Lately - and always, you say? - I've been wondering what it's all about. I submit a film to a faraway festival. I post a laurel on Facebook or here. It apparently screens, maybe even gets an award ... silence.
Similarly with Her Magnum Opus which Consonance Dance & Music Festival recently awarded this "Diploma." But what's infinitely more satisfying, they also created a page with "reviews" from professionals and audience members which touched me. Check out the page here, with a few excerpts below.
Movement here is more than just choreography - it is memory, language and emotion all at once. The way the film blends structured dance with unscripted, raw motion makes it feel deeply human, like watching someone's soul express itself in real time. It's not just about dance; it's about presence, about leaving something behind without saying a word.
Andrew Kanivchenko
This film doesn't rush. It moves like a slow waltz, lingering in moments, letting glances and silences speak louder than words. Watching it felt like sitting in a quiet room filled with people who love each other but know they don't have much time left together.
Marta Torres Serrano
As long as we're here, there does happen to be a screening that I can attend! The Thomas Edison Film Festival, with whom I have a very long history, will show Inter Library Loan at the Hoboken Historical Museum on Saturday, March 8.
Doors open at 6:30 for wine & pizza. At 7:00 a brief hello from me and the Executive Director Jane Steuerwald. $10.00 admission gets you in, and supports TEFF,
I hope you'll join me!
Friday, January 31, 2025
[NB: Like many others, I'm feeling a bit compromised by Facebook and the like. My happiest posting on that platform was probably the 365 days of "Outsides" - nature footage lasting about 30 seconds - for a year during the pandemic. Except for that, I never posted about my mood, or my grandchildren, using it more for self-promotion. And then I realized: I have this harmless old method of self-promotion which the same 50 friends - actual ones - pay attention to - especially if I remind them with a MailChimp email. All this for free and without the meddling of Musk or Zuckerberg. So I'll milk it and see how it goes.]
Lots of screenings coming up in February, in the US and abroad.
REPLICA in a festival called Winter Dances, which has screenings in Finland and Sweden - and pays a screening fee! REPLICA is also screening in Macao (which I had to look up on a map) in the Rollout Dance Film Festival, online for a few weeks.
GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME screens at San Diego Black Film Festival in a Saturday morning "Historical" series.
It's that time of year - reviewing, reckoning, resolving. It's also the time when I create a short reel of the work made in the previous year. Without further ado, here's a peek at what I made in 2024.
Not included in the 2024 reel is one currently in process, with the working title The Lake - Rockland Lake, that is, about a 5-minute drive from my house. Starting in September 2024 I'd bike a few times around the lake more or less daily for recuperation from double knee replacement. Almost immediately I decided to record on my cellphone the natural beauty and the diverse humanity that the lake offers. It's a little cold for me right now - also apparently for the diverse humanity - While waiting for warmer weather, I started to play with the footage, as a way of seeing what's there and what might be missing. It's turning out to be some kind of hybrid - not a documentary, not a dance film. A journal maybe, "written" not by me but by many others (d.h. see above). Check out The Lake (forthcoming) here. Radiant soundtrack courtesy of Soft Talon.
Finished - except for the ever-elusive music license - is the newest one: Blow Me Down, featuring Arthur Aviles & Selina Shida Hack, shot at BAAD! in the Bronx. Aside from Library which was a college commission, it seems like most of what I make latelyis decidedly peculiar. Death & Other Disguises features soloists in animal masks; Replica is a duet with a man and a mannequin. Now there's Blow Me Down.When I shareda link with my marine biologist niece, Julianna said it made her want to dance - nothing peculiar about that! In her email she also asked what was the inspiration behind it. Might as well share my answer with you, Dear Reader.
First, I had a thought that Arthur & Selina have similar movement affinities - a certain groundedness, combined with effervescence -though they’d never met and they're decades apart in age. So I started thinking about relatives ... kissing cousins.
I'd decided to shoot in that space, which is Arthur’s home base - and very cheap rental, FYI! The space has that screen that can’t be avoided so I decided to make the most of it. Cousins watch cartoons together, don't they? Kissin' Kuzzins.
I thought about Tom & Jerry because they’re Vera’s [my 3-year-old granddaughter] heroes these days, but I knew rights would be an issue. So I looked on the internet archive and found that these old ones (fingers crossed) are in the public domain.
I tried to prepare for a very quick rehearsal+shoot: Selina would be flying in from Berlin on Halloween and Arthur was flying out to Puerto Rico the day after Election Day. So I decided I’d better get a jump on costumes, starting with some TweedleDum ones ordered online, with turned out to be polyester, tacky (wanting to cover Arthur's cuts, see below.) So I quickly ordered 2 sets of long-sleeved striped shirts and jumpers. The propeller beanies were part of the original idea - cartoons, childhood - but were better made, so I kept them. At the same time I grabbed that Bumble Bee tutu from the thrift shop - only $10! - a few days before Halloween - because who knew Turned out that Arthur looked great, and kind of Popeye-ish, in the jumpers while Selina rocked the tutu.
