Repelling the Viewer (Abigail Norris & Jerry Rothwell) | Babelgum

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Repelling the Viewer (Abigail Norris & Jerry Rothwell)

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Repelling the Viewer (Abigail Norris & Jerry Rothwell)

[ 03:08 ]

Johannes Phokela, as he explains, has always been fascinated by iconic images and how they have “infiltrated our lives.” So this very unusual painter takes those images from classic paintings of the European masters and twists and turns them into satires of contemporary life. It might be turning a muscular white man black as he drapes himself over a nude woman, or hanging a cigarette from the mouth of a female, or adding a clown nose here and there. Filmmaker Jerry Rothwell’s camera captures Phokela at work, putting words to the brush strokes that transform allegories from centuries past into notions that could be considered subversive, as an unsettling cello underlines notions that could be considered subversive. At least, Phokela hopes so.

03:07

The Work's the Thing (Abigail Norris & Jerry Rothwell)
A short film about the art and working methods of Paul Housley. Born in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, in 1964, Paul studied at the Royal College of Art. He has an interest in observing the everyday and a penchant for humble mass-produced objects. Like a number of other young UK artists, Paul is returning to figurative painting, at a time when video, photography, installation and new media have attracted increased attention as art forms. Since the popularity of the young British artists, the rise of 'Brit Art' and the controversy of the Turner Prize, painting has taken a back seat. Damien Hirst was famously quoted as saying that painting was dead. Housley, however works with traditional materials, proving that painting is alive and has an energy and power of its own in today’s art world. His paintings play with our notions of taste, finding novelty in cliché and lyricism in mundane, blank objects like sports bags and light bulbs.

03:27

Paradise Regained (Steve James)
He was the painter who brought paradise to the infamous Chicago housing projects, miles of urban housing rife with violence, gangs and crime until they were finally torn down. With Reed's wall-filling murals, residents transformed their living rooms into oases from the ghetto storms outside. Through description and animation, Reed depicts a world that is thankfully gone yet brought alive again by ex-residents who will seek his views of paradise.

03:22

Sideshow Picasso (Marilyn Agrelo)
Brooklyn painter Marie Roberts comes from a family long entrenched in Coney Island's Sideshow. Her family home once housed the famous freaks and oddities of the 1920s and 1930s where her uncle was the "talker" luring audiences in to see them. Marie paints beautiful banners for the current Sideshow.

03:15

My Girl Can Fight (Justin Frimmer)
Father and daughter in East Los Angeles discover they are fighting for each other inside and outside the ring.

03:16

Paints On Ceiling (Jeremiah Zagar)
Sometimes, an entire lifetime is decided in a moment. At least it was for Isaiah Zagar, whose mother’s scream when he was three set him on the road to becoming an artist. In this striking, dream-like film, his son, Jeremiah reenacts the incident when his father had his epiphany: Letting his crayon stray outside the lines in the coloring book, to the formica kitchen table, then the floor, up the refrigerator and finally scrambling to the top of that appliance in order to color on the ceiling. When his mother walked in and saw her son teetering on the edge, her terrified cry convinced him that his destiny was to evoke similar reactions from others to his art. Now a famous Philadelphia mosaic and mural artist, Isaiah Zagar’s exploration of this moment offers extraordinary insight into the mind of a fascinating and complex man, the subject of his son’s first full-length documentary that won the Emerging Visions Award at its debut at the 2008 South by Southwest film festival.

03:10

Heavy Load in New York (Jerry Rothwell)
Michael, Simon and Jim are three adults with learning disabilities who, with their support workers Mick and Paul, make up unlikely punk band Heavy Load. A revealing portrait of the band's journey and the effect that filmmaking has on both them and the director.

03:04

Divorce Coach (Mark Steensland)
You’ve heard of a football coach. A baseball coach. An acting coach. But what the heck is a divorce coach? Meet Dr. Kim Lurie, who, after spending 8 years on her own divorce, reinvented herself and coined the term. Her cases have ranged from high-profile to downright weird and everywhere in between. Find out what drives a woman like her to rescue spouses when all hope seems lost.

03:15

Love In The Streets (Jerry Rothwell)
Our collective imagination of homelessness is shaped by the idea of someone who is single and lonely. Roy and Morag explode that myth and take in companionship, humor and love, alongside the dirt, noise and damp of London’s pavements –a warm look at the chill of a (love) life lived on the outside.

03:37

The View from Madison Street (Steve James)
African-Americans from this largely forgotten stretch of inner-city Chicago speak out about race, class and how neither of the then-presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, was addressing the issues of poverty that plague their community.

03:18

The R.O.M.E.O.S (Katy Chevigny)
The ROMEOS is a short documentary film about long relationships - good conversation amongst old friends. And we're talking old friends. The ROMEOs is an informal club of 5 old time New Yorkers, men aged 72-87, who have met every week for the past 20 years at the Metro Diner in New York City. It is a long lunch to talk about anything and everything; telling old jokes, making fun of each other, complaining about politics. Naturally they have nicknames: Mr. Indignant (his capacity for outrage knows no bounds), Mr. Google (this guy knows everything, you won't believe it), and The Token Goy. They are retired lawyers, writers and left-wing troublemakers and they are utterly hilarious without even trying.

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