Extinct (Single Channel Clip) from SB on Vimeo.
Extinct (Two Channel Clip) from SB on Vimeo.
Extinct is a 20 minute experimental film shot in Olympia, Washington, in collaboration with Nina Fortier. The film is a combination of documentary and poetic languages, a rendering of a dystopian parallel dimension in which
the female subjects speak, via the medium of their moving bodies, about their relationship to the body, to material, and to space. This film depicts the undercurrent of our culture—the “small violences” experienced by women, expressed by women. It was our concern as artists/directors and
performers to depict women’s experiences in their own terms rather than in the dominant “depiction” of their experience. Rather than showing the “small violences” inflicted on women, we gave our performers a platform to improvise and express their perception of contemporary life somatically.
As a collaborative gesture this film was a way of having a conversation and promoting critique, encouragement, alliances, and alternative modes of communication.
It was important to us that this film be collaborative, to dismiss the singularity of the “author,” “originator,” “source,” etc., and to see it as a way of sharing and generating. We chose to engage with direct styles of filmmaking and utilize experimental editing techniques to represent an under-expressed view
of women and the dominant mode of their depiction, designed to disengage with traditional narrative and linear forms of story-telling.
Extinct: New Choreographies in Feminism. Dir Sara Blumenthal & Nina Fortier. 20 Minutes digital & Hi-8 video.