synopsis

Ghost Dance for a new Century is a re-imagining of my earlier double-projection silent 16mm project Ghost Dance (1980), reworked here into a single, multi-layered, evolving digital canvas, rich in desert colors with pale whites overlapping, and fragments of running shadow interlaced. This film is inspired by the Native American dance performed especially in the 1890s to encourage renewal and prosperity – or from another point of view, to drive out the white man and bring back the buffalo. This is a meditative landscape piece, set between a eulogy for an unspoken past and a plea for attention to an unmapped future …

Music is an original work called LENS, written and performed by composer/ cellist Ha-Yang Kim. 

notes
I had made Ghost Dance (1980) from an 8mm original source looped on 16mm film via JK Optical Printer (see Ghost Dance notes for details). Thirty four years later I re-visited this work to use it here as a template — now working in video format on a digital timeline and using multiple video layers cut in fragments, like musical phrases, set with differing tempos and color aspects.

screenings

The Stone, screening with live performance with composer/cellist Ha-Yang Kim, NYC, July 2017
Ann Arbor Film Festival 2017 “Off the Wall” Storefront Installation, 3-week run throughout the festival, downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2017
Microscope Gallery, screening and live performance with Ha-Yang Kim, fall 2015