Atlanta


July recreates the press conference of an Olympic swimmer who talks to the journalists together with her mother (both roles played by July herself) about the big goal – “going for the gold” … but whose goal is it really? “Hard to take when the daughter flinches in front of the camera while the mother whispers to her to finally say ‘I love you, mom’”

The Amateurist


A captivating video about surveillance, identity, watching, and being watched, The Amateurist slides along the edges of horror and satire to create an unsettling portrait of a woman on the brink of a technologically driven madness. "The Amateurist alternately adores and rejects three familiar tropes: the sick and examined woman, the starlet/stripper, and the genius/talentless woman. As a performer living with a chronic illness who has been both a child actress and a stripper, I choose not to speak with an autobiographical voice, which would, in itself be yet another cliché (the confessional). Instead, I create women who are predictable amalgamations of single types. É What I choose to say with these figurines is much less articulatable, though no less familiar. The prescribed lines dismantle themselves with mutual interrogation and this process releases fumes of true loneliness, relentless strength, insatiable desire.


Nest of Tens


A young boy, home alone, performing a bizarre ritual with a baby; an uneasy, aborted sexual flirtation between a teenage babysitter and an older man; an airport lounge encounter between a businesswoman (played by July) and a young girl. Linked by a lecturer enumerating phobias in a quasi-academic seminar, these three perverse, unnerving scenarios involving children and adults provide authentic glimpses into the queasy strangeness that lies behind the everyday.


Getting Stronger Every Day


There are two movies I saw on TV about boys who were taken from their families and then returned to them years later. One boy was on a fun spaceship for years and the other boy was kidnapped and molested. These boys were never the same again and they just couldn't re-integrate into the family. I saw these movies when I was little. I've often described them to people, always paired together. They are sort of the comedy and tragedy version of the same story and it is a mundanely spiritual story. Getting Stronger Every Day includes these boys' tales, but they are like mystical objects placed on the living reality of the man storyteller. In other parts of the movie actual mystical objects hover in peoples lives without a myth or story attached. I like to think about how these dimensions interact simply and can be enacted: real life / story / worldly / spirit / video / flat drawing.

Thanks to danielcmetz@KG for giving us the opportunity to watch these videoworks by the directress of the lovely/creepy "Me, you and everyone we know" .

ed2k: Miranda July Shorts - NestofTens.avi  [221.12 Mb] [Stats]
ed2k: Miranda July Shorts - Amateurist.avi  [113.56 Mb] [Stats]
ed2k: Miranda July Shorts - Atlanta.avi  [87.04 Mb] [Stats]
ed2k: Miranda July Shorts - GettingStrongerEveryDay.avi  [52.65 Mb] [Stats]

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Thanks, I'll try one.

Btw, in Nest of Tens a big, black creepy man reads a piece of poetry he wrote, "fears of your life". You can get the full text (it will turn useful, believe me) here:
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/fears.html

"...

101. What people think of when they see me coming up the street? What the first thing that they can think of once they see a stranger like me coming in the direction I goes in? Nothing but fear!

102. Why do people when they see me coming what do they tell their friends? Let’s cross the street I don’t want to get hurt.

..."

and also:

"136. Staying up late late late at night watching horror movies alone is scary. "

Sure it is!