SPONSOR
Bell Tower Hotel
COMMUNITY PARTNER
iFFY
In this selection of 14 handmade animated films, Kamentsky explores relationships between sound and structure, rarely passing the three-minute mark. Films in this chronological screening reflect her interest in film, collage, rotoscope, stop-motion, and the limitations of drawing within the film frame. In her soundtrack work she experiments with found sounds, spoken elements, and field recordings, employing the soundtrack to shape the structure of her films. Kamentsky’s most recent films represent a departure from her work with found footage and explore movement, light, and space, combining pixilation, time-lapse video, and stop-motion. This screening includes a world premiere of her latest film, Pony Henge.
House Bunny
2010 | 1.5 | drawing and painting on 35mm film
Secret Bee
2010 | 2.5 | drawing and painting on 35mm film
Secret Bee ventures toward the sweet honey spot where representation and surface push and pull each other like a two-headed llama. Film footage was produced linearly, frame by frame, painting and drawing directly on found film stock. Soundtrack: “A Drink on Spike Jones,” by sonic de/constructor extraordinaire Dave Phillips.
Jiro Visits the Dentist
2013 | 1.5 | drawing and painting on 35mm film
The visual structure for Jiro Visits the Dentist is based on a soundtrack created using lo-fi spoken word recordings found at flea markets. Drawn on a 35mm trailer for the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
If you SAY something SEE something
2015 | 1.5 | drawing and painting on 35mm film
Starting with a box full of movie trailers from an art-house cinema, many subtitled in English, the animator ordered the subtitled clips and removed the emulsion, leaving the subtitles intact. Animation was created by drawing and painting on the remaining film surface. Music: “Funeral March of a Marionette” by Charles Gounod, performed by Ergo Phizmiz.
Tracheal Shave
2016 | 2 | drawing and painting on 35mm film
What happens when sound and image are moved out of sync and disconnected? How does inappropriate sound generate meaning? How far can movement in a subject be simplified before it falls apart and the distinctive character is lost? What is Levity?
Spank Shot
2016 | 1 | drawing and painting on 70mm film
The sound of one hand spanking and the force generated by two bodies colliding and spinning around on the ice as a ritualistic dance, violent and beautiful at the same time. Kamentsky’s first film on 70mm, using a rotoscope technique and employing video clips of hockey fights.
Cupcake
2017 | 2 | drawing and painting on 70mm film
Inspired by and based on the music of the late composer Noah Creshevsky. Much of his musical vocabulary consists of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental sounds, assembled from small recorded fragments. Creshevsky’s audio piece “Gotterdammerung” is featured as soundtrack. The film centers on interaction between three characters: an angry cupcake, a dog, and a bird.
Silo
2017 | 2 | drawing, painting, and collage on 70mm film
Created at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, Silo focuses on spatial movement, rotating around an abandoned grain silo at the center of the world. Soundtrack created from field recordings of summer bees and found sounds.
Sun Zoom Spark
2018 | 2.5 | drawing, painting, and collage on 70mm film
Explores the relationship between movement, light, and shadow under suspension bridges and underpasses. All animation is on prepared 70mm found footage with collage shards from 35mm and 16mm film. Film sound created by placing contact microphones on the bridge surfaces.
Trauma Chameleon
2019 | 3 | drawing, painting, and collage on 70mm film
An escaped laboratory rat navigates through a sea of punctuation. The starting point for Trauma Chameleon is a soundtrack mashup of a LibriVox recording of How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin, written in 1910. The film explores a nervous breakdown of image and language.
Rock, Paper, Thistle
2019 | 2.5 | stop motion
Children’s film as psychedelic acid trip, Rock, Paper, Thistle was created in the 1000 Acre Wilderness while at the Jentel Residency in Sheridan, Wyoming. The long days of summer, expansive landscape, and stillness allowed for an opportunity to work in the field, resulting in an explosion of joy and thistles.
Stunting Cunts
2020 | 3 | drawing, painting, and collage on 70mm film
On the cusp of 60, Kamentsky turns the camera on herself, performing a series of punishing live slapstick stunts, captured on video and rotoscoped onto 70mm film. The soundtrack is inspired by the game piece composition Hockey by John Zorn, which establishes the editing sequence.
Soft and White
2021 | 3 | stop-motion
The filmmaker assumes a new identity after a mysterious bird flies into her studio during lockdown. Soft and White features a soundtrack mash-up from audio book recordings, including One Martian Afternoon by Tom Leahy.
Sed Saepe Cadendo
2021 | 3 | pixilation
A celebration of spring in the garden after a long, lonely winter.This film is the first in a series of stop-motion films exploring movement, light, and space outside the studio.
Pony Henge
2021 | 5 | stop-motion, time-lapse
WORLD PREMIERE
An exploration of Pony Henge in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where rocking ponies are left to rust.
Gina Kamentsky is an animator, kinetic sculptor, sound artist, and educator based in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her anxious and joyful short films blast out at twenty-four frames per second, searing eyeballs and sending waves of buzz and crackle into the ether. Over her three-decade career she’s progressed through numerous forms, including painting, drawing, and collaging on film; rotoscope; musique concrète; sound collage; stop-motion; and pixilation. Kamentsky’s films have screened at festivals nationally and worldwide, including Ottawa International Animation Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Annecy International Animated Film Festival, and Animator Festival in Poznan, Poland. Alongside her creative practice she is a visiting lecturer at SMFA at Tufts and Rhode Island School of Design.