Stephanie Maxwell Visual Music Screening!

Sunday November 9, 2008, 7:00 pm

Los Angeles Filmforum and iotaCenter present
Stephanie Maxwell's Visual Music
Stephanie Maxwell in person!!

Co-presentation with the iotaCenter.

Stephanie Maxwell specializes in hand-painted experimental abstract animation. After performing a variety of painting, marking and engraving techniques directly onto 35mm film stock, Maxwell rephotographs each frame of the film using a digital feed camera and digital frame capture, sometimes employing additional manipulations such as bending and twisting the film, layering film frames together, and progressive alterations of the image during the frame by frame rephotography.

This screening will feature selections from Maxwell’s work from 1984 through her two newest works from 2008, as well as a twelve-minute short documentary about Maxwell’s filmmaking process, with footage of the artist at work.

The aesthetic of Maxwell’s films has changed since she began creating films in the 1980’s, and the transformation of her techniques and style will be apparent by viewing her films chronologically. The themes and imagery in her films vary widely – from that of a biological nature (GA, 1984), to staged, but painterly, graphical works (Somewhere, 1999) to interpretations of the metaphysical – time, reality, existence (Time Streams, 2003 and Runa’s Spell, 2007).

Some of the combinations of sound and imagery in Maxwell’s work are haunting and lovely, as in Runa’s Spell where a close-up of what appears to be a colorful microscopic organism is accompanied by the distant sound of a woman lamenting in musical form. In Reflecting Pool (2006), a dark, ominous background is lit up with neon reflections of sand animation combined with images of microscopic organisms in a watery matrix. The music reflects and reacts to the evolving revelations in this three-movement work.

“Stephanie Maxwell's work gets me. Her work is fuelled by a breathless, giddy energy and passion that seeps through every whore of a pore. Like a child, she is excited by a seemingly minute discovery — like an anthill, river or a rock. Maxwell's work is an extension of that explorative part of our childhood. She has a tenacious fascination with the natural world; a world that too many of us (myself included) have left behind in favor of simulated realities.” – Chris Robinson, Animation World Magazine

For questions about this event, feel free to contact me (Stephanie) here or at stephanie@iotacenter.org. Thanks!