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| COMMON GROUND (27:00, 16mm & super-8 on DV, 2008) |
| Abandonment, decay; demolish, rebuild: Common Ground follows the life cycle of land in Southern California to observe the way economics are shaping the terrain. A portrait of place and process, where perspectives shift to question our relationship with the past, designs on the future, and notions of progress in today’s world. |
“An elderly man dedicates himself to his hobby, searching for buried
objects with his metal detector. This is the beginning of a trip into
Southern California, a land whose cyclical process of abandonment,
decay, demolition and reconstruction is a sign of how the economy is
making a mark on the land. Like at Arnold Heights, first it was a
sacred place for the Serrano tribe, then it became a military base which has since been dismantled and now a new building complex is being constructed, the Meridian Business Park.” (Torino Film Festival) |
Screenings
2010 12th Wisconsin Film Festival, Madison, WI
2010 Experiments in Cinema v5.1, Albuquerque, NM
2009 27th Torino Film Festival, Torino, Italy
2009 “The Best of Sheffield Doc/Fest,” Branchage Jersey Film Festival, UK
2009 “New Ways of Seeing,” Sunset Hall, Los Angeles
2009 Antimatter Festival, Victoria, BC
2009 Los Angeles Filmforum |
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| THE GARDEN CITY (13:30, 16mm, 2007) |
| To what extent can we control the lived environment, and how does this impact our lives? A letter recounts a journey from American suburbia to a foreign city, becoming a meditation on growth and development that suggests all landscapes are human. |
| “Traveling to Bangalore, India from Valencia, California, Brunner-Sung’s brief essay meditates on a quote from Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man Under Socialism — ‘The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development.’” (Images Festival) |
Screenings
2009 Last Friday Shorts at TAP, Southend-on-Sea, England
2009 “Cast Glances, New Films,” Spool Mfg, Johnson City, NY
2009 “The Underground City,” DIVUS, London, England
2009 $100 Film Festival, Calgary
2008 “My Footnote to David Askevold,” Outpost for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
2008 The Images Festival, Toronto
2008 Los Angeles Filmforum
2008 Urban Research at Director’s Loung, Berlin |
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| HARD STARES & BROKEN MIRRORS (6:00, digital video, 2007) |
| A personal reflection on the Western genre, inspired by a road trip taken through the Mojave Desert to Sequoia National Forest. |
Screenings
2007 California Institute of the Arts Bijou Festival, Valencia, CA |
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| UNTITLED (PERLMAN PL.) (1:00, 16mm, 2006) |
| In Southern California, the housing boom generated a seemingly endless repetition of pastel stucco boxes. This micro-portrait draws attention to the human side of this standardized environment, revealing the intimacy of anonymity in one suburban fortress. |
Screenings
2010 ATA Film & Video Festival
2006 California Institute of the Arts Bijou Festival, Valencia, CA |
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| SOME OF MY FRIENDS (3:00, 16mm, b/w, silent, 2005) |
| Ten friends and their camera-impressions. |
Screenings
2007 Starting from Scratch Film Festival, Amsterdam
2005 Boxcar Film Series, Detroit, MI |
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| LONGSHORE (4:30, super-8 on DV, 2004) |
| A tour of a midwestern neighborhood navigates the relationship between individual and community, privacy and intimacy. |
| “Affectionately, shakily shot, this flickering document serves as a memory of a memory, preserving a kind of quintessential past; the woods behind neighbors’ houses, the voices of ghosts from behind screen doors and the gentle machinations of our families recorded in light. It is easy to remember Brunner-Sung’s film even if we are only seeing it for the first time. Her actors have been kind enough to be at once themselves and also archetypes for all of the people in our lives who lived in houses with front doors, or for cats that we don’t see anymore—people who have sunk beneath the ground, or who have become bodies in our mind. The frames of life are crisp, the edges have clear names like ‘1983′ or ‘1992′—it is only inside the borders, Brunner-Sung reminds us, that we find this perfectly grainy thing called our lives.” (James Hilger, NY Arts Magazine) |
Screenings
2007 Starting from Scratch Film Festival, Amsterdam
2006 “Special Reconnaisance,” Gigantic Artspace, New York, NY
2005 Boxcar Film Series, Detroit, MI |
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