KERRY LAITALA studied film and photography at The Massachusetts Collage of Art and The San Francisco Art Institute. She has screened work internationally, won various awards including the Princess Grace Award and attended a Residency at the Prestigious Akademie Schloss Solitude outside of Stuttgart, Germany. Kerry Laitala's Films may be rented from the New York Filmmakers CO-OP by calling:(212)267-5665 or She may be Contacted Directly at: klaitala@yahoo.com

To find out more about works in progress, please visit the coming attractions section.

"Out of the Ether" - 16mm, sound,
10 minutes - 2003

 

Out of the Ether


What do we leave behind? Are institutional forces using our hysteria to reap the benefits of possible infection? Whose environment could we possibly be affecting? What unseen forces would unscrupulous beings want to use to infiltrate our bodies and perhaps our consciousness? Who is the enemy? Out of the Ether unleashes upon an unsuspecting audience septic musings about fear in the guise of microbial menace and mayhem.

Funded by Institutute For Unpopular Culture.

"Hallowed"- 16mm,sound,
11 minutes-2003

 

Hallowed

"Hallowed" portrays a mystical voyage to the beginning of time of an unconscious woman in the throes of a cataleptic state. She finds herself in Plato's cave where flickering flames incite a prehistoric cinematic reverie evoking an experience of magical proportions. She is a spectral being who is transformed from within as viewers witness a chasm between the physical self and psychical self merge. Her internal state is evoked through a chromatically textural metamorphosis that plays across her visage as this human chameleon transcends pain from an unknown source. Flames of purification melt away layers of trauma, and send the dislocated psyche back into the realm of the present as an integrated self. "Hallowed" evokes a transcendent state that could only be traversed and negotiated through the ritual contemplation of the elusive pictograms and archaic petroglyphs on the cave wall, as the realm of cinema becomes an antidote for the emptiness of earthly existence.

more images

 


"The Adventure Parade"- 16mm
B&W and Blue, silent, 5 Minutes- 2000


The Adventure Parade

"The Adventure Parade" is another totally hand processed film that deals with the nature of using found images self- reflexively calling attention to the re-framing imprint of the filmmaker serving to emphasize the duplicitous nature of the material. The inherent violence that is hinted at lies beyond the threshold of understanding; only offering clues of past interventions."

Supported by Academie Schloss Solitude


"Awake, But Dreaming"- 16mm
color, sound, 8 minutes-2000


Awake, But Dreaming

This completely hand processed 16mm film was shot in the Hirschgang Oberer, an extended, curved hallway at the Akademie Schloss Solitude. The filmmaker was residing there in 1998-1999 for a residency, and started several film projects at Solitude. "Awake, but Dreaming" recreates a sense of an endless cyclical, dreamscape that is being conjured up from the deep recesses of the imagination. The images are coupled with a mysterious soundtrack producing uncanny associations: the flapping of wings, shrill cries of birds, a revolver fired off following unseen footsteps, a broken music box plays forgotten tunes from a forgotten childhood. A disembodied, hovering presence evokes a menace that is intimated through the sonorous resonance, but never manifests itself. However, the dreamer never reaches the apex of consciousness, but lingers repeatedly in the periphery of alchemically enhanced light and shadow. The cavernous intrauterine space is one of potentials, where anything can happen if the viewer can enter the portal of experience.

