Films Finley
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I Saw Jesus in a Tortilla
Entirely comprised both from dissolving still photographs and a simple narrative story line taken verbatim from a newspaper article in the The Arizona Daily Star is I SAW JESUS IN A TORTILLA. It recounts the story of Ramona Barraras, a New Mexican woman, who saw the face of...Watch Movie
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Fat Chance
Two fathers and three boys were celebrating high school graduation by sailing from San Francisco to Portland in their boat, Fat Chance. Thirty-five miles off the coast of Point Reyes, they were hit by a rogue wave. Two members of the crew washed overboard and one of the boys was killed. The...Watch Movie
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Loss Prevention
Documentary and fictional elements are combined in LOSS PREVENTION to tell the story of Irene, arrested at the age of seventy-nine for stealing a bottle of aspirin from a Miami Walmart and sentenced to ten weeks of Senior Citizen Shoplifting Prevention School. Narrated through the voice of her...Watch Movie
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Based on a Story
The widely-publicized encounter is explored between a Jewish Cantor, Michael Weisser and Nebraska's former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, Larry Trapp, in BASED ON A STORY. After months of harassment from Trapp by mail, phone and cable TV, the Weisser family befriended Trapp, who...Watch Movie
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Common Mistakes
COMMON MISTAKES uses the four synonyms of the word mistake (fallacy, error, accident and blunder) to present a sample of widely held "truths" that have later proven to be misconceptions. The mistakes are illustrated with documentary before and after photographs, diagrams and video footage and...Watch Movie
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Involuntary Conversion
This apocalyptic linguistic comedy meditates on the relationship between language, meaning and social decay and is scripted from "double-speak" language found in a variety of media sources. Drawing its title from the Pentagon's term for crash, INVOLUNTARY CONVERSION evokes the...Watch Movie
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Falsework
The Presidio Pet Cemetery, nestled under Doyle Drive at the foot of McDowell Avenue, is the final resting place for the more than four-hundred and twenty dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, lizards and goldfish that once lived on the military base at the Presidio. Grave markers date back more than fifty...Watch Movie
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The Adventures of Blacky
An installation work, THE ADVENTURES OF BLACKY, is based on a series of drawings of a family of dogs used as a psychoanalytic test in the 1950s in THE ADVENTURES OF BLACKY. In the middle of the room, caught between opposing projections of slides and evocative video, a wooden...Watch Movie
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Deaf Dogs Can Hear
DEAF DOGS CAN HEAR is a true autobiographical story that traces the tragic, yet humorous episodes of the artist as a young girl and her pet Chihuahua. Her love for this deformed and unattractive pet only grows deeper as one tragedy after another befalls the dog and the...Watch Movie
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The Big Bounce
An exploration of the visual, political and scientific development of satellite communications from the first message bounced off a balloon to the current communication industry. The first message sent to the other side of the world was developed during the 1950s and Eisenhower administration...Watch Movie
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Conversations Across the Bosphorus
The narratives of two Muslim women from Istanbul, Gokcen and Mine, are intertwined in CONVERSATIONS ACROSS THE BOSPHORUS. Gokcen, from an orthodox Islamic family, tells her story of taking off the veil after years of struggle. Mine, from a secular family who immigrated to San...Watch Movie
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Nomads at the 25 Door
NOMADS AT THE 25 DOOR explores memory's construction of an ephemeral homeland when a concrete one is lost, stolen or left behind. The tape is constructed in three chapters structured around a series of interviews between the video maker and Mickey Yates, a 22 year old woman...Watch Movie
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At the Museum
This film, produced during an artist-in-residence at the Oakland Museum in California, is about archiving and documenting culture in the 20th century. AT THE MUSEUM: A PILGRIMAGE OF VANQUISHED OBJECTS explores how all types of archiving, including documentary filmmaking, inevitably creates its...Watch Movie
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Manhole 452
Despite assurances from local municipalities, manholes occasionally blow sky-high, more than most people realize. The fictionalized film is a first person narrative that follows the reflections of a middle-aged man whose car was hit by an exploding manhole; he now rides the Geary Limited bus the...Watch Movie
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Accidental Confessions
Scenes from a demolition derby event are combined with statements taken from automobile insurance claims in ACCIDENTAL CONFESSIONS. In these claims, drivers were instructed to summarize the details of their accidents in the fewest words possible resulting in absurd and...Watch Movie
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Language Lessons
The search for the fountain of youth is entwined with the dream of a common language in LANGUAGE LESSONS. The fountain both promises and frustrates eternity, while this dream offers hope for common ground. The lessons, made vivid by watery, elemental images and multiple...Watch Movie
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Against a Single Match, The Darkness Flinches
AGAINST A SINGLE MATCH, THE DARKNESS FLINCHES enters the world of a young boy who, after reading in the National Inquirer that aliens were coming, gets up in the middle of the night, packs a lunch and goes out into the back yard to wait for their arrival. While waiting for the...Watch Movie
