
Mary Beth Reed
2021Garden Path
Stan Brakhage, Mary Beth Reed
Stan Brakhage
A depiction of the creative process of hand-painting film giant, Stan Brakhage. Inspired by Monet's paintings from Giverny, Brakhage's luminous abstract painting transforms the screen into an oneiric botanical landscape. Brakhage's painted loops leap out of black and white footage of the master at work, painting and printing.
Garden Path
Richmond Study 2 - Monument Avenue
Mary Beth Reed
Abstract hand painted film inspired by statues of confederate civil war generals and president (Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Davis), scientist Matthew Fontaine Maury, and tennis legend Arthur Ashe along Monument Avenue.
Richmond Study 2 - Monument Avenue
Montessori Sword Fight
Mary Beth Reed
A young girl struggles to perfect her new found passion, swordfighting. She discovers her role model when a band of Montessori school children invite her to a demonstration given by a legendary Hollywood master. After intense training, the children's adroit sword play awakens their competitive instincts. They rebel against their teacher, and a harrowing duel ensues. The heroine faces internal turmoil, when the Montessori gang forces her to choose between her master's path and their growing power. The film combines optically printed and hand processed original and appropriated imagery.
Montessori Sword Fight
Jake Seven
Mary Beth Reed
A few lingering brush flicks, olive drops of color splitting open on the vines, the roulette ball of our random lives dropped into the basket on some universal wheel and the road keeps winding out before him like a wick, excerpts from Steve Gehrke's poem Jackson Pollock Driving.
Jake Seven
After Creation After Icebergs
Mary Beth Reed
Visual music created with paint on an 8x10 canvas, an iPad, and After Effects as if working on an early cinematic special effects machine, the optical printer. The subtle hues above the water shift as the film dives into the depths of the icebergs, surfacing once more into a kaleidoscopic landscape.
After Creation After Icebergs
Moon Streams
Mary Beth Reed
The film builds up a surface tension that seems quite rocky and solid. This surface gradually begins to crumble and a bubbling of dusty gold begins, like a geyser, to break up this tension. The surface of paints and rhythms flows with the water and everything inside of the body of work spills out until electrical creative charges accompany the liquid gold and rock. Suddenly, out of this storm comes a red and yellow explosion of warmth and creativity, spilling out over the body like a lava flow.
Moon Streams