Talking Portraits

TALKING PORTRAITS is a 2-disk compilation of the following films: YOU 16mm, 1990, 15 min., sound YOU is an imaginary fictionalized you in a whimsical space. It is the still live residue of the broken relationship Lisa is here confronting. A parallel actor, the film is in the business of reinterpreting. Director’s Choice, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1990 OUT IN THE GARDEN 16mm, 1991, 15 min., sound Set in and around the house and garden of a middle-aged upstate New York academic, Grenier’s intimate experimental documentary portrait explores, in an innovative form, the thoughts and feelings of one man dealing with AIDS. Michael Moore Award for Best Documentary, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1992; Best Experimental Documentary, 16th Atlanta Film & Video Festival, 1992 FEET Video, 1994, 29 min., B&W, sound A portrait of an intimate friend of the artist – Susan Weisser – and her relationships with her 13-year-old son Billy, and 17-year-old daughter, Amanda. The author asked them to reconstruct their daily rituals. The results were enactments, accounts, confidences and arguments that freely crisscross each other with the dynamic created by the presence of the video artist and his “unobtrusive” Hi-8 camera. Surprising events ensue within evocative framings of sounds and images, and the enchanted constructions from the fanciful revelations of the everyday. Second prize, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, 1996