Friday, July 15th, 2011
A 2010 25 New Face, filmmaker Jason Byrne has been based in Tanzania, where he’s an Audio-Visual Archivist for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He recently sent an email to his list about a new project, and, with permission, I’m reposting it here.
Over the weekend, I was in Southern Sudan to witness the country’s independence. I made a film within the celebration, which included two actors. One actor plays the “North” and one actor plays the “South.” The history of the two countries will be captured through the telling of the characters experiences.
Here are some images from the film. The collective energy and excitement among the Southern Sudanese was something I never thought could exist anywhere. I hope I captured something of this feeling on film. — Jason Byrne
Actors:
Finishing touches on the statue of John Garang, the original leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Party (SPLA), who fought for the South’s Independence.
We had journalist accreditation so we were able to get on a media platform. Everybody on the platform was doing live feeds — except for me..
… Read the rest
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Jason Byrne
When we caught up with filmmaker Jason Byrne to include him in this year’s “25,” it was via e-mail from Tanzania. At the sa me time Byrne’s hypnotic experimental documentary Scrap Vessel winds its way along the festival circuit, he is working as an audio/visual archivist for the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “Living in East Africa for the last two years has been a deeply rich experience, and this job has been fascinating but psychologically difficult at times, especially when listening to the many graphically explained testimonies from witnesses to the genocide,” he writes.
Byrne has worked previously as an archivist in Los Angeles, and he also graduated from the Film/Video Masters program at CalArts, where he “received a lot of help in understanding space and time from filmmakers Betzy Bromberg and James Benning.” His understanding of the relationship between film practice and historical memory informed Scrap Vessel, which was his thesis project at CalArts. The film takes place on the final voyage of a former Chinese-owned freighter ship on its way to the breaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh. As he explains, “I shot this film in the frame of mind of being alienated from the rest of the crew and of trying to capture my initial understanding of the new environment. Maybe the film is the reverse of an anthropological study. Once I began editing, I realized I also wanted the film to reflect the memories I had aboard the ship, which I created by manipulating shots to give them a dreamlike image. By manipulation, I was able to capture a stronger state of sublime (technically by building heavy contrast by rephotographing the print over and over again), along with sound of Albert Ortega’s haunted-like score, to capture the traces of memory that leave me continuously with the surreal vision of being aboard the vessel. Also, I was interested in creating a similar haunted feeling with the use of the dusty archival material left over from the former mainland Chinese crew, which is interspersed throughout the film, that includes 16mm motion pictures of 1970s/’80s … Read the rest
