THE VOYAGERS

A DOUBLE FEATURE

Work by Penny Lane & Brian Frye 

Co-presented with WHITE LIGHT CINEMA

November 13th, 2010

Penny Lane creates video pieces that exhibit a vibrant contemporary imagination at work. Often playing with the expectations of genre, her works are lively explorations of the world as she experiences it. Playful and emotive, her work moves deftly between the worlds of documentary, narrative, and experimental cinema. Her videos have screened at AFI FEST, Int’l Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco Int’l Film Festival, Images Festival, Florida Experimental (FLEX), Seattle Int’l Film Festival, Women in the Director’s Chair, and MOMA “Documentary Fortnight.” Penny has been awarded production grants from the New York State Council for the Arts, LEF Foundation, NYSCA, Experimental Television Center, IFP, Dutchess County Arts Council, and the Puffin Foundation. Currently she is a visiting professor in art at Williams College and in pre-production on a feature documentary about goat testicles and Mexican radio. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.

Program Details:
SOMETIMES I GET LOSSY (2008, 1 min.)
This is what happens when you spend all your time in front of a computer.(PL)

HOW TO MAKE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (2010, 4 mins.)
The first thing you do when writing an autobiography is start off with a lot of facts about your life. Try to find interesting facts.(PL)

MEN SEEKING WOMEN (2007, 4 mins.)
A random sample of Craigslist personals opens up performative possibilities for an animated corporate tool.(PL)

FAMOUS LUNCH 03.28.05 9 PM (2009, 2 mins.)
Part of an unfinished series of videos involving imaginative surveillance. It turns out that I am really weirded out by spying on people, so maybe the series is doomed. A collaboration with Thom Stylinski (oh yes, those are his voices).(PL)

WE ARE THE LITTLETONS(2004, 10 mins.)
We Are The Littletons presents a tangled web of found objects, intercepted correspondences, reenactments and total fabrications centered around Eve Littleton, an artist with “movie star good looks” who was mysteriously banished from her postcard-perfect American family. A true story with forged signatures, We Are The Littletons is about what’s outside the margins of the American Dream, the people and memories that get removed from the family photos and erased from the records. It is also about their persistent struggle to come home, welcome or not.(PL)

SHE USED TO SEE HIM MOST WEEKENDS (2007, 4 mins.)
A short story about growing up, a certain love song, and the apocryphal memories of childhood. Also: a sort of epilogue to The Abortion Diaries.(PL)

THE COMMONERS (2009, 12 mins.)
By Jessica Bardsley & Penny Lane
In 1890, one man had the idea to collect every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare and release them into Central Park. The only bird to survive in the New World was the European Starling, now one of the most common birds in America. Its introduction is widely considered a major environmental disaster. The Commoners is a moving image essay about starlings, poetry, and the purist rhetoric used to describe “invasive species.” It is also about the paths people forge through history, intentionally or not, as they attempt to change the natural world.(PL)

THE VOYAGERS (2010, 16 mins.)
In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Together and alone, they will travel until the end of the universe. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler.(PL)

Filed under: film, video