Where to From Here
By Moonplay Cinema
www.moonplaycinema.org
Where to From HereJul 25, 2021
#20: Atlas O. Phoenix
Where to From Here podcast host Jes Reyes talks with Atlas O Phoenix (they/them/theirs), a multi-award-winning director, writer, producer, and editor who creates films that examine the dark and light places of their humanity. These films are personal, powerful, and uninhibited. Additionally, they were an actor and performer for the legendary Dykes Do Drag (2017-2020) and The Naked I series (2018/2020). Atlas' current film is Ordinary (2022), a documentary about their transition and mental health journey of 40+ years. It is a mini version of their film Beautiful Boi (in production).
Episode Links:
Instagram: @@beautiful_boi_atlas_phoenix
Website: https://www.beautifulboi.com/beautiful-boi-documentary
Genderful Podcast: https://genderfulpodcast.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes. Original recording date: January 8, 2023.
You can listen to this podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you stream podcasts.
Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com www.moonplaycinema.org
#19: Beth Peloff
Jes talks with Beth Peloff, a video maker whose work encompasses animation,
documentary, and the intermingling of the two. In her animation work, she focuses
on 2D stop motion and computer-assisted animation using materials such as sand,
buttons, and watercolor-painted paper cutouts. Her films have screened throughout
the United States, including at the Athens Film and Video Festival, the Walker Art
Center, and the Cadence Video Poetry Festival in Seattle, WA, where her film won an
award for best collaboration. She was the recipient of a 2017 Jerome Foundation
Film and Video grant.
Through her video production company Green Jeans Media, she produces videos
and animations for nonprofit clients. She also teaches animation and video editing at
community-based organizations. She lives in Louisville, KY with her husband and
two cats.
Instagram: @wheretofromherepodcast
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: August 13, 2022
Links:
http://greenjeansmedia.com/about/index.html
#18: CC Stanhill
Jes Reyes speaks and laughs with CC Stanhill, a paper-based animator working in Minneapolis. Their films explore themes of queerness and fluidity. At least, that's what they think they're exploring. It's mostly weird shapes moving around in fancy patterns. They were once described by a prominent person as "quite a lucid sort of fellow."
Links/Social:
minnanimate.com (festival website)
#minnanimate (festival hashtag)
vimeo.com/cstanhill (personal website)
@cstanhill (Instagram handle)
Podcast info:
Instagram: @wheretofromherepodcast
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: August 28, 2022
#17: Valérie Déus
Jes Reyes speaks with Valérie Déus, a poet, film programmer, and radio show host. Her work has been featured in Minnesota Women’s Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Midway, the St. Paul Almanac, The BeZine, A Garden of Black Joy anthology, and Under Purple Skies: A Minneapolis Anthology. Her most recent essay is featured in What We Hunger For - Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food and Family edited by Sun Yung Shin and published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. When she's not writing, she is the host of Project 35, a local low-fi radio show on KRSM radio. She curates FilmNorth’s Cinema Lounge and is the Shorts Programmer for the Provincetown International Film Festival.
Instagram: @wheretofromherepodcast
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: July 26, 2022
Links:
https://www.valeriedeus.com
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2022/filmnorth-cinema-lounge
#16: Merit Thursday
Jes Reyes speaks with Merit Thursday, a local artist of the Twin Cities. Merit Thursday is an experimental animator, video artist, and textile artist. Their process is highly material-based, and they are fascinated by the human body. A member of the LGBTQ+ community, Thursday's works also focus on the queer identity, the queer fascination with artifice and fabrication, and the natural/unnatural forces that shape us.
Instagram: @wheretofromherepodcast
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: July 30, 2022
Links:
Weird Stuff Only Submission Link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeqKPOY_aURnmXDhNeXKJhR6gEVUUSIJNs1YdNAAFGuQSjg4Q/viewform
#15 Xiaolu Wang & Naomi Ko
Xiaolu Wang interviews award-winning filmmaker, writer, performance artist, and cultural producer, Naomi Ko. It's clean with some adult topics and cussing.
Show links:
Check out FAWK at The Ordway on April 16: https://www.fawkollective.com/2022ordway
Cinema Lounge: https://filmnorth.org/cinema-lounge/
Learn more about Xiaolu here: https://www.hellox140lu.com
Learn more about Naomi here: http://www.konaomi.com/
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: December 21, 2021
#14: Kal Yelle
Jes speaks with artist Kal Yelle about their film Trans, film theory, and what's next, especially after being a recent film student graduate.
