White, Lili

Lili White
US videomaker

biography

Interview: 10 questions

1-Tell me something about your life and the educational background

LILI WHITE (http://liliwhite.com ) has been exhibiting her Painting and Super 8 works in shows in the United States and abroad after she received at B.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with a four-year painting certificate.

2-When, how and why started you filming?

I made SUPER 8 while I was studing painting. I always wanted to do a layered image. After making a few SUPER 8 Films, I became more involved with painting, as there was no optical printer at my disposal. When the computer came out I switched to video and continued to do my experimental moving image work…

3-What kind of subjects have your films?

MY FILMS COLLAGE various subjects together that connect tangentialy. For clips SEE: (http://liliwhite.com )

Artists & Immigration: NY (SEE) my a feature-length movie. Eschewing the documentary films’ standard of expressing opinion, and made without a script, storyboard or an editing plan, NY (see) reflects what New York stands for: America’s cradle of immigration; the site of the 9/11 Disaster; the platform of a genuine international city.

Immigration: REVERIE inserts family snapshots and world class architectural sites
into environments from Arizona, New Jersey beaches, New York, and Ireland’s Rock of Cashel site, that served as the traditional seat of Munster’s kings and has one of the most remarkable collections of Celtic art and medieval architecture to be found anywhere in Europe. REVERIE combines horizontal pans and forward moving “tracking” shots through Howth and New York to move into unknown future realities.

S/tr:w/EET WALK asks: What innate qualities do shoes convey-especially if found on a prostitute’s walk? Moving between diverse landscapes between the NORTH & SOUTH of the USA, seemingly haphazard facts disclose historic and mythic connections regarding the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, slavery (including the globel sex trade); artists (Flannery O’Connor / Augustus St. Gaudens); the Cinderella fairy tale (where the shoe is the main object), America’s symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty, whose ancient goddess twin of the crossroads, Hecate, all connect intuitively.

4-How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?

I often let chance, real life events and my personal concerns- EXAMPLE y concern about the Earth and food birthed: The KITCHEN SINK and everything, BUT that suggest fissures between human and natural infrastructure.
My “collage” films bear witness to human activity that runs primarily on unconscious energy.Their wacky atmospheric sense suggests psychological dimensions as they inspire others to find out about issues that effect humanity (here it’s humankind’s stewardship to the Earth and its agriculture). Their impressions present no final conclusions, nor convey “messages” directly- the viewer must suss out their own “meaning”. Intersecting tangents implied through the audio and visuals work to manifest consciousness of the interdependence between thought and actions; evincing that nothing exists alone. Their poetic form is a kind of expanding multiplicity of potentials and encounters and juxtapositions and resonances.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: TURQUOISE BEADS, composed of landscapes from New York after 9/11, and Chaco Canyon once a major center of a thriving Indian culture from AD 850 to 1250, where turquoise, a stone mythically born from the marriage between sky and earth, was traded extensively. The complexity of its community life, the high level of its social organization, and its far-reaching commerce created a cultural vision unlike any other seen before. David Stuart’s anthropological argument in Anasazi America claims that today’s American society has similar patterns that existed in Chaco’s Anasazi community before its final collapse.

5-Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.

MAC OS X & Final CUT, sometimes ADOBE PREMIER with a PANASONIC mini-DV camera.

6-The field of “art and moving images” (one may call it videoart or also differently) is is manifesting itself as an important position in contemporary art. Tell me more about your personal position and how you see the future of this field ( your personal future and the future of “art and moving images”)

This is a difficult question. If one is not picked up by an art gallery; or if one makes a “one-hit-wonder“, if one’s work is competient but not fashionable (and therefore not included in the current film festivals), then where is the audience to see it? How does an individual voice break into it and become recognized?

I believe seeing movies in programs in a darkened theatre is of paramount importance, lately I’ve been curating women’s experimental movies in this way and running the AXWFFestival.

7-How do you finance your films?

The reality is: I don’t. There is no money except my own limited funds. I teach painting on a part-time basis and have a huband who also works.

8-Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?

INDIVIDUALLY

9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?

My own Soul tells me to do this, no matter how tired I become.

10. What are your plans or dreams as a film/video maker?

To be respected as a filmmaker. To have my work screened at such festivals like IMAGES & ROTTERDAM althought I don’t follow the fashions of the times…

To finish my next feature (FOOL’S GOLD) and have someone donate a helicopter shoot for it.

I like being in CologneOFF and other micro fests that I’ve participated in such as: REMIX MEDIA FESTIVAL, both in New York & California; ATA in San Francisco; at the MIRROR/LENS screening conference curated by Margaret Jamieson at the Murray Edwards College at Cambridge University.

I’ve founded and curate ANOTHER EXPERIMENT BY WOMEN FILM FESTIVAL (AXWFF.com) that promotes and screens moving images in any media, made by women, that encourage critical thinking and dialogue. The 2nd annual AXWFFestival will take place on NOVEMBER 5, 2011 at MILLENNIUM FILM WORKSHOP in NY NY- with Two Screenings & a panel discussion.

Can works of yours be viewed online besides on CologneOFF or VideoChannel? Where?

YOUTUBE: qn35 channel, VIMEO under LILI WHITE and my web-site- (http://liliwhite.com)

List some links & resources:

LILI WHITE (http://liliwhite.com )

ANOTHER EXPERIMENT BY WOMEN FILM FESTIVAL (AXWFF.com)