Memory Box — Tamako's Letter

Memory Box — Tomako's Letter is a film essay that follows the life of a Japanese man named Keizo living in Oakland, California who lost his memory and became estranged from his Japanese daughter. Based on a true story, the film is comprised of a visual/aural letter from the narrator, Keizo, in the United States to his lost daughter, Tomako, in Japan. The "letter" combines the narrator's own story of amnesia, his poems, and his photographs to explore ideas of a "collected," subjective history. Because Keizo's own long-term memories have never returned, his identity has been painfully constructed from his study of the traces of his own life. The only factual memories he has from his past are those of his daughter.

During his eight years of recovery in the United States, in an attempt to reconnect with his daughter, Keizo has been creating photographic postcards with poems printed on the backside that he mails to her. A message in a bottle of sorts, these fragmented poems deal with loneliness, memory, and loss, and act as a thread between his past and present.

Memory Box — Tomako's Letter exploits the tactility of the film medium, evidencing the hand/hand-made through techniques of hand processing, toning, and painting and scratching on the film in an effort to assert Keizo's physical body in the present tense. Additionally, such techniques function to articulate the relationship between physiological memory and psychological memory.

Geometry of the Body

Shot with a standard 8 camera, Geometry of the Body is a dual projection piece that explores abstracted lines of light on the male and female body. Lines of light in the film are in continual flux, conjoining and separating within the film's frames and between the film projections, implicating the nature of a partnership between a man and a woman.

Atlas

Atlas is a film wherein each page of an entire atlas was photogrammed onto 16mm film. The varied optical sound is generated from the maps of spaces and cities throughout the world.

Interlude

Interlude is a film wherein a woman remembers her past through her relationship to the piano. In watching her play, we see her memories revealed within the piano's keys. Additionally, at moments in the film, the piano keys animate into stairs that transform into rooms. Within each room, images expand and contract, exploring the subject's varied memories.

Mimita

Mimita is a feature length documentary that follows the lives of the Candelario family-a Puerto Rican family of women-living in the South Bronx, and their adopted baby, Alliyah (Mimita). For more information please visit www.Mimita.com