Industriance™Shorts: Manifest Destiny
Documentaries, animation and experimental films about the ongoing attempts to conquer the world, and about the people and places left in the wake.

*** Buy Tickets ***
Saturday, September 8th, 2007
8:30 - Live Music by Sean Lee & The Masquerades
9:00 - Movies Begin

On the roof of The Old American Can Factory
CLICK for DIRECTIONS
232 Third Street @ Third Avenue
Gowanus, Brooklyn (Between Carroll gardens and Park Slope)
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.
Tickets -$8 at the door or online
Presented in partnership with - IFC.com, New York magazine &
XØ Projects, Inc

Watch other Industriance™ shorts on IFC.com:
Desert Suburb Vegas Suburb Desert | Vacancy | Financial Advice | Did I Tell You? | Devil's Canyon | Dies Irae |Harrachov|

INDUSTRIANCE™ - Manifest Destiny
Many people take for granted the basic functions of our homes, our lawns (Gimme Green), our roads (Market Street & Dies Irae), our shopping centers (The Mall). We accept the necessity of dominating nature (El Cerco) -- for shelter, food, fuel, waste disposal (Garbage Dreams). In cities, we tear down buildings with fickle changes in neighborhoods (Vacancy), squandering both the history and the resources that went into them. Meanwhile, civilization stretches farther and farther into the mountains (Lao Shan, Lao Yin) and deserts (Desert Suburb Vegas Desert), forever changing the natural landscape, and perhaps our own psyches (Devil's Canyon & Did I Tell You??).

The central idea of the INDUSTRIANCE™ series is to examine the way the built environment affects the way we live. This stunning program of short films includes both quirky and serious documentaries, humorous and horrifying experimental films, astonishing and exciting animation. As a film festival that lives in the liminal spaces of urbanity, we are excited, and perhaps obliged, to explore on screen the way our society builds and destroys, and the way our structures help us survive or make us suffer. This enticing and thought-provoking program is a deconstruction of our constructions, and a celebration of our creation. For better or worse, herein is the fulfillment of our destiny.

Desert Suburb Vegas Suburb Desert
(James Cho | Henderson, NV | 1:00)
This short video is about the utter boredom of Las Vegas, the filmmaker's home town.

Vacancy (Brandon Walley | Detroit, MI | 6:30)
A moment in Detroit’s history, captured before it is forgotten.

The Mall (Jonathan Ben Efrat | Israel | 12:30)
The Mall reveals the surreal routine of an abandoned Israeli shopping mall, which is home to hundreds of Palestinian illegal workers.

Lao Shan, Lao Yin (Old Mountains, Old Shadows)
(Johanna Vasquez Arong | China | 6:00)
While an always increasing number of young people move to Peking to realize their dreams, what do the old people living in a town hidden in the mountains 90 km from the capital dream?

Tyger (Guillherme Marcondes | France | 4:30)
Set in Sao Paulo’s chaotic urban landscape, this film is a loose adaptation of William Blake’s poem “Tyger.”

Gimme Green (Isaac Brown & Eric Flagg | Yulee, FL | 27:00)
Gimme Green is a humorous look at the American obsession with the residential lawn and the effects it has on our environment, our wallets, and our outlook on life. From the limitless subdivisions of Florida to sod farms in the arid Southwest, Gimme Green peers behind the curtain of the 40 Billion industry that fuels our nation’s largest irrigated crop- the lawn.

El Cerco (The Fence) (Ricardo Iscar & Nacho Martin | Spain | 12:00)
Every year thousands of tuna fish migrate to the Mediterranean Sea. Men chase them in a ritual of blood and death: Three hundred tuna fish are trapped into a ring of nets. Terrified, the animals start jumping and beating their tails on the water surface turning that circle into a huge water curtain. Images of nature abused and overwhelmed.

Dies Irae (Jean-Gabriel Periot | France | 10:00)
"Dies Irae" are the opening words of the Sequence of the Latin Requiem Mass, which in full reads, "Remember that I am the cause of your journey. Do not forget me on that day." The quickly alternating sequence of images of roads, railways, passages, subways, airports, etc., shot all over the world, acts as a lovely and frightening allegory for an individual's journey through life, and for mankind's manufactured "progress."

Did I Tell You?? (Marianne Hayden | Los Angeles, CA | 5:18)
The experience of a woman’s dream cycle, as placed into a landscape of highway overpasses and abandoned buildings.

Devil’s Canyon (Kelly Sears | Glendale, CA | 6:10)
Devil's Canyon weaves together a narrative growing out of a collection of abandoned images and super 8 landscapes of the American West. Mechanical horses, a doomed automobile town, and distressed cowboys are combined into a tale of American tragedy.

Market Street (Tomonari Nishikawa | San Francisco, CA | 5:00)
A dazzling trip, one frame at a time, down one of the San Francisco's central streets.

Garbage Dreams (Mai Iskander | Egypt & UK | 8:00)
This film is brought to us courtesy of the Media that Matters Film Festival.


THE MUSIC: Sean Lee & The Masquerades

With warm, booming vocals, and myriad instrumentation, Sean Lee & The Masquerades truly depict an original sound that can be enjoyed by any generation of listeners. The quartet, hailing from Philadelphia, is the birth child of the charismatic yet humble, Sean Lee. The band delivers a rustic sound with smart and personal lyrics, an unusual feat for someone 21 years young. Sean Lee & The Masquerades make honest, fun music that will appeal to any music fan. If you don’t trust us then here’s what Sean's Nanna has to say: “His music rivals my matzah ball soup in family lore,” which is odd because Sean isn’t Jewish.

The Apes Have Escaped is their new album. Listen to tracks from the album on MySpace and read below some of the things people are saying:

“When it comes to songwriting, The Masquerades aren’t faking anything. All five tracks on this EP are insanely catchy. Sean Lee’s vocals and lyrics recall Elvis Costello (with a hint of Tom Petty). The music is bright and poppy; the harmonies are perfectly sloppy. Watch for these guys.”
--- Origivation Magazine (5 Stars)

"Vague echoes from the Beatles but with a sound all of their own..."
--- The Delicate Art of Noise Pollution Podcast