My Films

People have been asking about these for years. 

I've withheld these for ages on the technical grounds that public online viewability often disqualifies films from festivals, but that's starting to be less of an issue now. These two shorts have had their rounds at respectable venues, and I'd rather you all just had a chance to see them. They're complicated, imperfect, delicate; designed to reveal themselves slowly, to be taken in more than once. Six of my films have played at festivals; these are the most recent two.
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Regulate (pictured above) stars Eleanor Moseley and Ryan Cooper, among others. In it, a recently remarried woman in her forties, whose daughter is suspected of terrorist activity, finally decides enough is enough with regard to her theatrical and overbearing ex-husband.

The general idea was to shoot a chamber dialogue piece with greater-than-normal attention to aesthetics (see more below). Although I've received a lot of compliments on the film's visual design, I say the main cause célèbre here is Eleanor's performance, particularly her closing monologue, shot in a six-minute unbroken take. ​This premiered at the Henry Art Gallery and was an Official Selection at the 2016 International Women's Festival and two other festivals.
Full (twenty-eight minute) film here; IMDb link here.

I don't talk too much about the genesis behind my projects, but I'm told sharing is caring. If you're in the mood for a tell-all, check out Regulate's hour-long commentary with yours truly. 

​I'm not sure how I managed to talk that quickly for that long without any dead air.... Every question you could ever lob at me about theory, regrets, successes, content and formal decisions– good and bad– gets answered in this hour. Put it on while you do the dishes. This is how I see film.
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Rejuvenate has been showcased on this blog before, but never in its full fifteen-minute form. Commissioned by Real Change, this film showcases the lives of two street newspaper vendors as the colorful, vibrant people they are.

We see a lot of stories in process on the street, and we wonder where these folks come from. With Rejuvenate I wanted to offer a window of sorts, and not the usual dour one: I find tiresome the approach of filming the homeless in unsophisticated static shots of desaturated brown and grey. Just because documentaries focus on content doesn't mean they should get away with a lower bar for visual aesthetics. Here we focus on communicating to the viewer with dynamic camera movement, natural lighting, and rich color.

We'll leave sociological analysis to the experts; this is a vérité celebration of two faces in the crowd as fleshed-out people with energy and dreams like yours and mine. Rejuvenate premiered at the 2013 Real Change Annual Breakfast, at the Washington State Convention Center, and was an Official Selection at the 2016 Seattle Transmedia Film Festival and the 2016 Grand IndieWise Convention. 
​Full (fifteen-minute) film here; IMDb link here. 

Here's a newspaper profile on me written by one of the film's subjects, Tricia Sullivan.

Information on my other films here. 

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Thanks for watching– on a big(ish) screen, I hope!