Naomi Uman

The Tin Woodman's Home Movie #2: California Poppy Reserve, Antelope Valley

Naomi Uman, Lee Lynch

A three-dimensional narrative enacted at the California Poppy Reserve. It’s part of Mike Plante's Lunchfilm series of commissioned shorts (made for the cost of a lunch between Plante and filmmakers, Naomi Uman and Lee Lynch).

Leche

Naomi Uman

Examines details of the lives of a rural Mexican family. The film was hand-processed in buckets to dry on the clothesline.

removed

Naomi Uman

Ingrid Steeger, Hans Walter Clasen

Starting with a piece of vintage porn, filmmaker Naomi Uman painstakingly removed each female figure from the footage using nail polish remover, leaving a striking absence where there's usually a fleshy presence. Uman's celebrated film is a smart retort to pornography's obsessive gaze at the female body.

Unnamed Film

Naomi Uman

Another kind of utopia is presented in the films of Naomi Uman, whose search for her family roots in the Ukraine led her to move to the small village of Legedzine. In "Unnamed Film", she shoots the old bubushka ladies as they expertly prepare pickles, pick vegetables, and sing odes to vodka. Shot on 16mm with non-sync sound, it has an intimate, handmade quality, only heightened by the use of explanatory inter-titles in place of subtitles. Uman’s Ukrainain was weak, so she wanted the viewer to have the same experience as she did, just getting the gist of things. As with Uruphong’s work, there is a nostalgia for the old ways, which were self-sufficient but took an incredible toll on the body. The bubushkas complain about their aching backs and the never-ending poverty, spiking any drift towards romanticization.

Private Movie

Naomi Uman

This love story in three parts recounts the amorous journeys of one woman, in love with places, pets, men, and nostalgia.

Mala Leche

Naomi Uman

A sequel to Leche, this film follows members of the same family now living in California's agricultural Central Valley. Through economic struggles and familial growing pains, the family relies on traditional values to navigate a complex environment of immigrant working life and cultural alienation.

Clay

Naomi Uman

This film explores the idea of the consistency of land use over time. In the exact location of where the filmmaker is living and realizing this project, trypillian people lived over 5,000 year ago. A modern day, post soviet brick factory in the village uses the exact same process to make bricks that the trypillian people used to make pots. Through this same process, and the unexplained burning of the trypillian homes, we have fired clay remnants of their presence in this village in very large numbers. A reknowned local archeologist talks about these people and their relationship to land, clay and black gold.

Video Diary

Naomi Uman

The director turns the camera on herself, chronicling her decision to relocate (and the accompanying doubts and anxieties), her friendships with the village babushkas, and her undercover attempts to enter the cloistered world of the local Hasidic community.

Hand Eye Coordination

Naomi Uman

The film tells the story of its own making.

Kalendar

Naomi Uman

Kalendar obliquely tells the story of language acquisition. The filmmaker, struggling to learn a new language, comes to understand that the names of the months of the year have concrete manifestations.

I Saw Bones

Naomi Uman, Kate Haug

A collection of experimental shorts by female directors curated by Rita Gonzalez and features the shorts Bathing the Baby by Semefo, Taxidermy by Eva Aridijis, I, Bear by Helen Mirra Self Dial by Caroline Koebel, Removed by Naomi Uman, Deep Creep by Kate Haug, and Hawi by Ximena Cuevas.