As to music, we never rehearsed or shot to the cartoon music: only the images were projected. Later while editing, I gave the audio a try and was hooked - partly out of perversity, I expect. To me the early cartoons are quite sophisticated - and distinctly NOT post-modern.
For company / energy during both rehearsals and shooting, A & S danced to a Sylvan Esso song - the first one that drew me to the duo, when I heard it on the radio - though I knew I wouldn't use it finally.
Arthur & I rehearsed one day before Selina arrived and made the "alcove" material, and a little scene which we call Pieta, where I stood in for Selina. Partly because I wanted some "cousinly" tenderness and comfort between these two characters, and partly because Arthur had foolishly / vainly attempted suicide earlier that year. For those rehearsals we were listening to Sylvan Esso's Come Down, which I hope we do get permission for.[1/8/25 Note: Permission granted!]
We shot for two days. On Monday Nov 4 - my 71st birthday - there were 102 gold balloons in the space from a party the night before honoring Arthur's 102-year-old landlady Mrs. Ross. How could we not use them?
Is all of the above inspiration, opportunism, instinct?
I'm still awaiting a music license for the last section - will I ever learn? But if I don't hear relatively soon, I'll move on.
As usual, assorted festivals are showing assorted work: 16 festivals and counting for Inter Library Loan, including Miami Screen Dance, January 17-25, in case you're in Florida. Peculiar or not, Replica is an Official Selection at Rollout Dance Film Festival ... in case you're in Macao. Cathy & Harryhas been seen in only a few festivals thus far. But it's been invited to screen at art departments in New Paltz and NYU - and a (mid-Hudson) PBS date in early March.
So what to expect in 2025? Pretty much the same as 2024. Which is a good thing, I guess. Right?
A friend and I had a good laugh about how words like "release" and "distribution" are terms that don't really apply to my little niche. True, I do hang on to a new work for a little while, submitting it to festivals but not sharing it widely until years later. And what would widely mean anyway, in this context? Internationally, which is a satisfaction, and at no expense. To strangers who I never see or hear from, which is ... well, anonymous. Or perhaps years later in person, in a retrospective, as I did in 2022 in my hometown, thanks to Rivertown Films. It was very gratifying to be in company with the audience who watched an all-Renzi program ranging from the 2006 Welcome Table to the 2023 Bronx Magic. If you missed the retrospective at the time, you can watch the post-screening conversation which I recently annotated with excerpts of the short films Laura Harrison and I talk about.
Now "released", Replica just won Best Experimental in Wildsound Feedback Film Festival. Not a typical film festival, here's what they offer: a private screening for a select group of people who go home after the festival and record their comments. WildSound then turns those comments into something they call a FEEDBACK Festival Video.Kinda cool, right?Click hereto see what folks said - and be sure to wait for the guy at the end. In addition, about a month later, WildSound streams it on Festival TV - a kind of distribution, you could say.
Thinking about the timing of the so-called release, I looked back in these blogposts to see only rare mention of the process of making Replica.
October 22, 2023
What will I make next? I'm toying with producing something before the weather gets impossibly cold.
February 9, 2024
And there's footage in the can - ok, clips on the hard drive. Shot in December outdoors in Hyde Park, NY with long-time partners-in-crime dancer Robert Sorrentino and cinematographer Charles Caster-Dudzick. It's an odd premise - Rob's partner is an artist's mannequin - which I look forward to editing... as I recuperate from total knee replacement.
And so, approximately a year later, Replica is released upon the world. What took ya so long, you might ask. It's all of 5 minutes long, so that's not the issue. What I referred to as the odd premise gave me pause: the editing process took a ridiculously long time because I didn't know - still don't really - if the central character exists or not. Partly the director (yours truly) is to blame because she didn't give me enough options to edit with. On the other hand, considering she also produces, and is responsible for set & costume design, I guess she can be forgiven. Incidentally, the director/designer/etc also edited the music, which was generously given to me by long-time collaborator Emily Holden. She had made some spooky sketches she had no use for, and they turn out to be perfect for my purposes.
Interested in a peek? This trailer will give you an idea.
Another reason for the attenuated Replica timeline - from planning to creation to self-promotion - is that it has gotten a lot of rejections, especially from dance film fests. Fair enough: although Robert Sorrentino's acting is wonderful, there's very little of what other people call dancing, and his partner / mannequin is, well, rather wooden. However, the RIC Dance Company piece Inter Library Loan (trailer here) is glowing with youthful dancer/actors which means it's being accepted in dance film festivals all over. Win some, lose some.
Meanwhile, Guardians of the Flame is still alive and kicking, with screenings in Gary, Indiana; Chania, Greece and Houston, Texas.
And more soon about the process behind the second Renzi/Wolff collaboration: a documentary called Cathy & Harry whichis having a lively fall season:
