. And be sure to catch his nimble editing work on Portlandia. 

"Memory" by Amelia Chen

Written & Directed by Amelia Chen                                                                                      http://www.ameliachen.net/