Animated Works by Nancy Andrews

FILM AT REDCAT PRESENTS

Tue Mar 8 | 8:30 pm Jack H. Skirball Series $9 [students $7, CalArts $5]

The Birdwoman and Her Dreams: Animated Works by Nancy Andrews

World premiere and Los Angeles premieres

With characters and stories synthesized from sources including history and autobiography, Nancy Andrews works in a hybrid form that combines research with storytelling, documentary, puppetry and vaudeville. The program presents the World Premiere of a Surprise Film along with two of her latest animated works. Inspired by classic "mad scientist" horror films and research into the physiology of insects, Behind the Eyes are the Ears (2010, 26 min.) features a soundtrack by Andrews and Zach Soares and mixes animation, live action and found footage to follow the revolutionary attempts of Dr. Sheri Myes to expand human perception and consciousness. On a Phantom Limb (2009, 35 min.), with music by John Cooper, invokes the realm of the invisible and takes as its starting point the filmmaker’s near-death experience during a harrowing surgical procedure. Andrews is the recipient of awards and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others.

In person: Nancy Andrews

“Nancy Andrews’s films are small treasures, finely crafted, exquisite in small details and as rare as they come. Her cinema is artisanal, beautiful in its homespuness, expressive in its miscellany of hand-made images, whether drawn, animated or acted, and sly in its humor.”

www.redcat.org | 1

– Lawrence Kardish, The Museum of Modern Art

“Behind the Eyes are the Ears embraces the full scope of the unknown—from the sinister to the rhapsodic… The now-familiar Rorschach is consumed/ subsumed by an unknown, other-dimensional entity growing inward from the sides of the screen—making the peripheral central, conflating analog and digital into a warm, comforting, enigmatic, oily stain of a talisman. Together we experience a hushed, epiphanic singularity.” – Colin Capers

Behind the Eyes are the Ears (2010, 25 minutes, video)

This mix of 16mm, animation, found footage, and live-action footage follows the research of Dr. Sheri Myes and her revolutionary attempts to expand our perceptions and consciousness. The filmmaker began the project by writing a song cycle, and then imagery was developed through a series of drawings. The film is influenced by classic “mad scientist” horror films like Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, and by research into the physiology of insects.

On a Phantom Limb (2009, 35 minutes, video)

The film examines the passage of a surgically-created hybrid – part woman, part bird – on a perilous night that lasted months; through death, mutilation, purgatory, and the eventual return to the living, what lies beyond leaves her changed forever. The boundaries of reality and fantasy, documentary and fiction are blurred in this reprise of the classic themes, dilemmas, and consequences of reanimation. “The monster did not choose this for her self, to be an amalgam for alchemy.” (NA)

Nancy Evelyn Andrews lives on the coast of Maine, where she makes films, drawings and other stuff. After completing her undergraduate studies at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, she received a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been presented by the Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archive, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Jerusalem Film Festival, Flaherty Seminar, Nova Cinema Bioscoop, Brussels, Belgium, and Taiwan International Animation Festival, among others Her films are also held in the collections of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art. Andrews has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, LEF New England Moving Image Fund,

www.redcat.org | 2

Illinois State Arts Council, The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (supported by the Jerome Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts), and National Endowment for the Arts. Andrews is currently faculty at the College of the Atlantic where she teaches video making, animation, time-based arts and film history.

Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud. Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels.

###