Dear friends of ERC,
We are applying for $2000 from the City of Austin’s Community Initiative program thanks to our sponsors at Women and their Work. However, in order to receive this grant we also need to partially match the funds. Your support is absolutely critical for us to receive this grant. If you’d like to help, please click the image below – we’d be ecstatic if you do (and we have some goodies too, of course!)
Among the screenings these funds will go towards:
- Hosting filmmaker Michael Robinson! Michael Robinson (b.1981) is a film and video artist whose work explores the joys and dangers of mediated experience, riding the fine lines between humor and terror, nostalgia and contempt, ecstasy and hysteria. His work has screened in both solo and group shows at a variety of festivals, museums, and galleries including The 2012 Whitney Biennial, The International Film Festival Rotterdam, The New York Film Festival, The Walker Art Center, MoMA P.S.1, The London Film Festival, REDCAT Los Angeles, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Sundance Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Tate Modern, Impakt, Media City, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Images Festival, The Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the San Francisco, Melbourne, Leeds, Vienna, Singapore and Hong Kong International Film Festivals. He was the recipient of a 2009 residency from The Headlands Center for the Arts, a 2011-2012 Film/Video Residency Award from The Wexner Center for the Arts, a 2012 Creative Capital grant, and his films have received awards from numerous festivals. Michael was listed as one of the top ten avant-garde filmmakers of the 2000’s by Film Comment magazine, one of the “Best 50 Filmmakers Under 50” by Cinema Scope magazine in 2012, and his work has been discussed in publications such as Artforum, Art Papers, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Dazed and Confused, The Nation, BOMBlog, and The Brooklyn Rail. He has curated programs for San Francisco Cinematheque, Whitechapel Gallery, Cornell Cinema, and The State Contemporary Art Center in Moscow. Michael holds a BFA from Ithaca College, a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema at Binghamton University. You can find out more about Robinson at his website, poisonberries.net
- It’s very rare for Austin to see the kind of long, ambitious work we often hear other about, but can only see in “other” cities. We’d like to start showcasing that kind of cinema with a screening of Stan Brakhage’s The Art of Vision! Over four hours long, this homage to Bach’s Art of the Fugue by that most influential of filmmakers, The Art of Vision is “…a new continent of the eye’s sway. Mind at the mercy of the eye at last.” (Robert Kelly) (Doesn’t that sound exciting?)
- One media that we have yet to tackle: 35mm film! We want to have a screening featuring experimental work in that grand theatrical format!
Risks
All our money goes to paying artists, renting films and videos and occasionally renting screening spaces and equipment. You can be sure that each dollar you give will go to bringing in more films. Finally, even if we do not receive the Community Initiative, $1500 will still allow us to do at the very least 3 more shows (or one extra long show, etc.). In either case, your money will go towards more movies!
Other Ways You Can Help
Even if you can’t donate, we’d be overjoyed if you got the word out to your friends and colleagues! Everything helps!