A group works together to build a cottage out of inexpensive local resources in Northern California. The film documents the gestures and materials that are part of the process. Watch the film on Vimeo.
In Common observes the life of a garden planted on a "vacant lot" in Los Angeles. As the days and seasons cycle through a year, different tempos of life exist in counterpoint. The gardener's rhythm of work, as she grows and harvests food, accompanies the scurrying of small creatures in the garden, the play of weather and light on the hillside, and the hurtling of cars across the city on the freeway below.
Watch the film on Vimeo.
Cleaning house is one of the most private things we do in our homes, other than sex and arguments. Although the product of a clean home is socially valued, the work required to achieve it is not. This film bears witness to the invisible labor that makes up a huge part of our lives, in a series of portraits of people cleaning. (2012, HD, 91 minutes). Winner of the Images Prize, Images Festival (Toronto, Canada). Distributed by vtape.org. Watch the film on Vimeo.
In a New Mexico ghost-town turned simulated-town, local people are hired to play the parts of terrorists and victims in government-funded simulation training exercises. This interventionist documentary juxtaposes the training exercises with a theater workshop in which the local community acts out the stories of their town. Winner: Best Documentary, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Distributed by vtape.org
On the 13th of each month, hundreds of people gather at a site in the Mojave Desert to see visions of the Virgin Mary appear in the sun. They point Polaroid, cell phone, and video cameras at the sun, and compare interpretations of the resulting images. This film documents the creative energy of this populist spiritual event. Winner: Vision Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival
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When sunlight falls through the spaces between leaves on a tree, the pin-hole apertures in the foliage create images of the sun on the ground below. This film records replicas of the sun as they appear and disappear in the dappled light under trees.
This film is a series of short experiments, each of which explores peripheral vision in a different way: attempting to capture it on film, conducting perceptual experiments, and telling stories about what is seen from the corner of the eye. Watch the film on Vimeo.
The Tailenders is a captivating look at a missionary group's use of ultra-low-tech audio devices to evangelize indigenous communities facing crises caused by global economic forces. Global Recordings Network, founded in Los Angeles in 1939, has produced audio versions of Bible stories in over 5,500 languages, and aims to record in every language on earth. The film traces their journeys in the Solomon Islands, India, Mexico, and the United States. Winner: Film Independent's Truer than Fiction Award. Broadcast Nationally on P.O.V.
The Tailenders is discussed in two recent works of film scholarship:
Landry, Olivia, A Decolonizing Ear: Documentary Film Disrupts the Archive, University of Toronto Press, 2023
Baron, Jaimie, The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History, Routledge, 2014
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