Guest Artist: Althea Thauberger

This week we had a guest artist who came in to present some of her films and videos. She showed us "Not Afraid to Die", "songstress", "A Memory Lasts Forever", and "Treeplanters". I was not a huge fan of any of the first three, but they were O.k. I thought it was really interesting how she uses collaboration in her films. She basically sets up the shots and such while the performers come up with their own material.

Treeplanters was a very strange, yet interesting film to me. I thought that for such a simple setup and idea, that it was executed in a way that made you think about things. A slowly moving dollied camera moves first left, across a sort of barren forest area with 8-12 people sleeping in various positions. Once the camera gets past all of the people a helicopter lands and someone jumps out to wake the sleepers up. They wake up in sort of a domino fashion, but once they all are awake they suddenly stare in to the camera. This final section of the film was powerful and really woke you up.