Che Noia
(2007) 2:00 min. (video, color, sound)
"A pornographic film with no pornography," set to a soundtrack of hip-hop beats mixed with parole in liberta of Italian futurist Giacomo Balla, architectural elements of Saint Peter's Square replace elements of the human body in the act of sex. Evoking notions of repression and violence, Mistretta reveals and parodies the Vatican as a specifically gendered global institution.
Swan
2006, 5 min. (super8mm trasnferred to video)
Swan is a re-photographing of a popular television extreme make over program, “The Swan”. The obscure and abstract super 8 images de-construct the polished TV show. Superimposed is the images of stitches dancing on the screen as an attempt, in vain, to sew the images back to whole and a comment on the invasive nature of the program on the female body.
ZigZag
2006, 6 min. (16mm transferred to video)
ZigZag is a film that was part of a performance called “Eyes needs Ears” that asked filmmakers to produce a silent film for musicians to use as a score in a live performance. This film was sewn in a sewing machine. Lines of thread form a dancing zigzag stitching pattern which the musician plays along with a guitar solo.
Bridge
2006, 8 min. (super 8 mm transferred to video, color, sound)
Bridge is a visual loop of images of the Brooklyn Bridge under surveillance by a police helicopter. The audio is composed by the sounds of the bridge rocking to the music box lullaby's that play to the rhythm of the de-constructed loop.
Gramsci-Roma
2005, 8 min. (super 8 mm transferred to video)
Gramsci-Roma is inspired by the prison letters of Antonio Gramsci and the city of Rome, where he was arrested by the Fascist-dominated Italian state in 1926. The film represents Rome with images that lie in-between quotidian and tourism. These images weave through and collide
the economic and class struggle presented by Gramsci and the coexistence of modern capital consumption and the historical commodity of the ancient city of Rome.
End Child Labor and Sweatshops
(2005) 8:00 min. (DV, color, sound)
An experience of surveillance leads to a journey into a landscape of access and waste. The video is digitally manipulated to enhance the proliferation of access and the diagetic sound is transformed into mechanical reverberations of the city as cyborg.
Tintura
(2003) 9:50 min. (16mm, color, sound)
This film includes filmed frames that were hand manipulated with bleach and hand painted. The visual component is constructed by fragments of previous work and the sound is created from fragments of individual improvised noise. It juxtaposes two cultures from an immigrant's perspective. Religious traditions become indicative of a stifling but yet passionate culture which form the basis of memories and dreams of the land of origin.
Sold
(2003) 5 min. (video, color, sound)
On June 23, 2003 President George W. Bush visited New York City to attend a fund raising dinner for his re-election campaign. This video presents the mob of people who were rallying outside to protest his presence in NYC and his re-election. The video shows the techniques used by the police to cage in and direct the people like cattle. The superimposed images of the protest and the building caotic audio emphasizes the atmosphere of police manipulation at the rally.
Baptism
(2002) 4:00 min. (DV, color, sound)
Baptism is a digital animation and a play of using text in video. The video presents the Christian sacrament as a stifling act of metamorphoses and seduction.
Tematiche
(1995) 9:50 min. (16mm, b&w, sound)
Tematiche is an interpretation of Italian Philosopher Gian Battista Vico’s theory on the development of language. Vico describes three stages through which the process of language occurs, Sense, Fantasy, and Reason. The film is a visual exploration of these stages, revolving around physical and psychological images of an individual’s daily routine. The sound starts with the “Intona Rumori” sounds by Luigi Russolo and transform into electronic sounds based on Russolo's manifesto “The art of Noise”. The conclusion reveals language as an abstraction by fusing sound and image into an explosion of reason.
Occhi di Lenzuolo,
16mm, color/B&W, 22 min. Narrative/Experimental.
This film examines the search for sexual and cultural identity revolving around a homecoming. The main character, Piero, returns to his hometown in Sicily after a long absence. The people and culture of the land he once was part of are now alien to him. The film was entirely shot in the province of Palermo, Sicily. Occhi uses various film stocks to present different qualitative images and many film taboo such as the jump cut to bring to the foreground the language of filmmaking.
Crack,
16mm, color 8 min. Experimental.
This film looks at the struggle of a person grasping onto individuality in a controlling and authoritarian social structure by focusing on a medical experience. The mechanization of medicine strips the patient of any individuality by reducing language and basic body functions such as breathing to automated procedures. The positive and negative image is used to intertwine a mesh of repetition to evoke the mechanization of the human body. |
