Film and Video by Nicky Tavares
This program features video that explores individual relationships with technology and the presentation of the self, as well as recent experiments with film.
Part 1
Saint Edward's Circle (5 minutes, Video, 2008)
A domestic adventure in cleaning, both real and virtual.
Fwd: Update on My Life (28 minutes, Video, 2010)
A hybrid live-action and animated documentary, Fwd: Update on My Life follows Dr. Deanie French, a professor and pioneer of internet-based learning and web accessibility, who decides one day to take a holiday from her prescription of mood stabilizers and go on the Atkins diet. With newfound energy, she promptly leaves her husband and sets out starting up multiple businesses, making 10 new "special friends," and directing a documentary about her life.
Our New Home or Being the Best There is at Selling Service Plans (15 minute
s, Video, 2010)
In the early 1980s, my father, a recent Portuguese immigrant, took a job with RCA as a salesman and moved our family to a suburb of Atlanta. With the extended family we left behind in mind as an audience and what was then RCA's latest camcorder, my father recorded an extensive collection of home videos including several tours of our new home narrated in Portuguese. Responding to my father's archive, I attempt to make a narrated video tour of my apartment in Portuguese and interweave it with footage of my parents struggling to watch and translate it into English. The result is a humorous and mutually embarrassing reflection on first and second-generation immigrant experiences.
Part 2
At the age 4, I had a very clear picture in my mind of what a pumpkin should look like. When my pre-school teacher announced that we were to draw one for Halloween, I sat quietly because along with my mental picture of a pumpkin came an equally clear understanding that I lacked the skills to translate it to paper. I watched as my classmates’ sloppy versions unfurled knowing all the while that I was better than that. When my teacher insisted I complete the assignment, I cried so much that she told me to sit in the corner for the rest of the afternoon. For me, Halloween serves as an invitation to reflect on my creative process. With this in mind, the second half of this program presents recent short films dedicated to discovering new ways of working.
Pasqua (1 minute, Double 8mm, 2010)
Gary's Best (1 minute, Double 8mm, 2010)
Cabin, Not Kevin (1 minute, Double 8mm, 2010)
Untitled (3 minutes, Double 8mm, 2010)
Four and Twenty Birds, North and South (20 seconds, 16mm)
Lala's Film (3 minutes, 16mm, 2010)
Call Me by Heart (4 minutes, 16mm, 2010)
TBA
Nicky Tavares is a Boston-based multimedia artist primarily working in film and video. Her first documentary, Fwd: Update on My Life, is currently screening nationally at film festivals and micro cinemas including the Balagan Experimental Film Series, VideoFest, Hot Springs Documentary Festival and the Kent Film Festival. In addition, her work has been featured in The Boston Globe and O Jornal: The Portuguese English Journal. She is a Walker Foundation Scholar (2003) and a World Studio Foundation Scholar (2005). She holds a B.A. in photocommunications from Saint Edward's University and an M.F.A. in Film and Video from Massachusetts College of Art. She has taught courses in film and video at Massachusetts College of Art and Mount Ida College.
