Artist name: Joel Schlemowitz
Dates of residency: 2010
URL: http://www.joelschlemowitz.com
Bio/Statement:
Joel Schlemowitz is an experimental filmmaker based in Brooklyn who works in 16mm film, shadowplay, and stereographic media. He has recently completed his first feature film 78rpm, an experimental documentary about the gramophone. His short works have been shown at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Tribeca Film Festival and have received awards from the Chicago Underground Film Festival, The Dallas Video Festival, and elsewhere. Shows of installation artworks include Anthology Film Archives, and Microscope Gallery. He teaches experimental filmmaking at The New School and is Resident Film Programmer and Arcane Media Specialist at the Morbid Anatomy Museum. www.joelschlemowitz.com
His films begin with visual poetry shot with a 16mm Bolex camera and inspired by the experimental filmmaker Marie Menken, then come poetry films made with the author Wanda Phipps. There also come experimental film portraits, hand-painted films, and experimental documentaries on artist collectives. Subsequently there are “camera roll” films produced without editing, magic lantern shows using glass slides and “live” Victrola soundtrack, 16mm film installations, live film performances (including shooting, hand-developing, and projecting a film all in one screening) and collaborative arcane media mash-ups. Currently there are works using hybrid approaches, combining documentary and experimental film.
While the media are diverse there remains in all these projects a conciseness emulating the poem’s heightened state of experience, an undercurrent of droll humor, a preoccupation with the tactile nature of the filmic image, and an eye towards the Nineteenth Century.
During his Special Features residency at RU, Schlemowitz filmed “Victrola Cinema”
