Gregg Araki’s Smiley Face was shown at the AFI Fest, in Los Angeles in November. In this slapstick comedy, a woman inadvertently eats her roommate's pot cupcakes and embarks upon a strange day filled with surreal misadventures.

Ralph Arlyck’s An Acquired Taste and Current Events were shown together at the Viennale Film Festival, in October.  The first of these short documentaries reflects the United States’ focus on success, while the other explores the quagmire of liberal inaction.

James Benning’s Casting a Glance was shown in the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Viennale Film Festival, in October. This contemplative work portrays the Spiral Jetty, a giant earthwork realized by the artist Robert Smithson in 1970 at the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

Hartmut Bitomsky’s Staub screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Viennale Film Festival, in October. This feature documentary rhapsodizes about dust, which is everywhere, ever present and will not go away.

Andy Blubaugh’s Scaredycat made its public television debut in December on P.O.V., shown with Freida Lee Mock’s Wrestling with Angels. It was also included in the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, which began its tour at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History in November. This documentary short explores the inevitable and justifiable fear the filmmaker experiences following a physical assault at the hands of five young men, while also examining the legal response to the attack.

St. Clair Bourne passed away December 15th, at the age of 64. Bourne was an incredibly active member of the New York film community, and he worked on a global scale to bring more attention to African-American history.  He was one of the biggest supporters of the African Diaspora Film Festival, and he blogged extensively through his Chamba Notes email list. From Richard Prince’s obituary: For the past year, he had been working on a documentary about veteran Memphis-based civil rights photographer Ernest Withers…and continued a project on the Black Panthers. Bourne was best known for the documentaries on renaissance man Paul Robeson and Afrocentric historian Henrik Clarke, and for Making 'Do the Right Thing'.

Christiane Burkhard’s Trazando Aleida | Tracing Aleida had its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), in November. She had also received a post-production grant from Gucci and the Mexican documentary program Ambulante, for this film.  It follows a Mexican woman who reunites with her brother for the first time since their adoption by different families, after their parents’ disappearance during Mexico’s “dirty war” in 1975. (Mexico)

Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep was shown at the London Film Festival and Viennale Film Festival, in October. It was also awarded a Special Critics' Award by the New York Film Critics Circle. This recently remastered classic of true independent cinema captures the everyday poetics and pain of a man and his family, struggling for economic and emotional survival.

René Castillo’s Hasta los huesos | Down to the Bone was screened daily at the Walker Art Center as part of their “Cinemateca: Contemporary Film from Mexico” series.  This animated short provides a lively tour of the underworld. (Mexico)

Paul Chan united his impulses towards political activism and evocative installation by mounting special performances of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in still-struggling areas of New Orleans. Chan served as Artistic Director for these stagings, offered to the public for free and performed in November by the Classical Theater of Harlem at two different locations. Fellow Cauleen Smith is working on a documentary about the performances, and an insightful article about Chan and this project was offered by the New York Times at the beginning of December. When in New York, Chan participated in a new program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, “Between the Lines,” which pairs readings by emerging writers with screenings by up-and-coming artists who re-imagine the possibilities of film.  Additionally, Chan was one of 50 artists awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, for his work with visual arts.

Jem Cohen provided three trailers for the Viennale Film Festival, in October. The black and white urban landscapes of A Tale of Two Cities, War Machine and Untitled New York were shown multiple times throughout the festival.

Bruce Conner’s His Eye is on the Sparrow was shown at the London Film Festival, in October, in the program "Past Imperfect." This evocative collage film draws from documentary footage shot several decades ago of the innovative gospel group The Soul Stirrers.  

Ernesto Contreras' Parpados azules | Blue Eyelids was shown at the Morelia International Film Festival in October.  His first feature-length narrative navigates two lonely strangers’ romance. (Mexico)

Julie Dash was one of 50 artists awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, for her work with media arts.

Arthur Dong’s Hollywood Chinese was shown as a special presentation at the Vancouver International Film Festival, in October and at the AFI Fest in November. Hollywood Chinese was the first documentary ever to be featured as an opening night film at the 44th Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei, Taiwan, where it was also awarded Best Documentary. Drawing from a trove of rare and memorable film clips, Dong’s film charts the visual and social history of the Chinese in American feature films.

