Film Categories: body

  • Cowboys and Iodine

    An attempt to tame the atomic frontier, Cowboys and Iodine is a fever dream involving the masculine bravado and seldom-discussed gender shaming used to encourage men to volunteer as liquidators for the cleanup of the Chernobyl disaster. Employing dip, spray and smudge techniques to replicate the different methods of radiation exposure the men experienced. The film also employs a split negative/reversal process to reflect the methods that waves of radiation enter the body. Cowboys and Iodine blends subtext, social stigma and personal aspiration to construct the internal contemplation of a man going to war with the atom. The full-length version…

  • Cure

    Cure is a document from a time when radiation was touted as a solution for everything- for beauty, power, perhaps even for a broken heart. A drifting composition, Cure uses gently applied “radiation” techniques to mimic the application of a precious beauty cream. It completes the look with whispers of the promise of radium and the solutions it brings, floating in and out like traces of perfume. The full-length version of the Lion series is available through the CFMDC.

  • Lion

    A project spanning three years of production and research, Lion explores the Chernobyl disaster and the nature of radiation, recollection, and personal history. Lion navigates atomic fallout and a girl’s adolescence, a dream before death, radiation as a cause and a cure for cancer, masculine bravado, feminine obsession, a trip to Chernobyl amidst the death of a matriarch, and the destruction of memory. This conceptually arranged film album is composed of seven works on 16mm and hand processed with darkroom techniques that mimic the effects of radiation on film. The series combines memory, history, pop culture and technical experiments to create visual representations…

  • BROKEN ANGEL (GEBROCHENGEL)

    In Frankfurt near St. Peter’s church on Klaus-Mann-Platz, there is a memorial with an angel sculpture (aka Frankfurter Engel) for the homosexual men and women persecuted and murdered during the Third Reich. 2013 was a tumultuous year for LGBT rights like the spike in hate crimes in the U.S. post-DOMA, and passing of anti-gay legislation worldwide (most notably Russia and India). On 6 May 2013, the anniversary of Marlene Dietrich’s death and 80th year past the Third Reich, Stephen explores the historical and ongoing queer struggle and gilded apology of monuments in a guerilla performance by colliding the Frankfurter Engel…

  • the body of Others

    the body of Others, is an experimental video that engages the tensions between sexuality, identity, visibility, representation and the body, as it relates to queer subjectivity. The video asserts a dynamic relationship between queer subjectivity and the representation of queer identities presented through ideological systems of representation, as performed by the queer body. The video questions the boundaries and distinctions between the visible/invisible, personal/political, private/public, body/technology, human/animal, interior/exterior and normal/other. the body of Others presents a body that is unstable and drifts over itself into space. The body fuses with the unknown and becomes an amalgam of skin, flesh, fur,…

  • unexplained as yet

    The vernacular of gender identity is ever growing and changing, yet many continue to live beyond these definitions, defying language and category; we are unknown, akin to mythical creatures. Multiple exposures of a single roll of Super 8 film allow a brief glimpse into the heart of this chimera: to be unidentified…unexplained.

  • What I Want / What I Have

    Incongruities between body and gender become an obstacle for lovers as they navigate the painfully awkward rift between dysphoria and desire. 

  • de(con)struct

    Double exposed and edited entirely in camera this work plays with ideas of gender expression and creation while addressing the possibility of conflicting aspects of one’s self identity: the perpetual construction and deconstruction of gender.

  • Former Models

    A public and private history undo themself(ves) as they mutually encounter the trials of Labor, Love, Loss and Planned Obsolescence. A body desires its Other: a simulation is transgressed and the ultimate price is paid- “No-body is above The Law.” In this docu-narrative, the tragic story of Milli Vanilli’s Robert Pilatus and his descent into a post-racial and post-gendered pure image is told through appropriated video footage. A fabricated narrative conceived by the artist collides with Pilatus’ public biography in a technologically mediated flash of desire and information. This video is dedicated to the very real life of Robert Pilatus, 1965-1998.  

  • The Dancer and The Crow

    Who we are on the outside does not always represent who we are on the inside. When one man takes a closer look at his inner self, he discovers the beauty he has been hiding from the world. He decides to stop hiding and embrace who he truly is.