Film Studies profs to exhibit new work at Athens film and video festival

Film Studies professors Ray Rea and Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson will be exhibiting new work at the 2010 Athens International Film and Video Festival. Both works combine elements of documentary, animation and experimental practice.

Rea’s work, Cat’s Cradle, combines 16mm animation and analog rotoscope techniques with digital effects to tell a visual story of trial, error, and forgiveness. The soundtrack for Cat’s Cradle was done by Minneapolis-based Helena Thompson of Purest Spiritual Pigs.

Kristjansson’s 30-minute documentary, Sveit, was shot in a rural village on the north coast of Iceland. The filmmaker traces her family’s history and emigration from Iceland to the United States, while unpacking memories and stories of her grandfather’s experience as a New American in North Dakota. Meanwhile Kristjansson negotiates the relationship between landscape, language, mythology and ritual with the help of the local first through fourth grade Icelandic children. Sveit was funded in part by the Bush Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Fulbright Association, and Skaftfell Menningarmidstod.

The Athens International Film and Video Festival was founded in 1974, and since then has presented independent films from around the world. The Festival is sponsored by the Athens Center for Film and Video, a project of the College of Fine Arts at Ohio University.

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