Laura Dunn will be awarded a Truer Than Fiction award at the 2008 Film Independent’s Spirit Awards, for The Unforeseen. Her film toured the festivals, screening at the London, Hamptons, Viennale and the Vancouver International Film Festival in October, and the AFI Fest in November. In this lyrical documentary, environmental concerns are probed when the development of large-scale subdivision housing threatens a fragile limestone aquifer in Austin.

Chris Eyre was one of 50 artists awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, for his work with media arts.

Jeanne Finley and David Muse’s four channel video installation Flat Land was exhibited at San Francisco Camerawork’s gallery through October and November. This piece explores the visual culture of men and women at war by looking at publicly available images of "Flat Daddies" (life-size cut-outs of soldiers that are carried through daily activities by families and friends back home), and "Flat Stanleys" (small cut-outs
of a cartoon boy, sent by American school children on adventures around the world, sometimes to war zones).

Su Friedrich presented her newest experimental documentary From the Ground Up at the Viennale Film Festival, in October.  The film shows all the stages of coffee production, as a way to address the fact that most products we use have had to pass through the hands of hundreds of people in numerous countries. Also, Friedrich’s Seeing Red was shown at the London Film Festival, in October, in the program "The I and the We." In this short, Friedrich employs a video confessional to express her frustration with the onset of middle age, including observational vignettes edited to Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Andrew Garrison’s feature documentary Third Ward, TX was shown at the Harvard Graduate Design School as the centerpiece of the Bruner Loeb Conference, " Learning from Project Row Houses: Transforming Community through the Arts." The film takes its title from a Houston neighborhood that was reclaimed by artists and consequently subjected to the forces of gentrification.

Ernie Gehr's Panoramas of the Moving Image, a synchronized five-channel video installation that uses eighty-seven original slides from nineteenth century magic lantern shows, will be on display in the Museum of Modern Art's Titus Theater lobbies, alongside magic lantern artifacts.  This installation will be exhibited until March. Gehr was also the subject of a program in the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde, in which his films Shadow, Cinematic Fertilizer 1, Cinematic Fertilizer 2 and 10th Avenue were shown, offering mediations of time, place and environment.

Janie Geiser designed the puppets used to expressive effect in Jessica Yu’s feature documentary Protagonist, which was released theatrically in November. The film centers around the idea of the protagonist in Greek drama, and the puppets function as a Greek chorus, enacting moments from the Bacchae and from the subjects’ lives.

Marina Goldovskaya’s Dom s rizariami | The House of the Knights was shown at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, in December.  This documentary charts the history of a Moscow address, which used to be a Russian princess’ residence, before it was inhabited by eight families during half a century and now accomodates the Ministry of Culture.

Sterlin Harjo’s Four Sheets to the Wind was released on DVD in November, by First Look International. In this feature narrative, a man sets off to begin a new life in the big city of Tulsa, after fulfilling his father's dying wish. Actress Tamara Podemski was also nominated for Best Supporting Female for the 2008 Film Independent’s Spirit Awards.

Shih-Chieh Huang was included in the Taiwan Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale in Italy, from June to November.   

Peter Hutton’s At Sea was shown at the London Film Festival, Viennale Film Festival, and the Views from the Avant-Garde program at the New York Film Festival. This film follows the inception and launch of a large container ship, providing a sensuous and sociological portrait of industry, set against ceaseless waters.

Ken Jacobs’ experimental film project Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son (1969-71) was among the 25 American films added to the Library of Congress’ National Registry. Hundreds of films are nominated by the public each year; those selected are considered "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant. In October, Jacobs’ unusually three-dimensional short films, including Capitalism: Child Labor, Capitalism: Slavery and Nymph where shown at the London Film Festival and Viennale Film Festival while Nymph and Capitalism: Child Labor were also featured in the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde, along with Surging Sea of Humanity, and Hanky Panky January 1902.

Dominique Jonard’s El Agua en Tiempos Extras | Water in Extra Times was shown in the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, which began its tour at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History in November. This experimental animation short considers global warming and its impact on water, as well as imagines some preservation solutions. (Mexico)

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s book Learning to Love You More was released in October. This book compiles the responses made by the general public to assignments given by the artists at the related website.