Kal Yelle (they/them) is a DIY filmmaker and documentarian who enjoys crafting narratives using experimental techniques. They have a background in analog film (specifically 16mm and Super 8) and cultural theory. Most of their films - fiction and documentary - revolve around the stories and lived experiences of queer and trans individuals.
"I myself am both queer and non-binary. One of my main interests is figuring how to ethically and respectfully represent the truths and stories of individuals belonging to marginalized groups on camera, which I intend to explore in my ongoing work.”
A recent University of Minnesota Graduate, they shoot using a mix of analog 16mm and digital footage, and also like to incorporate 2D animation in their projects.
Learn more about Kal here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 25, 2021
#13: Kym McDaniel
In this epsiode, Kym McDaniel join Jes Reyes in conversation.
Kym McDaniel (she/her) is an experimental filmmaker, media collaborator, choreographer, and performer. Her films have shown at Slamdance, Antimatter, Chicago Underground Film Festival, ADF’s Movies by Movers, and selected exhibitions at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University, and the London Bow Arts Gallery, among others.
She began filmmaking after a head injury and resulting chronic illnesses forced her to reconsider her relationship to dance and the body. Her process is influenced by her studies in dance and psychology. Disability and queer movement practices inform her gaze and current practice as a filmmaker, teacher, and mover. She is an AmSAT trained Alexander Technique teacher with a special interest in hypermobility and trauma.
She has an MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is currently an Assistant Professor in Cinema at Binghamton University. She is an Advanced Certificate in Disabilities Studies candidate at the City University of New York.
Epsiode transcription can be found here.
Learn more about Kym here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 23, 2021
#12: The Story of Moonplay
What is Moonplay? In this mini episode, Jes explains this very question.
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 25, 2021
#11: Simone LeClaire
Jes talks it up with Simone LeClaire!
Simone LeClaire is a woman filmmaker and a white queer person who has lived her life across vastly different Minnesotan cultures, feeling simultaneously odd and at home in all of them. In her pleasure-based, feminist, and anticapitalist filmmaking practice, Simone is guided by how film might facilitate healing, and how to keep creative processes healthy, truthful, and abundant. Her work most often centers on femme characters and relationships, and is highly curious about internal processes, quiet revelations, and self-reconciliation. Simone also repeatedly draws on imagery of the natural world to create peacefulness with her work. Her films tend to actively integrate both her own autobiography and the impacts of genuine, transformative collaboration, with finished films reflecting the presence of both.
With editing a central part of her filmmaking practice, Simone is the director/editor of seven narrative shorts, which have received awards and screened at over fifty film festivals around the country; currently in post-production of her debut feature, Sunflower Man, a documentary about transience, flowers, and a man living with schizo affective disorder; and collaboratively developing her first narrative feature, a heart-centered exploration of Minnesotan landscape, racialized identity, and female friendship. She currently makes her home in Minneapolis.
Learn more about Simone here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 29, 2021
#10: Maribeth Romslo
Links referenced in epsiode:
Learn more about Maribeth here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 30, 2021
#9: Lyn Corelle
Learn more about Lyn here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 20, 2021
#8: Hannah R.W. Hamalian
In this episode, Jes talks with Hannah R.W. Hamalian, an artist intrigued by how complicated the world is. In her animation and film practice she tends towards an experimental and poetic mode of expression, working with the movement of animation in collaboration with dance and landscape to represent paradox and complexity. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to aim for the emotional core of an experience and craft immersive soundscapes that create a space specifically designed for asking questions.
Learn more about Hannah here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
www.moonplaycinema.org
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 20, 2021
#7: Xiaolu Wang
Xiaolu Wang (she/they) is an emerging documentary filmmaker and a translator from the Hui Muslim Autonomous Region of China, whose practice is based in the mapping of interiority, with the use of video, poetry, memory, translations, and a decolonial lens. Their work have been screened at local venues and international film festivals in countries like Lebanon, Mexico, China, and Argentina. They contributed translations to journals including 单读, onlimbo, and Cinephila.
When they are not studying films, Xiaolu helps out at a friend's donation-based food pop-up, "The Shui Project", or reads the Tao Te Ching. They are a recipient of the 2019 Jerome Film and Media Grant, a fellow of DocX Archive Lab 2021 organized by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, and their work has been generously supported by Metropolitan Regional Arts Council of Minnesota, Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, Jerome Foundation, Women Make Movies, and UnionDocs. They live in Minneapolis with two cats, Marvin and Moto, who sleep on separate couches.
