Woodland Pattern™ |
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| Book Center Experimental Film and Video Archive |
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| Saturday, September 17, 7pm $2 Woodland Pattern Experimental Film/Video Series Presented by the UWM Department of Film Birthday Girl a video by Steve Wetzel  Birthday Girl documents a suburban family celebrating one of its members.Treated with a delicate sense of both levity and somberness, this video documents events leading up to and during a young girl's 6th birthday party. Lily, the birthday girl, performs for the camera while simultaneously being pursued by it. This ambivalent relationship builds over the course of one day and one night until finally the threshold between performer and subject cracks, if only for a moment. The world of pre-adolescent imagination and ambition rarely receives such scrutiny—a world where the internalization of values and norms is violent, thorough and irresistible. Birthday Girl peers into this world, albeit for a limited glance, and finds all the complexity and nuance indicative of social life, a process of struggle filled with joy and despair. |