Tom Kalin 's Savage Grace was shown at the London Film Festival and Viennale Film Festival, in October. This feature dramatizes the shocking murder case involving the Baekeland family, of 1950s plastics fame.  

Yael Kanarek has enjoyed the culmination of her recent artistic efforts. She debuted her Fellowship-funded project World of Awe: Traveler’s Journal, chapter 3 – Object of Desire in spring, at the Exit Art Gallery in New York City. This web-based narrative, told in English, Hebrew and Arabic, focuses on a mythological relationship between an individual and an uncharted landscape in a parallel world, revealing a relationship developed as a construct of language. Her solo show “Warm Fields” was exhibited at Bitforms gallery in New York City, through October and November, and “Object of Desire: Yael Kanarek's World of Awe” also opened in October at The Jewish Museum in New York City, to be displayed until March.  Both shows include sculptures that complement Kanarek’s internet artwork and explore ideas related to language, semiotics and travel.  In November, Kanarek gave an artist’s lecture “And I Was Both Tongues” at The Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium, held by the Berkeley Center for New Media.  Mediated by Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg, this lecture was co-presented by Renew Media in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Media Arts Fellowships.

Leandro Katz 's Tania and The Trophies was exhibited at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, in November and December. This show featured large scale photographic installations on the mythological figure of Tania, the woman who fought alongside Ernesto Che Guevara, and included segments of a work in progress about the search of Guevara's remains and forensic anthropology. (Argentina)

So Yong Kim’s In Between Days was released on DVD, by Kino International, in November.  This debut narrative feature tells the story of awkward affection between a recent Korean immigrant and her more assimilated friend.

Anne Lewis’ documentary Morristown continued to tour, screening in October at the Austin Film Festival and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas, and in November at the Cucalorus Annual Festival of Independent Film and the Latin American Film and Video Festival, both in North Carolina. In this film, working-class people in Mexico and eastern Tennessee are caught in the throes of massive economic change, which challenges their assumptions about work, family, nation and community.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer represents Mexico in the 52nd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, taking place from June through November.  This is the first time that Mexico has been included in this event. The Mexican Pavilion will host a solo show "Some Things Happen More Often Than All of The Time," comprised of six of his pieces, including a new work produced specifically for the biennial. (Mexico)

Judith MacDougall’s The Art of Regret was shown in the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, which began its tour at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History in November. This observational documentary examines the digital revolution in China, particularly as it pertains to photography.

Chico MacMurtrie’s Birds, exhibited at Andrew Edlin Gallery in October and November, marks the the first multi-sculpture installation using the Inflatable Bodies technology.  This work eschews metallic joints in its creation of sculptures that move organically. Also displayed was a high-definition video of Totemobile, a composition of 31 machines, which transforms from a Citroen coupe into a 90-foot totem. Additionally, MacMurtrie and Amorphic Robot Works launched A Tree for Anable Basin- a metallic tree, or condominium for birds, that floated in New York's East River.  The tree was the fruit of an urban design contest sponsored by A Place in History in 2005.

Jonas Mekas presented one short film every day in 2007. Inspired by a poet writing a poem each day of the year for his lover, Mekas will create a similarly poetic statement through these deeply personal films, reflecting on his life and sentiments of both past and present. These works were available at his website.

Julia Meltzer and David Thorne’s We will live to see these things…  was shown in the CinemaEast Film Festival, held in New York City, as well as at REDCAT in Los Angeles, in November. This five part video documentary presents competing visions of an uncertain future as Damascus, Syria faces both a growing conservative Islamic movement and intense pressure from the United States. At the Los Angeles screening, Meltzer and Thorne's short not a matter of if but when...,which served as an interpretative collaboration between the filmmakers and Syrian artist Rami Farah, was also shown. Meltzer and Thorne were present to answer questions after both screenings.

Nina Menkes was honored with a retrospective program of her films, at the Viennale Film Festival in October. The six films shown were: Magdalena Viraga, The Story of a Red Sea Crossing, Queen of Diamonds, The Bloody Child, A Soft Warrior, The Great Sadness of Zohara and Phantom Love.

