It Will Be Monumental in Brighton

On Tuesday, December 1, the Cinecity Film Festival in Brighton, England, will screen a short from I WILL SMASH YOU, the segment with Adam Robinson, It Will Be Monumental, along with shorts by Stewart Copeland, Nash Edgerton and others.
More info on the festival’s website: www.cine-city.co.uk

St Nicholas and the ghost of a woman mourn my loss, while old woman sits still and skeleton plays funeral march

I am posting new art on my Etsy page every day. Check it out.


All my art is here.

Things saved from the fire

On Herbert Pfostl.

Herbert Pfostl is a contemporary Austrian artist who paints animals, plants, saints, ghosts, ships.

I love his work. All of his figures seem to have been thrown into the fire, and finally saved from the fire. Pfostl’s work has the textural quality of relics.

Hearts, devils and towers are ashes.

Go see Pfostl show in Brooklyn at Observatory.

More info here.

Visit the Paper Graveyard.

The blink of an event

Bret McCabe reviewed I WILL SMASH YOU, the film I made with Michael Kimball, on the Baltimore City Paper. It's a really great, attentive review. Here.

I WILL SMASH YOU screens in Baltimore on Friday, November 20, as part of Shattered Wig Night.
The place is 14-Karat Cabaret.
There will readings by Blaster Al Ackerman, Ingrid Burrington, and loud music by Sweatpants.
The time is 8:30pm.

http://www.littleburnfilms.com



"Think of something that has meaning to you. Anything. It could be a family heirloom, a meaningless trinket, a symbolic construction, or even an ephemeral idea. OK? Now, destroy it. Hit it with a sledgehammer. Set it on fire. Slice through it with scissors. Bludgeon it with an ax. Repeatedly strike it with a hammer. How do you feel?

That's the entire concept of I Will Smash You, as conceived by local author Michael Kimball and executed by Kimball and New York artist/filmmaker/writer Luca Dipierro. Twenty people--18 individuals and one couple--destroy 19 items before the camera, with Kimball briefly interviewing the participants before, during, and after the action. What's disarming about the entire process is not the clever, collateral entertainment damage that comes from staged violence; what emerges from these brief snippets are miniature personality portraits of human beings.

It's a misdirection approach to humanity that snugly gels with Kimball's recent endeavors. His output over the past two years or so--2008's Dear Everybody, a novel of suicide notes; his ongoing, and recently expanded, "Michael Kimball Writes Your Life (on a postcard)" project; his next collaborative movie project with Dipierro, 60 Writers/60 Places--are conceptual conceits, but they would be merely clever if they didn't smuggle intimate interpersonal contraband in the process. Smash never spends more than a few minutes screen time with each participant--the entire movie is roughly 50 minutes long--but what's affecting is who these people become during these moments. Yes, the ostensible focus is the action theater-qua-scream therapy of the actual smashing process, but what you end up taking away from the vignettes is everything that bookends that blink of an event.

Put another way, Kimball and Dipierro have put together a collection of money shots that make you care about who's coming and why. It's amusing when local author Leslie F. Miller obliterates a bust of Zeus, because it's a gift from her mother-in-law and her neighbors have a similar one they keep in their living room. Record nerds may knee-jerk blanch at Gregg Wilhelm putting a flame to his copy of Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, but it's bittersweet because of what the album represents for him. And young Ella Grossbach destroying a piñata-like representation of her teacher's head is not only adorably brutal, but includes an off-screen voice granting the sort of permission that every child needs to hear at least once: "You can light it on fire, sweetie."

If you've ever fantasized about going positively caveman on something, Smash offers vicarious thrills--personal fave is local author Betsy Boyd mirthfully demolishing her car--but it's the reasons why that stay with you when all that's left is rubble."

Bret McCabe

Black Biscotti on Etsy

I've set up an Etsy shop for my artwork. My page is www.lucadipierro.etsy.com.

I just posted a few of my most recent pieces. The shop will be updated regularly.

Check it out. Easy Christmas shopping.

In Udine tomorrow

My touring solo show opens in Udine, Italy on Saturday, November 14 at KOBO Shop. The exhibition, which will tour five different Italian cities, is called ALL AROUND MY HANDS THERE IS DARKNESS, and features a selection of my art and of my animation films from 2006 to 2009.

At the opening there will be readings by my friends Federico Zanatta, writer and musician, without whom my show would not have been possible, and author Alessandro Di Carlo. Federico and Alessandro will read some of my fiction and some of their own.

More about the beautiful city of Udine here.

7 p., cuis., s. de b.

I write about Agnès Varda here.

Screening of Dear Everybody at Camm

If you are in Baltimore on Friday, November 13, Creative Alliance Moviemakers (CAmm) will screen Dear Everybody, the short film I made in 2008 with Michael Kimball, based on his latest novel. There will be screenings of shorts by Travis Mays, Ryan Thomas, Hunter Nesbitt and others.
The place is The Patterson, at 3134 Eastern Ave., Baltimore.
The time is 8pm.
The website is www.creativealliance.org

Little Burn Films is here.