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THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION
It's hard to find original gift ideas.While searching for a Valentine's Day present, I remembered a conversation I had with the director Sara Driver in Rotterdam. She told me about Boym Studio's Buildings of Disaster series. Small postmodern totems, the series consists of bonded nickel sculptures of sites like the Chernobyl nuclear reactors, the Unabomber's Cabin (pictured, right), the L.A. freeway during the O.J. Simpson chase, the Waco Complex, and, yes, the World Trade Center. Reading about the sculptures, one would imagine them to be pieces of ghoulish kitsch. Seeing them in person, though, they come off as strange and eerie artifacts of our own psychic histories.
Design partners Constantin Boym and Laurene Leon Boym describe the series in a short manifesto that is equal parts Robert Venturi and J.G. Ballard: "Buildings of Disaster are miniature replicas of famous structures where some tragic or terrible events happened to take place. Some of these buildings may have been prized architectural landmarks, others, non-descript anonymous structures. But disaster changes everything. The images of burning or exploded buildings make a different, populist history of architecture, one based on emotional involvement rather than scholarly appreciation. In our media-saturated time, the world disasters stand as people's measure of history, and the sites of tragic events often become involuntary tourist attractions."
I bought the Alma Tunnel, where Princess Diana crashed. Buildings of Disaster are available from Moss in New York City or through Boym's Web site, which also features a variety of other design objects and three short films depicting the firm's gallery-installation work.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 2/13/2004 07:40:56 PM
OVERLOOKED
Of course, with the Academy nominations come and gone, it may seem kind of pointless to hype an un-nominated performance. But given the nods to Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro for their work in 21 Grams, I just wanted to mention my favorite performance in the film which I was surprised to see absent from the various year-end lists. I'm not talking about Melissa Leo, who has her supporters, but rather Charlotte Gainsbourg. Playing Penn's wife -- a Brit transplanted to Memphis who just wants a second chance at a child with Penn -- Gainsbourg, in a quiet, unshowy performance, found the emotional truth within Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's melodrama. The daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Gainsbourg is a major star in Europe, but let's hope we see her in more Stateside productions.# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 2/10/2004 12:51:38 AM
MARK SILVERMAN FELLOWSHIP
Sundance has awarded its annual Mark Silverman Producer's Fellowship to L.A.-based producer Gina Kwon. Formerly a V.P. at Myriad Pictures, Kwon has worked with Academy Award-winning filmmaker R.J. Cutler on his TNT series The Residents and his Fox series American High. She's most associated, though, with director Miguel Arteta and producer Matthew Greenfield, having production-managed Star Maps, associate produced Chuck and Buck, and co-produced The Good Girl. She is currently producing a Sundance Lab project, Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know, aiming for a Summer 2004 shoot. The fellowship, which is a tribute to the late producer of such films as Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, will support Kwon through this process with a cash grant and a group of producing mentors.
I've read July's script, and it's one of the most unique and compelling scripts out there in the indie scene right now. As the filmmaker describes it, "The film tells a story about children and adults with impossible desires, living at a time when coming of age is a digital process and reality is an aesthetic choice." The script is full of hilarious deadpan dialogue and strangely funny set-pieces, and, knowing July's previous video work, which is smart, intimate, and inviting, hers is a sensibility that should successfully leap into the narrative feature realm. For more about July, pictured at right, click here.# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 2/9/2004 08:27:14 PM
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© 2004 Filmmaker: The Magazine of Independent Film