Guadalupe Miranda’s Relatos desde el encierro | Tales from the Inside was shown at the Viennale Film Festival, in October. This documentary allows half a dozen women imprisoned in the the Federal Jail of Puente Grande, in Jalisco, Mexico, to share their stories. (Mexico)

John Muse and Jeanne Finley’s four channel video installation Flat Land was exhibited at San Francisco Camerawork’s gallery from September through November. This piece explores the visual culture of men and women at war by looking at publicly available images of "Flat Daddies" (life-size cut-outs of soldiers that are carried through daily activities by families and friends back home), and "Flat Stanleys" (small cut-outs
of a cartoon boy, sent by American school children on adventures around the world, sometimes to war zones).

Rob Nilsson’s 9 @ Night film series were screened for the first time together, in order, at the Harvard Film Archives, in November.  These nine narrative features represent the collective efforts of Citizen Cinema, comprised of professional and untrained cast and crew, who portray interlocking stories of people living on the edges of American society.  

Carlos Efraín Pérez Rojas’s A Cielo Abierto | To the Open Sky premiered at the Morelia International Film Festival, in October.  This short narrative was co-directed with Jose Luis Matias. (Mexico)

Sam Pollard produced and edited Spike Lee’s acclaimed television documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, which was awarded the Pare Lorentz Award by the International Documentary Association, in December. This film turns an unflinching eye towards New Orlean’s Katrina-induced nightmare.

Lourdes Portillo’s La Ofrenda: The Day of the Dead was screened daily at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as part of their “Cinemateca: Contemporary Film from Mexico” series. This short documentary explores the cultural roots and current celebrations of The Day of the Dead.

Yvonne Rainer’s Film About a Woman Who… was screened at the Viennale Film Festival in October, during which she attended. This experimental feature illustrates the deliberateness and artifice of the idealized image, and underscores the act of performance in creating the illusion of happiness.

Kurt Ralske's installation Times Square Timeshare was displayed at the Westside Gallery in New York City, in November. In this 4-channel video piece, a super-panoramic image of Times Square stretches across monitors as time and motion defy physics through distortion.

Randy Redroad's Cowtipping was included in a presentation of recent and Third World Newsreel Film and Video Production Workshop pieces, held at New York City’s Anthology Film Archives, in November. In this short, a Cherokee cafe waiter confronts customers who insist on sharing their ignorance about Native Americans.

Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light was awarded Best Picture and Best Director at the 33st Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival, held in Spain in November. This accomplishment followed screenings at the New York Film Festival, Morelia International Film Festival, London Film Festival, the AFI Fest and the 43rd Chicago International Film Festival, where it also won the most prestigious award, the Gold Hugo. In this film, a Mennonite father in Northern Mexico grapples with an illicit desire. (Mexico)

Alex Rivera was one of 50 artists awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, for his work with media arts.

Jay Rosenblatt’s Beginning Filmmaking had its international premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, in November. This short documentary follows a year as videotaped by his young daughter.  I Just Wanted to Be Somebody was shown at the London Film Festival, in October, in the program "The I and the We." This poetic documentary short voyages back to the late 1970s to reflect on Anita Bryant and her influence on both the religious right and the gay liberation movement.

Ira Sachs’ Married Life was shown at the New York Film Festival, in October. His latest narrative feature provides a comic and at times harrowing look at the pitfalls and pathologies of marriage.

Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses and Kitch's Last Meal, two recently restored short films, were shown at the London Film Festival in October and at Anthology Film Archives, in New York City, in November, as part of “Performa 07” biennial festival. To extend the tactile intimacy of lovemaking to filmmaking for Fuses, Schneemann treated the filmstrips as a canvas, working by hand to transfer the erotic energy of the body directly onto the film material. Kitch's Last Meal documents the routines of daily life, as a relationship winds down and death closes in. The film is projected double screen in an interchangeable set of 18-minute reels. Additionally, recently restored films and recent videos by Schneemann were shown at Electronic Arts Intermix, in New York City in November.  Many of the pieces shown, including Snows, Body Collage and Americana I Ching Apple Pie capture Schneemann's performance-based art, while Devour was an example of her more recent video installation work. Schneemann attended all of the screenings.

