Waking Things by Melika Bass
“Characters announced in exquisite typeface. . . scurry along paths, dart through doorways and sleep upright. Bass mystifies the work of these plain folk with her own filmic magic.”
-(Chicago Sun-Times)
“A house in a forest. Preparations for an archaic ritual. Lights and shadows of an incomprehensible world. Filmmaker Melika Bass directs as if time did not exist, with a rigor that transforms images into still lifes, loading them with a heartbreaking and threatening beauty.” (Torino Film Festival)
In a house in a primeval wood, a mysterious, misfit family prepares a seasonal feast for a visiting party of outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature — one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition, blood for blood.
A short film co-produced by and featuring ensemble members of Every House Has a Door Performance group.
US Premiere – Anthology Film Archives
European Premiere – Waves Section, Torino Film Festival, Italy
16mm to video, color, sound, 2011, 34 mins.
Presented to coincide with Every House Has a Door’s Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never. at PS122, January 5-9 2012
Named “one of the most promising emergent practitioners in Chicago” by the Chicago Tribune, Melika Bass is the recipient of an Artadia Award, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council, and the Kodak/Filmcraft Imaging Award for Best Cinematography from the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Her film work has been screened and exhibited in cinemas and art spaces worldwide, among them the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (solo exhibition, February 2011); Torino Film Festival, Italy; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Ann Arbor Film Festival; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Northwest Film Center; Segal Center for the Performing Arts, Montreal; Hamburg International Film Festival, Germany; and the Split Festival of New Film, Croatia.
Presented as part of the
7th Annual COIL Festival
150 1st Ave., Manhattan, NY
Saturday, January 7 4:30pm
2012