Category: Multimedia Features

The Kodak Moment

As part of The Florida Review and Aquifer: TFR Online’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and Latinx contributors, we are featuring the work of multi-media artist, theorist, and historian Michael Betancourt. We will feature one video by Betancourt every week until October 15th, starting today with The Kodak Moment. Betancourt’s work will also be featured in the upcoming fall print issue of The Florida Review.

 

The silent film actress Mae Murray, known as the “girl with bee-stung lips,” appears in fancy dress, pouting and flirting with the audience. Hers is an archetypal image of white feminine beauty from the start of the twentieth century, a form that was already old when the source film was shot in 1922, here glitched and fragmented—yet remaining coherently recognizable throughout this movie. The music is from a vintage 1920 recording of inventor, visual music pioneer, and symphony piano soloist Mary Hallock-Greenewalt playing Chopin’s Nocturne in G Major.

Share

Our Pool

Our Pool is about the space in-between. Digitizing my family’s VHS collection of home movies was an experience I don’t think I could forget (an experience ironically filled with moments I didn’t remember). Some of the tapes featured family members I had never met or only met once or twice. Others, like this short clip of my mother, father, and siblings in my grandparent’s pool, affectionately labeled “Our Pool,” brought back a swell of memories. One part haunting, another exhilarating; nostalgia meets revelation in the space between screen and memory: boy and girl: self and family.

Share

Two Videos by Carl Knickerbocker

 

Visual account of an audio visit to a convenience store.

 

 

I got Apple TV. Periscope came free. I got a little infatuated with Periscope. Made this short. On separate evenings recorded visual then audio Periscope broadcasts.

Share

The Whole Speaks

An experimental documentary about a modern-day blacksmith and wordsmith, Nelms Creekmur. A text excerpt from his novel, NERBO (from the Italian meaning vigor) provides the backbone for the placement of the moving images, which were shot in his workshop in Atlanta.

 

Video by Caroline Rumley

Text by Nelms Creekmur

Share

The Anachronist

The Anachronist is an interactive narrative set in the year 1596 in which a woman named Anna is set to be burned at the stake. What will be her fate? Your choices will help decide. It is republished with permission by the author from http://peterlevine.ws/anachronist/

 

View The Anachronist

Share

The Word of Several Million Years

A meditation on shifting ideas of being home: where it begins and ends. Of being right and wrong: how we lie about the difference.

 

Animation, music, and sound by Morgan Joseph Hamilton

Share

City of Cobwebs

City of Cobwebs is an interactive narrative built using the open source tool Twine. It tells the story of a person wandering a city, in search of his/her sister.

View City of Cobwebs

Share

Daughters of a Revolution

“Daughters of a Revolution” is published in cooperation with the Self Narrate project, and the in-video “subscribe” button connects with their site. To subscribe to Aquifer, please click the orange RSS button at the bottom of the page.

 

Share

Timelord Dreaming

You wake in the middle of the night with a terrible pain radiating from your lower side up to your chest. An ambulance is called, and you’re rationed ever increasing doses of morphine on your way to the hospital. In the EW, a heart attack is ruled out but the mystery intensifies. Until a CT scan reveals the truth…

 

“You”, in this case, was the author, who, with the kindness of a Dr Who understudy and other medical staff at the Mater Hospital, Brisbane, survived a urgent operation and had many medicated days to reflect on an often surreal experience.

 

Timelord Dreaming uses “tweetems”, microtexts with Internet call-outs, to recreate one man’s journey through the parallel universes of patient and personal identity. If you’ve ever been hospitalised, you’ll find much that is familiar – and not always comfortable – here.

Book Excerpt

To browse the excerpt in full-screen, click this icon at the top of the PDF viewer:  Full-screen activation icon
 

Share

Hula

https://youtu.be/aPRr4yBh3P0

Share

Growing Up a Haitian Immigrant in the United States

“Growing Up A Haitian in the United States” is published in cooperation with the Self Narrate project, and the in-video “subscribe” button connects with their site. To subscribe to Aquifer, please click the orange RSS button at the bottom of the page.

 

Share

The Best Life Is One Lived for Others

“The Best Life is One Lived for Others” is published in cooperation with the Self Narrate project, and the in-video “subscribe” button connects with their site. To subscribe to Aquifer, please click the orange RSS button at the bottom of the page.

 

Share