See clips from Xiaolu's films here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: September 10, 2021
#6: Season 1 Epilogue
Welcome to episode five of where to from here, a podcast series hosted by artist Jes Reyes. Its formation is both a result and a response to postponing Moonplay Cinema's first season of in-person programming due to COVID-19 safety protocols. Today's episode concludes Season One with an epilogue from Jes.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: July 25, 2021
#5: Jes with Kiera Faber, Andrea Shaker, and Molly Parker Stuart on where to from here
Welcome to episode five of where to from here, a podcast series hosted by artist Jes Reyes. Its formation is both a result and a response to postponing Moonplay Cinema's first season of in-person programming due to COVID-19 safety protocols. Today's episode features Jes in conversation with Kiera Faber, Andrea Shaker, and Molly Parker Stuart. This episode brings the group back together to reflect over Moonplay, building a consortium, and what we have created by being open to trying something different.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: January 9, 2021
#4: Jes with Kiera Faber
Welcome to episode four of where to from here, a podcast series hosted by artist Jes Reyes. Its formation is both a result and a response to postponing Moonplay Cinema's first season of in-person programming due to COVID-19 safety protocols. Today's episode features Kiera Faber.
Kiera Faber is an artist working with materiality and texture through the mediums of animated experimental film, photography, and drawing. Her auteur, award winning films are entirely crafted by hand. Each film involves extensive drawing, sculpture, and painting for sets, puppet stop motion animations, and other forms of frame-by-frame animation. Faber creates visually complex and richly evocative surreal worlds where themes of loss and trauma are explored through enigmatic abstract narratives.
Faber's work is internationally screened and exhibited at film festivals, galleries, and museums, most notably the South Bend Museum of Art, DeVos Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, George Eastman Museum, and the Walker Art Center. She received her MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop after completing a BA in Psychology from the University of Rochester. In 2018, Faber received a McKnight Fellowship in Media Arts. She has received numerous regional grants and two film production grants from the Jerome Foundation (2013, 2019). Faber currently is in production on her next animated film, The Garden Sees Fire, supported in part by the Jerome Foundation.
Faber is a Luxembourger/American and currently resides in Minnesota.
See clips from Kiera's films here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: December 19, 2020
#3: Jes with Andrea Shaker
Welcome to episode three of where to from here, a podcast series hosted by artist Jes Reyes. Its formation is both a result and a response to postponing Moonplay Cinema's first season of in-person programming due to COVID-19 safety protocols. Today's episode features Andrea Shaker.
Andrea Shaker is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict | St. John’s University. She earned her BA from Georgetown University and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign. Her films have screened at the Walker Art Center, Mizna’s Arab Film Festival, and Altered Esthetics Film Festival. Her written work home. not home. (bayt. laysa bayt.) is included in the publication Women, Citizenship, and Photographies (Liverpool University Press). She is a 2019 recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist initiative grant. She serves on the Executive Board of New Arab American Theater Works.
View clips from Andrea's film ON BAYT here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: December 5, 2020
#2: Jes with Molly Parker Stuart
Welcome to episode two of where to from here, a podcast series hosted by artist Jes Reyes. Its formation is both a result and a response to postponing Moonplay Cinema's first season of in-person programming due to COVID-19 safety protocols. Today's episode features Molly Parker Stuart.
Molly Parker Stuart is an interdisciplinary artist best known for her work in experimental video. Molly works with and within digital structures to transform the digital artifacts generated by the social structures that affect her life. Artifacts that represent difficult or oppressive experiences. This data is broken down into its constituent parts and used to create video works that speak directly to the body, to convey a whole body experience of beauty.
View a clip from Molly's work here.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: November 21, 2020
#1: Jes with Kiera Faber, Andrea Shaker, and Molly Parker Stuart on filmmaking, artistic process, uncertainty, and life and work during COVID times.
Welcome to the first episode of where to from here, a podcast series hosted by artist Jes Reyes. Its formation is both a result and a response to postponing Moonplay Cinema's first season of in-person programming due to COVID-19 safety protocols.
The podcast starts with Jes talking with Kiera Faber, Andrea Shaker, and Molly Parker Stuart. Topics include filmmaking, artistic process, uncertainty, and life and work during COVID times. Following episodes of season one include individual conversations with each artist, along with the artists coming back together to reflect on the possibilities of Moonplay and the podcast.
Follow Moonplay on Instagram: @moonplaycinema
Email: moonplaycinema@gmail.com
Theme music by Jes Reyes.
Original recording date: October 24, 2020