Supported by Academie Schloss Solitude


"Conquered"-16mm,color,sound,
15 minutes- 2000


Conquered

Filmed entirely at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, this film comes from the depths of a submerged self. The filmmaker incorporated her own imagery with found material from German industrial films, most notably a film about a youth prison. These images were fused with images from a film brought from the United States entitled "The Epic of Everest" summarizing an attempt to reach the mountain's summit by George Mallory and Sandy Irvine in 1924. Mallory's body was just recently discovered below the North face. Killed after a fall, his innards were subsequently eaten out by Goraks. Amidst the controversy of whether Mallory made the summit or not, the filmmaker's intent in using the Everest imagery was to describe a feeling of a frozen landscape as emotional state. As she was awestruck at its extreme beauty and chill, she felt that it perfectly portrayed an immobilized, catatonic state analogous to the darkness, and the snow covered quietude. As matter becomes transformed into a morass of material incoherence, the filmmaker wants the viewer to become lost in the imagery, and to feel as though he/she is dangling precariously over the edge of a precipice. She merged the materials: celluloid base with alchemically, manipulated surface and found a way to crack the emulsion to yield a fragile, encumbered palate- a veritable testament to the forces of organic catalysts in motion.

Supported by Academie Schloss Solitude


The Escapades of Madame X- 16mm,
B&W,sound,11 minutes,2000


The Escapades of Madame X

"The Escapades of Madame X" is a collaborative project made with fellow friend/artist Isabel Reichert. "EscapadesÉ" addresses early Hollywood cinema and its complicity in helping to establish the womanÕs passive role. The female protagonist transposes her passive role with one that is sexually, intellectually and physically empowered; one who takes control and creates meaning through gestures and actions. Madame X becomes elevated to mythical proportions, moving seamlessly through different realms that are represented metaphorically.


Retrospectroscope-16mm,
B&W,silent,5 minutes,1997


Retrospectroscope

The "Retrospectroscope" apparatus has gone through many incarnations, its presence belies the processes that have created it. As a paracinematic device, it traces an evolutionary trajectory, encircling the viewer in a procession of flickering fantasies of fragmented lyricism. It is a reinvention that simulates the illusion of the analysis of motion to recall early mysteries of the quest for this very discovery now taken for granted. The "Muses of Cinema" represented by the female figures on the disk, have emerged from a dark Neoclassical past. Streams of images revolve around, in an attempt to harness notions of a cinematic prehistory tracing past motions and gestures to burn their dance on the surface of the retinas. This film known as the "Retrospectroscope", and was described in the San Francisco Bay Guardian as "A spinning flashing UFO/roulette wheel of Athenian proportions."

One of The 10 Best Experimental Films of 1997 - Film Threat Online.

Funded by Princess Grace Foundation.


Secure the Shadow-16mm
color,sound,8 minutes,1997


"Secure The Shadow 'Ere the Substance Fade..."

"Secure the Shadow" is a meditation on disintegration and morality. The film utilizes antique Medical stereoscopic images from the Victorian era, which are simultaneously disturbing and beautiful. The filmmaker's intention is to reveal universal truths about the overwhelming quality of disease to render us ultimately mute, immobilized within a corporeal shell that has succumbed to imminent forces beyond our control. The filmmaker's also wants the film to address the myth that dignity is automatically restored upon the visage when facing death. In analyzing the original function of the stereoscopes, the filmmaker intends to expose their classificatory nature. These anonymous subjects were reduced to paradigms of pathology, embalmed in time within their exterior presence. By re-photographing them on the optical printer and placing them in a mythical home, the filmmaker endeavors to reanimate these visages to ensnare them, or allow them to roam free on the surface of celluloid. Absence transforms to presence as the latent image reveals the manifest content, the slippery territories in between unraveling like the threads joining the crazy quilt that joins images together. An anachronistic Victorian sensibility places the images in a chimerical, historical context that embodies the film with a mind that is paradoxical and alien to our Twentieth century perspective. The title "Secure the Shadow...'Ere the Substance Fade,let nature imitate what nature has made", comes from a Nineteenth century post mortem photographer who advertised his services. This reference speaks about the function of photography as a democratizing medium that assists in the process of mourning and serves as a physical reminder of loss.

Funded by Princess Grace Foundation.

Test- 16mm
 B&W, sound, 3 minutes- 1997

 

Test

As 4000 questions flurry past the retinas of the viewer, one becomes aware of the futilty of trivial persuits. An I.Q examination for the manic on speed.....A readymade little gem found in an abandoned Movie Palace in Boston, MA

 

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