New editing project — Witness: South Sudan

The episode of the docu-series Witness that I edited will premiere on HBO on Nov. 19th. It profiles the photographer Veronique de Viguerie.  It was directed and produced by David Frankham, and produced by Michael Mann.

The four-part series premiers on Monday, November 5th. For more information on HBO Documentary Films, visit http://itsh.bo/I83ODm.

NEW GHOST TRADE POSTER

The Flattering Illusion

‘An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable’. 

George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 27.

NEW DESIGN PROJECT: Cinema Audiences

This book was designed to commemorate a three year period of screenings and events held at the Echo Park Film Center.  The book contains 300 photographs of audiences that attended the film center from 2008-2011.

NEW DESIGN PROJECT: The Ghost Trade Poster

A suite of posters created for a show by my band The Ghost Trade.

NEW DESIGN PROJECT: Filmmobile 2011 Poster

This is a poster I designed for the Echo Park Film Center's 2011 FIlmmobile National Tour.  Check out their website for dates and times in a city near you!

NEW DESIGN PROJECT: THE SOUND WE SEE

The Echo Park Film Center has just released the DVD for their excellent collaborative youth-made film The Sound We See: A Los Angeles City Symphony.  I designed the DVD packaging, 6 page booklet, and menu.  

Leslie Monsour: Laurel Canyon, 2010

Here is a video I made recently of my mother playing guitar, singing, and chatting with me at her home in Laurel Canyon.  She sings a song by Agustin Lara, a song she wrote to lyrics from a poem by Rhina Espaillat, a song of her own, and a Robert Burns song.  You can find out more about her work at www.lesliemonsour.com.

NEW VIDEO POSTED: YX

YX is an allegory about cities, bodies, fluid media, privation and loss, in which hermetic spaces create hermetic narratives. Shot in 2007 in Chicago with performances by Evan Scott Rubin and Jeff Harms, production assistance by Sam Wagster, Britt Willey, Matthew Kellard, Chris Vlasses and Lizzy Lynette Vlasses.  Music by Vaughan Williams and Paysage d'hiver.

You can also view the full page with stills here.

Work In Progress: yx

In 2007 I shot ten scenes for a feature length project called The Upper Air, but I was dissapointed with the results and scrapped the project.  I've decided to re-edit the scenes into a short entitled yx, which will hopefully be finished next month.  The themes and concept are very much the same as the original project: the privitization of resources and of bodies, the translation of hermetic spaces into hermetic narratives, allegories of ecologies in crisis.  The new title comes from Stéphane Mallarmé's poem, Sonnet en -yx.  The video has performances by Jeff Harms and Evan Rubin, and Sam Wagster was an immense help in the production.  Below are some stills from the edit in progress.