by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
WHAT: New Maps of the New World Screening with the Filmmaker
WHERE: San Marco Theatre
WHEN: September 4th at 9pm
Roger Beebe’s series of films opens with the words “I recently moved to a town where the tallest building is a six-story Holiday Inn.” When the image opens to the pink Holiday Inn and filmmaker Roger Beebe starts talking about a city full of strip malls, it’s easy for Floridians to identify with this film. All of these films were shot in Super 8 and everything from the introductions to the credits, are done through the lens, rather than after-the-fact. Beebe addresses the intent of the film.
“The Strip Mall Trilogy is a series of three city symphonies that attempt to liberate form and color from the sprawling consumerist landscape of postmodern America.”
Part one of the Strip Mall Trilogy, A Woman, A Mirror, is a somewhat abstract collection of images and accompanying audio. Implementing an amateurish approach and haunting, avant-garde montages, as well as a soundtrack that is somewhat conceptual, this is the video portrait of a rather average Florida town, blighted by urban sprawl and wrought with corporate restaurants and retail. The short film is composed of these avant-garde montages that mournfully revel in the disparate and synthetic signposts of our corporate culture, ending with an American flag that flies with a Chik-Fil-A flag.
Part Two is titled Composition in Red & Yellow and is dedicated to “the men and women in red and yellow.” It is a montage of McDonalds Restaurants from all over the country to the tune of ‘Hands Across America,’ the anthemic song recorded as a sort of sequel to ‘We Are the World.’ It is a perfectly ironic pairing of a failed all-star fundraiser from the 80s and the Canadian Corporation that unites these states of ours.
This “trilogy” is comprised of more than three films. Subsequent chapters are bizarre at best. One is presented as an instructional film, something you would be forced to watch at school in the late 70s, but it presents a strange juxtaposition of Irish Americans and Irish-named African-Americans. This segment ends with an odd “tribute to the poster children of black America” which highlights Halle Barry and Tiger Woods. It then goes on to make ambiguous commentary on various racial mixtures represented by professional athletes in America. Others include abstract statements about industry, tourism and the visual representation of places and entities juxtaposed with their realities. Parts of the film are so abstract that they are constructed from images that are flashed on the screen in rapid succession to a soundtrack that varies from nothing to samples of machinery or everyday sounds.
An interesting technical fact is that the solid majority of these films were edited entirely in-camera, meaning there was very little post-production manipulation, so like in a photography exhibit, you see precisely what the camera saw at the moment and in the same sequence.
Exactly what Roger Beebe is trying to accomplish with this expressionistic style of filmmaking is beyond vague, but fortunately he will be at the showing of the film at the San Marco Theatre on September 4th at 9pm. Although certainly not a traditional storyteller, this sort of film is a far more interesting representation of the aardvark and artistically made films coming from a new generation of filmmakers.
Come to the San Marco Theatre and talk to Roger Beebe about these award-winning films after the screening.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
