Documentary Films by Paul Fiesta Featured at BlackRock (VIDEO)

BlackRock Center for the Arts’ On Screen/In Person film series for the 2014-15 season final screening takes place April 11 at 8 p.m. with two shorts by internationally-acclaimed director Paul Festa, Tie It Into My Hand and The Glitter Emergency. Both films are experimental in nature and follow the story of an artist who can no longer create art the way they used to due to an injury. Ticktes are $5 to each film screening and can be purchased in person, over the phone by calling 240.912.1058 or online at blackrockcenter.org.

At once entertaining and deeply insightful, Tie It Into My Hand is an unprecedented look at the life of an artist, told entirely through interviews with pre-eminent directors, filmmakers, visual artists, writers and performers, including Alan Cumming, Barbara Hammer, and Harold Bloom, among many others. The filmmaker, Paul Festa, sets his interactions with the artists in the context of a fake violin lesson while using his personal struggle to play the violin despite a chronic hand injury as the catalyst for dialogue.

Immediately following the screening, there will be a panel discussion concerning the film and the subjects that it raises.

A 1920s-style screwball silent short film, The Glitter Emergency follows a peg-leg ballerina’s (played by Matthew Simmons) struggle to overcome her disability in pursuit of artistic fulfillment. Starring members of the San Francisco Ballet and San Francisco’s legendary drag troupe The Cockettes, The Glitter Emergency is a story of fearing the thing you want more than anything else, of running from your desires, of fantasty and humiliation, and of love, evil, and seduction. The Glitter Emergency has received awards from the Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood (Best Experimental Film), Reelout Queer Film and Video Festival (Best Short Narrative), Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles (Best Musical Score), California Film Award (Best California Short).

Trailer, The Glitter Emergency

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