10/1/14 Fern Silva

Fern Silva has created a body of film, video, and projection work that has been screened and performed at various festivals, galleries, museums and cinematheques including the Toronto, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, New York, Edinburgh, Images, Oberhausen, London and Ann Arbor Film Festivals, Anthology Film Archive, Gene Siskel Film Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, San Francisco Cinematheque, Museum of Art Lima, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and the Museum of Modern Art P.S.1. He was listed as one of the Top 25 Filmmakers for the 21st Century in Film Comment Magazine’s Avant-Garde Filmmakers Poll, is the recipient of the Gus Van Sant Award from the 49th Ann Arbor Film Festival and was nominated for Best International Short Film at the 2012 Edinburgh International Film Festival. He received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, MFA from Bard College and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY and Chicago, IL where he teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

"Showing a preference toward making/taking footage while traveling, Fern Silva's films are filled with nods to the histories and aesthetics of home movies, ethnographic film and experimental film. Through a variety of collage-techniques and sophisticated sonic strategies, the works retain an alluring density that compels repeat viewings. Beyond the density, they have great levity and are propelled by their own internal rhythms. Busted pop songs and radio fuzz keep the party moving even if its attendants may not be sure where." -Jesse Malmed, Bad At Sports

“Fern Silva‘s framing and in-camera editing techniques create a unique visual and narrative logic in which time and space are of little concern. From such far-flung locals as France, Turkey, and Egypt come a kaleidoscopic array of images, each depicting some expansive landscape, city sprawl, or sociocultural ritual. The technique is jarring yet intriguingly rhythmic.” — Drew Hurst, Chicago Reader

"Taking up a long-standing tradition of the avant-garde, the films of Fern Silva constitute a restless travelogue of a filmmaker exploring the world—but this is a far different world than that of Silva’s cinematic forebears, one pervaded by a post-millenial tension that no longer allows one the privilege of looking without consequence. Aware of this danger, Silva casts sidelong glances in his films, tempering his desire to experience the world head-on with an acute (and often humorous) awareness of the compromised situation of being a traveller in a foreign land."-Chris Kennedy, TIFF Lightbox

www.fernsilva.com