Scott Snibbe was commissioned by the Science Museum of Minnesota and the California Science Center to create Fear, an interactive installation for “Goosebumps! The Science of Being Scared,” which was on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, through December. This interactive exhibit creates a social situation in which children learn about nature's flee or freeze response. In October, Snibbe’s interactive video artwork Women Hold Up Half the Sky debuted at Mills College in Oakland, California, where it will be permanently installed. Celebrating women in science from ancient to modern times, the installation presents stylized views of them at work in laboratories, montages of their discoveries, and quotes about their experiences, displayed across five screens. Finally, Snibbe's Boundary Functions is now part of the “Metalandscapes” exhibition at Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Mallorca, Spain, to be exhibited until June 2008. In this piece, people explore the boundaries of personal space when lines are drawn between them as they walk on a large projected floor.

Ellen Spiro’s Body of War screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival, in October, where it won Audience Award for Best Documentary, and at the AFI Fest in November. Additionally, Body of War was shortlisted as one of fifteen films to be considered for nomination for an Academy Award and was named Best Documentary of 2007 by the National Board of Review.  This feature documentary, co-directed by Phil Donahue, follows the political transformation of a US soldier wounded in Iraq.

Eddo Stern’s newest works were exhibited at New York City’s Postmasters gallery, in October. The works, kinetic shadow sculptures and 3D computer animation videos, in the show are a result of the artist's obsessive participation in online fantasy games, most recently a yearlong immersion (2000 hours played) in the online game World of Warcraft.

Caspar Stracke’s urban particle supercollider was included in “Interference,” a group show that celebrated the tenth anniversary of New York City’s Eyebeam gallery and their artists' contributions to the art and tech field. This installation represented a collective urban image project shown as three linked animations of street objects from Seoul, Tehran and New York City.

Hank Willis Thomas was one of 27 recipients of a grant for California artists, provided by The Center for Cultural Innovation. This grant will be used by Thomas to acquire equipment and tools necessary to complete Question Bridge, a documentary designed to explore critically divisive issues within the African American male community.

David Thorne and Julia Meltzer’s We will live to see these things…  was shown in the CinemaEast Film Festival, held in New York City, as well as at REDCAT in Los Angeles, in November. This five part video documentary presents competing visions of an uncertain future as Damascus, Syria faces both a growing conservative Islamic movement and intense pressure from the United States. At the Los Angeles screening, Meltzer and Thorne's short not a matter of if but when...,which served as an interpretative collaboration between the filmmakers and Syrian artist Rami Farah, was also shown. Meltzer and Thorne were present to answer questions after both screenings.

Camille Utterback’s Abundance was commissioned by the Zero 1 new media festival, held in October, as a temporary public artwork created specifically for the San Jose City Hall Rotunda and Plaza. The artwork was dynamic, abstract animation projected directly onto the Rotunda, that changed in response to pedestrian movement in the Plaza.  Additionally, Utterback’s reactive sculptures Shaken and Balance were included in the “L'emoi de l'image” exhibit at Les Galeries Poirel in Nancy, France throughout October. Finally, Untitled 5, an interactive video installation which challenges conventional artistic processes by adding time and interactivity to abstract painting, was showcased during a festival in Copenhagen organized by the Danish curatorial group Maskinstorm. In conjunction with the festival, Camille lectured at a series of workshops.

Francisco Vargas’ El Violin | The Violin was released theatrically in December, at New York City’s Film Forum.  In November, Vargas attended a screening of the film at the Walker Center for the Arts, in Minneapolis, as part of their “Cinemateca: Contemporary Film from Mexico” series. In this award-winning narrative feature, a violinist entertains the military while secretly providing aid to an armed peasant revolt in the 1970s. (Mexico)

Bill Viola’s new piece Ocean Without a Shore was installed in the San Gallo Church for the 52nd Venice Biennale, from June throughout November.  Viola’s haunting videos and images of bodies in dreamlike motion often involve inverted actions and submersion in water.

Marco Williams’ Banished was shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival, in October. This documentary feature explores the history of three U.S. towns which, in the early 20th century, forced their entire African American populations to leave.

Soon Mi Yoo’s Dangerous Supplement was shown at the London Film Festival, in October, in the program "Past Imperfect." This short video work uses archival footage of landscapes shot during the Korean War to illustrate what is absent in their present representation.