Annual Walker Commissioned Event Sound for Silents Presented Online, Features New Music for Silent Films

TUNG  
Film by Bruce Baillie – soundtrack by Beatrix*Jar
1966, 5 min., 16mm transferred to digital 

Bruce Baillie’s TUNG explores the conflation of vision, movement and language. It is a portrait of Baillie’s friend Tung as she floats playfully through an animated world of color and motion. Beatrix*Jar plays with words and orchestrated ambience to guide the soundtrack into a meditative journey that brings Bruce Baillie’s film to life.

Bruce Baillie served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and studied filmmaking for a year at the London School of Film Technique. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s and within a few years became a guiding light of the New American Cinema. Beginning in the late 1950s, Bruce Baillie created a vagabond, romantic, first-person filmmaking style that continues to enchant and influence new generations drawn to the artistic possibilities of the 16mm film medium.

Stupor Mundi 
Film by Rock Ross – soundtrack by Dameun Strange
1999, 10 min., 16mm transferred to digital 

Stupor Mundi is a spoof on the genre of silent era cinema. Ross casts the characters of Liberty and Justice working to defeat the cunning manipulation of Death. The first task of Death is to get Liberty hooked on booze. Success comes easy for Death in the beginning of this short film, but don’t count out the collective bargaining skills of Liberty and Justice. Part slapstick, part Shakespeare, and a whole lot of overacting infuse this playful tale. Dameun Strange takes audio cues from the three lead characters and provides a temporal narrative to accompany the imagery.

Rock Ross has been living and making films in San Francisco since the mid 1970s. Ross has made over 40 of his own films and has collaborated with many of the city’s filmmaking legends; Geroge Kuchar, Bruce Conner, Curt McDowell and many more. Rock is the founder of the No/New Nothing Cinema, created in 1982.

Gather + Listen 
Film by Buki Bodunrin – soundtrack by Lady Midnight
2014, 5 min, digital 

Gather + Listen is an animation that focuses on the subtle rhythms that unconsciously happen at an owambe (a lavish party thrown by Nigerians). As people come together in joy, their hearts begin to beat at the same rhythm, as if united in happiness.

Buki Bodunrin is a film, video, and installation artist who explores language, culture, and media. In her collage animations, she manipulates film using unorthodox manual and digital techniques in order to produce unexpected cinematic experiences. Lady Midnights soundtrack infuses joy and hand clapping rhythm that will make you grin from ear to ear.

HEAD 
Film by Tom DeBiaso – soundtrack by Andrew Broder
1978, 8 min., 16mm transferred to digital 

Tom DeBiaso casts Joanne Kawamura in this structuralist film where she continually challenges the viewer in simple gestures. Andrew Broder’s perfectly timed powerful soundtrack pounds beats and tempos into the imagery, keeping rhythm to the visual cues, provoking the audience to a stare down.

Tom DeBiaso is an educator, artist, filmmaker and photographer. Currently he is Professor Emeritus at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he retired as Director of the Master of Fine Arts Graduate Program. He established the Media Arts Department and the Master of Fine Arts degree program at MCAD and served as Dean of Studio Programs.

Motion Picture Genocide 
Film by Robert Banks – soundtrack by Cody McKinney
1997, 4 min., 35mm transferred to digital

Violence! Racism! Sex! “The days of escapism and cheap thrills!” … Robert Banks uses found footage and direct hand-manipulated film to question the intentions of race in the motion picture industry over that last several decades. Cody McKinney brilliantly incorporates some of Robert Banks original narration to jump start the viewers into a rhythmical cinematic ride.

Robert Banks’ films have been screened at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film-Music Festival, Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Underground Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Cleveland International Festival and more. He has been living and making films in Cleveland, OH for his entire adult life.

Depicting the harrowing psychological impact of slavery and its legacy, drawing a subtle contrast between historic and present-day race issues, Kara Walker’s use of silhouettes and dark, dramatic, settings offer an aesthetic interpretation of slavery on America. Lady Midnights uses her ethereal voice and brilliant beats in her soundtrack and digs deep into the American songbook (Black Spirituals, blues, American anthems) to invigorate Walkers story.

New York-based artist Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide. Walker’s major survey exhibition, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, was organized by the Walker where it premiered in February 2007 before traveling to ARC/ Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; and the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth.

Practice  
By Mark Bradford – Soundtrack by Beatrix*Jar
2003, 3 min., video 

Mark Bradford created a struggle for himself in this short video. He built a huge antebellum hoop skit made from a Los Angeles Lakers uniform. Falling often, yet always getting up. Bradford’s use of struggle is a roadblock for culture, gender and race in America. All reminders to get up and keep going. Beatrix*Jar’s soundtrack adds to the whimsical nature of the fabric blowing in the wind, adding another dimension to Mark Bradford’s struggle with making the shot.

Mark Bradford grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a family of hairdressers. From early on, he used the materials found around salons, including the paper rectangles used for permanents, bobby pins, and hair dyes. Over time, his art making grew to include video, installation, and photographs alongside his continued interest in printmaking and collage. His works are held in the collections; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.

Beatrix*Jar  is an art collective made up of multicultural couple/creative collaborators Bianca Janine Pettis and Jacob Aaron Roske. Formed in 2003, Beatrix*Jar works in tandem creating video projects, music videos, sound art lectures, and more.

Andrew Broder is a life-long resident of Minneapolis, who has been a cutting battle DJ, improviser, soundtrack composer, working sideman, producer, remixer, beat-maker, poet, beauty creator, and songwriter. He has released records on renowned indie labels and worked with numerous artists, such as Bon Iver, Poliça, Marijuana Deathsquads, Dua Saleh, FPA, Armand Hammer, Serengeti, the National, Dave King, and others.

Cody McKinney is a composer, bassist, and sound artist living in Minneapolis. For the past 4 years, along with electronic musician John Keston, McKinney has performed and curated sound/simulacra, a monthly experimental music series promoting free improvisation and collaboration between artists of differing disciplines.