5/2/12 A Little Holy Circus-- Kim Keown and Cirkestra

A Little Holy Circus brought to you by a Woman with Many Names and featuring Peter Bufano of Cirkestra composer of the song A Little Holy Circus

Program:

Screen tests with Jayne NoWek a work in progress by Kim Keown intermittent 
 

Laura Sister Angel 10 min S8 film by Kim Keown with Susan Black performing a live sound track

History Lesson 3 min film by Hazel Manko
 

A Little Holy Circus 4 min film & performance by Faye Raye and Cirkestra performing a live sound track (a work in Progress)





Making the Hairless Woman 31 min short doc by Kim Keown

Cirkestra performing live music

notes:

Screen tests is the first attempt to work on an idea I have had for several years. The reporter, Jayne Nowek, is an aspect of myself that taken alone people may find familiar but not completely recognize. Its like déjà vu. She’s a clunky voice in my head that’s a way of making things clear and simultaneously more confusing; a nerd that wants to delve deeper into the goofiest things.

Laura Sister Angel I call the first film I ever made, and I suppose that’s true outside of animation classes where I made images. At first the film was a way of expressing a feeling or feelings-loss, mourning, anger, sadness. I used the movements and the rhythms to get at all that. But the story developed overtime to incorporate the insight that death manifests, through the various sound tracks used or unused during the film’s screenings. Starting on a 4 track with whispers to telling the entire story from my sister’s death to her reappearance as an angel in my life 20 years later.

History Lesson is the first film my daughter, Hazel Manko, ever made shot on a bolex and edited digitally. I acted as cameraman to her vision. She and my companion, Ed, play roles to a sound tract of one of her father’s songs.

A little Holy Circus is a work in progress to explore projection and performance techniques as well as a concept made up by a “Miss Patty” and executed into the song A Little Holy Circus by Peter Bufano during his 24 hour circus song CD Marathon.

Making the Hairless Woman is a short doc about Peter Bufano, an exclown turned circus musician who did a 24 hour CD marathon. It was made using about 6 hours of HD footage shot during 2 interviews and the 24 hour period, as well as with footage from phones, computers, SD footage shot by Peter Camila and his band members and photographs taken during the marathon by Peter’s cousin Peter. Watch the trailer here for this film. Making the Hairless Woman

Cirkestra  http://cirkestra.com/

“Highly praised” Boston Globe

“Perhaps the most unusual musical group in Boston” Brett Milano: B.U. Today

“Fabulous...timeless and original, a combo you don't see every day Nancy Sheehan:” Worcester Telegram

“Musical Acrobats” Jon Garelick: Boston Phoenix

“If you can have an intimate circus band Cirkestra are it” Boston Phoenix

“Swings like a carnie in a drunken brawl” 7 Days



Kim Keown:

Kim graduated from Emerson College and started working in her field of communication disorders while going to MassArt part time. She was an installation artist for 10 years doing work in gardens and studios in the Boston area before becoming a performance artist. She has also made a few films including Laura Sister Angel, Love Songs, and Making the Hairless Woman. She is currently a studio manager in the film department at the Massachusetts College of Art, a yoga teacher, and the founder of a small multimedia performance group, Circus Mirage, where she manifests fabulous figments of her imagination.

http://circusmirage.blogspot.com/