Interviews | Screenwriting

Experimental Film and Video: Inside Out

1 Apr , 2001  

Written by Tiffany Patrick | Posted by:

Following up on last month's profile on the Balagan series, Alla Kovgan and Jeff Silva return to talk about their own experimental films.
Experimental filmmakers and video artists are amazingly diverse in the way they approach their work. Many see themselves as artists who use the medium of film and/or video. Others use film or video exclusively, and identify their work in the possibilities and limitations of therein. In this way, experimental film can be vastly different than experimental video. See what I mean about diversity? It is difficult, perhaps impossible to find a term that describes their work collectively, and perhaps trying to do so is misleading.

To help see through the label to the artists and their work, NewEnglandFilm.com spoke with experimental filmmakers Alla Kovgan and Jeff Silva to find out what inspires them, and how they describe themselves and their work. Alla Kovgan and Jeff Silva are artists and curators of the Balagan Experimental Film and Video Festival.

TP: Are the terms avant-garde, art-house, or experimental accurate? 

Silva and Kovgan: As filmmakers, we don’t particularly like being labeled "experimental," "avant-garde," or "arty." We wouldn’t want to label other film and video makers in those terms either because these labels do not define the works.

TP: What inspires the work? Is it something different than what may inspire "traditional" filmmakers, or is it perhaps similar to what inspires another type of artist, say a painter or sculptor?

Silva and Kovgan: We can’t help but be influenced by the senses of life and of course by the memory of those senses. Yes, experimental filmmakers, like any other, are influenced by the films and videos we’ve seen, but are also as equally influenced by the street scenes that we encounter on the way to work; our families and our childhood; the screeching sounds and noise of the city; the smell of cotton candy at the parade; the taste of ripe strawberries; and of course the numbing drone of images and sound that "pop-up" in the magic electronic TV box over the course of one’s life.  All of these "stimulants" influence and affects an artist’s works consciously or unconsciously.

TP: What are each of you working on at the moment?

Silva: Right now I am in the editing stage of a piece, "Hard Reigns," that explores elements of the recent tragedy in the Balkans. Over the last year and a half, since the end of the NATO bombings in 1999, I began shooting interviews of people in Serbia and in Kosovo asking them questions about life. There’s a personal and also a political quotient to the film that I am currently struggling to balance with all its other parts. It’s a very difficult film to make, the most difficult for me thus far as a filmmaker but I hope to be screening a rough-cut soon. If I finish this project in time or get some money, I’ll likely hit the road this summer to work on "18 Wheels," an exploration with truck drivers and a look at Americana.

Kovgan: I am just about to finish a documentary "American Quilt 2000" about Clara Wainwright, a quilt artist who for over 10 years, has worked with different groups around Boston on collaborative quilts. She will have a retrospective in January 2002 at DeCordova Museum. At the same time, I am working on a film about experiences of Russian and American dancers during the Modern Dance Festival in St. Petersburg where I traveled last year with Paula Josa Jones Performance Works Company.  This project will combine video and super 8 footage. Finally, I am collaborating with my German friend and filmmaker, Dag Freyer, on a 16mm film about Anatoliy Yakub, one of a few survivors who entered Chernobyl Atomic Station to clean up after the catastrophe. Anatoliy lives in Germany and I interviewed him this summer and am now in the process of filming the second part of the film in the States.

TP: Jeff, you sometimes work with multi-channel installations. Describe a multi-channel installation.

Silva: It’s a visual experience that demands more participation from the viewer. A multi-channel work show simultaneously, two or more images projected within a space so that the viewer has to make a conscience decision of what he or she will focus on in the moment. The viewer can’t possibly capture everything at once thus they have to sacrifice some images for others that attract their visual senses more eagerly.

TP: Alla, I’ve seen dance often used in tandem with installation art. Describe the interplay between dance and some of the work you’ve done.

Kovgan: There are three aspects I am interested in terms of dance and film/video collaboration.

The first aspect is a dance film or film that features a dancer. Oftentimes, I would prefer to invite a dancer to be the main character in my film because dancers are able to communicate what I can’t really express with words. This is how I met Alissa Cardone and created a 16mm film "Aching" in response to the war in Yugoslavia.

The second aspect is a dance/film/video collaboration in a performance. The camera is able to capture source and images that inspire movements of the dancer. The images may reflect the dancer’s state, or clash with it – creating harmony or conflict.  Being projected during the show the images bring another dimension or layer to the performance to enrich the experience for the audience. Alissa and I created "Surface" inspired by "Diary of a Young Girl" by Ann Frank. The two parts were filmed on video and super 8 at two different locations at an old factory and a park. The quality of images divided the inside and the outside. Alissa appeared in both pieces.  Two pieces were edited to talk to one another and projected on two screens during Alissa’s performance indoors.

The third aspect is dance as a universal language that merges differences among people, and blurs boundaries between the audience.

For more information about Jeff and Alla’s work or the Balagan Experimental Film and Video Festival, log on to www.coolidge.org/balagan.


For more information about Jeff and Alla’s work or the Balagan Experimental Film and Video Festival, log on to www.coolidge.org/balagan.

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