Featured Guests

The Orgone Archive
The Orgone Cinema and Archive was a not-for-profit (i.e. break-even) motion picture exhibition group and archive dedicated to a sincere film culture in Pittsburgh, Penna. Orgone Cinema presented unique monthly shows of home movies, industrial, educational, experimental, and documentary films, light and sound performances, and visiting film and videomakers at The Silver Eye Center For Photography, 1015 East Carson beginning in October 1993 and then ceasing activity in March of 2000. Orgone was also a travelling cinema band that screened and performed films at the Red Room (Baltimore, MD), Hallwalls and Cornershop (Buffalo, NY), 8th Floor Gallery (NYC), Berks Filmmakers (Reading, PA), Total Mobile Home Micro Cinema, Other Cinema, and the San Francisco Cinematheque (San Francisco, CA) as well as numerous clubs, halls, homes, gyms, backyards, galleries, museums, coffeehouses, and garages in Pittsburgh. Since May of 2001, The Orgone Archive has continued showing its films to the fine folks who have visited Film Kitchen and Jefferson Presents… (Pittsburgh, PA), Northeast Historic Films (Bucksport, Maine), Orphans III, IV and V (Columbia, SC), the AMIA Conference 2003 (Vancouver, B.C.), the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema & Anthology Film Archives (NYC), the Aurora Picture Show (Houston, TX), the University of Chicago and Chicago Filmmakers.

Tara & Gordon Nelson
This cine-performance will feature some recent films by filmmaking newlyweds Tara and Gordon Nelson.
Also on the program is Gordon's "Sixties Teen Dance Party" with a new live soundtrack by some special guests. All films are projected in the original film formats.
Cosmic American Honeymoon - Tara and Gordon Nelson (Super-8, color, black and white, live and recorded sound, 30 min.) An experimental travelogue film set in the American southwest.
Stars and Skulls - Gordon Nelson (2008, 16mm dual analyst, color, 5 min.) Skull movement by Tara Merenda. Primitive space exploration with a floating cosmic skull.
River - Tara Merenda (2008, 16mm dual analyst, b&w, silent, 5 min.) Observations of the light, texture, objects and motion of the Allegheny River.
Sixties Teen Dance Party (2001, 16mm single analyst, b&w, live sound, 12 min.) Found footage by an anonymous filmmaker of a wild dance party circa 1965 played backwards and very slowly.


Ferris Wheel Arts 


Ferris Wheel has been active since 2004, creating film and video work for both live performance and home viewing. Their primary concern is the implementation of a variety of visual novelties, ranging from stroboscopic stereoscopy to computer-manipulated video feedback. This screening will include a large range of their work, both collaborative and individual, as well as a variety of found films and videos from their private collections.

Ivan Ross 

Ivan Ross (born October 31, 1982 in Eden, North Carolina) is an American filmmaker. While he began making videos and films much earlier, his first notable work was a three-part series entitled "Clean-Shaven Man," starring Matt Robinette. This work, focused on an anemic high-school student, was the first video to exemplify Ross' interest in subverted narrative structure and biographic allusion. (wikipedia bio contiunes here)

Michael Nason (website here)
Michael Nason is a filmmaker and musician currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Since graduating from Bard College in 2005 he has worked on project ranging from experimental and music videos to westerns to documentaries. In 2007 he founded International Waters Films and wrote, directed and Produced an hour long musical entitled “Journey to the Very Heart of the Constitution” with music he wrote and performed under the moniker ‘International Waters.’ His 2005 experimental film “Nature’s Bounty” won the “Maya Deren award for cinematic excellence” at Bard College and was featured in the 2006 Cinematexas Film Festival in Austin, Texas. He is available for freelance editing and videography work.

Jesse McLean
McLean was born in Philadelphia and studied art at Oberlin College. She was employed at Pittsburgh Filmmakers (a prominent media arts center dedicated to experimental cinema) for six years. Currently, McLean is pursuing her MFA in Moving Image at University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Eternal Quarter Inch - Synopsis: Rising fundamentalism and a government that cites faith to defend war actions have helped grow a desperate society. Dipping between ecstasy and despair, transcendence and absurdity, this movie journeys to a hidden space where you can lose your way, lose yourself in the moment, lose your faith in a belief system. An exhausted and expectant crowd waits on this narrow span. It is not a wide stretch, but it can last forever.

Gretchen Neidert
Teresa Foley is an award-winning video artist and digital media arts educator. She received her BA in English Literature from Duquesne University. She studied filmmaking, video production, and Balinese painting and woodcarving techniques as an independent student. Her motion pictures have screened internationally, and she has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and The Pittsburgh Foundation.

T Foley
Teresa Foley is an award-winning video artist and digital media arts educator. She received her BA in English Literature from Duquesne University. She studied filmmaking, video production, and Balinese painting and woodcarving techniques as an independent student. Her motion pictures have screened internationally, and she has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Foley’s presently utilizes her combined experience as a video artist, community educator and arts-administrator to lead a pilot initiative called the Pittsburgh Creativity Project. The Project is housed within the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, and is funded by The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Olivia Ciummo
For the last decade Olivia Ciummo has been making films and videos that have shown locally, nationally and internationally. She also teaches time-based media developing ideas to help young people think about and make media that is socially thoughtful and influenced by being literate in the language of motion pictures. She is a huge fan of local cinema group Jefferson Presents. She has moved recently to peruse her MFA in Moving Image Studies at The University of Illinois at Chicago. She was born in Pittsburgh PA the year was1980.

Link ( John E. Smith) East Lansing, Michigan
Weirdamation - 13 minutes (1995) super 8 motion picture film expermental animation film with stop motion images with classical music/abundant music.
Visual Abstract Movements of Kent, Ohio- (2008) 10 minutes Abstact film shot in Kent, Ohio with spit-screen and inverted effects of moving images at diffirent speeds.