Film Categories: art & artists

  • Of Beauty & Deities: Music and Dance of India

    Focused on southern Indian classical bharatanatyam dance and music, this hour-long documentary consists mostly of performance and interviews. The performers come from a group called Kalanjali: Dances of India that maintains performers in Chennai, India, and a dance academy in Berkeley, CA, USA. Our documentary was filmed in the San Francisco Bay Area. The group performers come from the dance academy and are mostly young women from the Indian diaspora. The solo dancer, K.P. Yeshoda, as well as the musicians, come from India but traveled to California to join us in the studio. Kalanjali’s directors are the primary interview subjects:…

  • H2T

    Shot on several types of film (16 mm and Super 8 format), ranging from handmade film emulsion to expired films, H2T takes place in the mighty Hotel2Tango Montreal recording studio. The film is a chemical composition where light meets the effervescence and creativity of the band Land of Kush (Constellation Records) during the making of their latest album, The Big Mango (2013). Filming of the recording session during rehearsals and breaks, the picture is just as ephemeral as the musicians’ movements. H2T reflects on the performative aspect specific to experimental film and musical performance.

  • Mach Stem

    Part one in a series, Mach Stem is an essay about skincare, depression, memory loss, and the atomic bomb. Formulated from a discarded master’s thesis film, Mach Stem records the shadow of a long depression and the process of convalescence. Exploring sites of research, memory, and legacy, the film travels between continents to piece together one’s own identity that was previously lost at sea.

  • Broth of Vigour

    A different kind of bone broth. A boiling broth stewed from science fiction, competitive cooking shows and the erotic recesses of the imagination, Broth of Vigour is a tonic for the body and mind.

  • A Letter from Huami

    In 2069, a few rolls of films were found in a regeneration center occasionally. Then scientists extracted the genes from the hair which were left on the films to give a cat -Huami a new life. With human’s consciousness and the memories which belongs to the past time, Huami wrote a letter to her owner in 2019…

  • 75 Years

    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago initiated The Cold War. 75 Years is a cinematic meditation on The Cold War and photography. 75 Years is comprised of surreal, evocative still photos put into motion and edited like cinematic footage. The images are often stunningly beautiful. Though not documentary, they feel like they were shot at ground zero of an annihilation. And they are sequenced to suggest such a narrative—from a Prologue to an Aftermath. All the images have some degree of motion blur, so they range from representational to abstract. At their most abstract, they look…

  • Running In O&R

    Running In O&R occupies the conjunction of three crucial arts of the 1970s: performance art, experimental dance, and independent filmmaking. Running In O&R started as a performance piece for Missing Associates, Dudar’s partnership with dancer/choreographer Lily Eng. This film was shot at the original location of the Centre for Experimental Art and Communication (CEAC), the city’s ”largest and most avant-garde” international art gallery. In Running In O&R, the performers run laps around the gallery space, keeping in step and using their natural strides. Consequently they go in and out of phase visually, as other complexities emerge. The establishing wide shot…

  • Xam

    Xam is a sci-fi exploration on the future of surveillance and body hacking. While in the London subway, an unsuspecting man opens a strange text, rendering him unconscious and dragging him through a wormhole. He awakes, lost, on the train tracks in Kiev, Ukraine, unable to communicate with friends or family. With the help of the hacker community in Kiev, and then Paris, the man harnesses alternative virtual transmissions in an attempt to find his way home. Xam is told through an intimate, first-person frame and video collage to emphasize the increasing integration of human and technology. The story is…

  • Every Day Burns

    Award winning pole dancer, Sada Velasquez, addresses the familial and social stigma she must overcome in order to pursue her passion for dance. Everyday Burns is a short documentary exploring one artist’s journey towards self expression and community empowerment. Every day Sada overcomes physical limitations, personal doubts and moral perceptions of others in order to create a safe space for folks to explore their sensual freedom.

  • Housebound

    The film combines a scene taken from the movie Copycat (1995) with footage of my editing the film. It is a reflection on the idea of artistic originality as well as the art world’s constant desire to instantly transform everything – even the current health crisis – into works of art. Housebound was commissioned by this year’s edition of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. It is my contribution to the festival’s discussion: “Can and should one make films now?”