37 Stories About Leaving Home (52 min, 1996)

5 lessons & 9 questions about Chinatown (10 min, 2009)

What I'm Looking For (15 min, 2004)

(and maybe a surprise!)

Under Silver's direction, video becomes a tool to ponder life's meaning, to create parables about the conundrums of existence. Her videotapes prod, query and confront the way we construct our world and ourselves. (Sally Berger)

Don't miss this program!

Best,

Heidrun

37 Stories About Leaving Home (
1996, 52 min, color, sound)

37 Stories About Leaving Home provides a rare and personal view into the lives of Japanese women. This beautifully constructed and complex video weaves stories told by a group of Japanese grandmothers, mothers and daughters, ranging in age from 15 to 83. The stories recount each woman's personal journey from child to adulthood—their experiences of leaving home. It points to the enormous societal changes that have occurred in Japan over the last few generations, showing how these women are both influencing and coping with these changes in their own different, individual and creative ways.

"Subtle and insightful... highlighting the competing demands of tradition and personal freedom. Silver presents a remarkable portrait of a culture about to experience seismic social change." (Steven Bode, Film and Video Umbrella, London)

"A beautiful film." (Margarethe von Trotta)

In 37 Stories about Leaving Home (1996), Silver's view becomes intimate and lyrical, as she creates a portrait of a group of mothers, daughters and grandmothers living in the Tokyo area. These women encompassing three generations, recount childhood memories, dreams and the small daily moments that make up their lives, to build a picture of the strong and complex relations existing between mothers and daughters. Silver, in typical fashion, layers the narrative by weaving in fiction with the documentary material in the form of a traditional, but shocking Japanese folktale of a mother and daughter caught in the grasp of an awful Oni, an ogre who is half-human, half-monster. (Sally Berger)

What I'm Looking For (15 minutes, 2004)

A woman sets out to photograph moments of intimacy. On an Internet dating site she writes: 'I'm looking for people who would like to be photographed in public revealing something of themselves...'

What I'm Looking For, a 15-minute high definition video, documents this adventure; the connections formed at this intersection between virtual and actual public space. The video is a rumination on the nature of photography and the persistence of vision. It is a short tale of desire and control.

5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown (10 minutes, 2009)

10 square blocks, past, present, future, time, light, movement, immigration, exclusion, gentrification, racism, history, China, America, 3 languages, 13 voices, 152 years, 17,820 frames, 9 minutes, 54 seconds, 9 questions, 5 lessons, Chinatown....

You live somewhere, walk down the same street 50, 100, 10,000 times, each time taking in fragments, but never fully registering THE PLACE. Years, decades go by and you continue, unseeing, possibly unseen.

A building comes down, and before the next one is up you ask yourself 'what used to be there?' You are only vaguely aware of the district's shifting patterns and the sense that, since the 19th century, wave after wave of inhabitants have moved through and transformed these alleyways, tenements, stoops and shops.

more info: www.shellysilver.com