Greetings, 2025!

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 lately is 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 shared a 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 & Harry has 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? 

Any requests?

Released!

New "dance film" Replica is released! 

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 here to 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 which is having a lively fall season:

November 2 @ 6:30 Moviehouse in Millerton, NY

November 9 @ 3:15 Alexandria Film Festival, Alexandria Virginia

           (screening with my 2018 dance film Where Love Leads!)

November 13 @ 7:00 YoFiFest, Yonkers, NY 

           

Please join us.

And if you're actually reading this, please leave a comment or shoot me an email. Do you click on the links? Am I repeating myself? 

It gets kind of lonely here... it gets kind of lonely here ... it gets kind of lonely here...

Not Like The Old Days

The regional heat+humidity wave has finally ended, and the weather reminds me of many past summers, rehearsing and performing - at Wave Hill,  Jacob's Pillow, Orchard Beach, Central Park SummerStage, PS 1, Avignon ...

At the moment, those days seem very far away, as I recover from bi-lateral total knee replacement.  But I do have a New York show coming up - on screen, which is how I roll, for almost 2 decades now! 

Death & Other Disguises was selected at the Mobile Dance Film Festival, and will screen at the Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center at Gibney downtown. So far, it's been screened only in dance film festivals, from Puerto Rico to Idaho. It may not make it out of that sphere because it is pretty dance-centric, honoring the lineage of post-modernists Yvonne Rainer and Valda Setterfield, and their "descendants" David Thomson and Arthur Aviles, and me. So I'm submitting it mostly to dance film fests, with a few experimental ones thrown in. The Mobile Festival coincides with a Renzi family reunion so it will be fun to watch it on a big screen and then hear from my relatives just how impenetrable it is. However I've heard from a non-dance friend that it's also "strangely calming" so maybe it's more accessible than I think.

This is the 4th time my work has been screened at MDFF - every year but the first, I think, which is a pretty good record.  I'm always pleased by repeat selections - InShadow in Portugal, Short Waves in Poland, Screendance Festival in Sweden, DV Danza in Cuba. There's a certain satisfaction in knowing that the artistic directors there "get" me, and still swing with whatever new direction my work takes. On the other hand, the jury is different every year at MDFF, so there's another satisfaction in knowing that the work stands out, stands on its own.

Because I can't attend all of these distant international fests, I usually have to derive my satisfaction from a distance,  Not this time, however! This time I'm going to fill the place with Renzis and enjoy the next best thing to an actual live show. Join me.

GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME is Bi-coastal June 1

I haven't posted yet about a major project that has occupied me over the past few years. That's mostly because it's not a dance-film, though it has some wonderful dancing in it, and because I didn't direct it myself, though I did edit it. 

But now I'm ready to crow:  the 66-minute documentary Guardians of the Flame, directed by Daniel Wolff, will screen on two coasts in a few weeks.  June 1, both coincidentally at noon, although one is Pacific Time, one EST.  If you live anywhere in between, you can watch it stream through the SF Doc program.

The People's Film Festival in Harlem, NY  June 1 at noon.

[June 8 update: Guardians won Best Feature Film at The People's Film Festival, with the laurel below to prove it.]

San Francisco Documentary Film Festival in San Francisco, CA June 1 at noon

For more info about Guardians of the Flame, check out our fancy website. You'll see that it's played in a number of festivals, all over the world and online.

But it hasn't played in NYC yet - so I hope you can come to the Magic Johnson AMC Theater in Harlem. Or to the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, where Daniel Wolff will be in attendance. Meanwhile, enjoy the trailer.