We’re happy to be in Seattle tomorrow night! Tickets can be purchased here: http://localsightings.nwfilmforum.org/?page_id=1079
Looking forward to being part of the NW Film Forum’s film festival in Seattle in a few weeks! 9 plays on Tuesday, Sept 30 at 9pm.
9 is heading to San Francisco this November to be part of an amazing weekend of dance inspired films. Ticket sales and specific dates TBD!
Ticket sales are up! I’m thrilled to have my mad little coming-of-age fantasy in the line-up on Sunday June 1st at 12:30pm. Hope to see all your shining faces in the audience!
http://www.danceswithfilms.com/slt_9.html
(gorgeous poster design by David McLaughlin)
And another announcement! 9’s California premiere will be at the prestigious Dances With Films in Hollywood, CA the first week of June. Dances With Films - recently voted one of MovieMaker Magazine’s Coolest Film Festivals in the World also has the distinction of being the only festival in Los Angeles on the Top 25 list. I’m thrilled to attend this festival and celebrate 9 with anyone in the SoCal vicinity!
Italian wine and 9! Our film begins her adventures through the European film festival circuit at the Salento International Film Festival in Southern Italy. Buon viaggio!
9 is awarded Best Oregon Short Film at 9’s premiere! With this boost of love and enthusiasm from home, I am now ready to take this show on the road. Pack your bags Baba Yaga!
I always say that all the hours and sweat of creation is done for nothing more than the pure joy of creating. And for the most part, this holds true throughout the entire process. And then there is that one crazy night when the package is unwrapped and is naked before a sea of strangers, and suddenly I hang everything on a few kind words. A mad hunger takes over to know that after viewing the creation, one heart will thump differently, one mind will grow one new question.
So be it! 9’s premiere was a heart swelling success. Here are a few reviews and comments pouring into my inbox:
“Kimberly put together a very powerful, poignant film indeed. Her movie definitely hits a chord - multiple chords; it integrates many vectors and dimensions which merit and fuel further discussion.” - OBT Trustee Ajay M.
“Smashing work! Made with such confidence and grace, it has something of Kubrick in it, quite Clockworky Orangey but with more heart. I can see a definite haunting whimsy in [Kimberly’s] work that is very distinct and skillfully realized. It’s dark and deviant, innocent, romantic, sensual, simple, complex. It manages to be so many things!" - Short Film Nights programmer and filmmaker Brian Harley
“[9] has a very beautiful, Hollywood-like aesthetic to it. The imagery comes from a deeper well, and when that resonates with other people that’s when the magic starts.” S.W. Conser: The Film Show
“Such a gorgeous piece with stunning shots and powerful message. Kimberly’s obsession with detail and composition pairs nicely with her story (but I could rave about her film all day!). I’m excited to see where it goes in the world.” - filmmaker Stephanie Hough
“9 is absolute magic!” - artist Warren Dawn
“A shout out for Kimberly Warner. [Her film] is beautifully shot and if you like ballet but have wondered what it is that young ballerinas go through, see this film.” Dmae Roberts: Stage & Studio
“Kimberly Warner’s 9 is stunningly crafted and gorgeous. Haunting, and strange, and just so completely, completely beautiful.” - filmmaker Christian Kimbell
“Head and shoulders above the rest. 9 was glorious.” - Nancy Hogarth
“Truly a work of art!” - Tracie Erlandson
“It was WAY more than what I thought I would see. Everything was captivating. Time flew. I really enjoyed [Willa Clare Truby’s] acting. Fact is, Kimberly found quite a cast to create a piece that we can cherish for years to come.” - Dr. Bruce Breckenridge
"9 was exquisite… [including actress] Willa Claire’s ability to show such depth without ever saying a word. She is open and honest and I found it very easy to get swept up in the joy as well as the darkness and pain of the life of a young performing artist. It is truly remarkable that she can portray this so effectively at her age. She has a maturity beyond her years.” - Nanette Anderson
Almost a year to the date an idea was born. A film was made. Next stop, big screen. Announcement just two weeks away.
Nearing the finish line of a year devoted to the making of 9, I’m finding more time to reflect on the tireless and miraculous journey I embarked on 12 months ago. Born from not just a script, but memories and experiences that shaped my childhood, the story of 9 drew me into a year long inquiry into the cultural conditioning of the feminine and how 9’s young heroine confronts these conditions and then integrates them into the larger context of wholeness.
Ballet is 9‘s vehicle to tell the story of how perfectionism and order can distort and even maim the creative expression when out of balance. In the 15th century, ballet was born in the European courts as part of the cultural rebirth that was the Renaissance. This rebirth included a significant shift in human perception. Philosophy, science and medicine were expressing a new paradigm of Reason. The feminine was regarded with suspicion as an inferior and unruly force, like nature itself, and further reduced to an unimportant status with masculine values of reason and control seen as superior. Death, nature, woman, the body and sexuality were often clumped together as things to be controlled and overcome. It follows that around the same time the Church had a heightened emphasis on the virginal feminine as the ideal woman which further encouraged the split between spirit and flesh. Early forms of ballet became an expression of this split, further emphasizing virginal perfection over carnal earthiness. Devotion to Mary as universal mother continued to spread and some believe that many of these early forms of ballet were just that - devotional dances to the Virgin.
Transcendence. Idealism. Purity. Reason. Order. Many young maidens today wouldn’t use these words to describe their own adolescent pursuits. But when taken to extremes, they can feed the perfectionism pervasive in our modern culture, inhibiting a natural maturation into an embodied feminine wholeness. Our preoccupation with order has sequestered chaos and mystery to the darker corners of our psyche.
And for hundreds of years, with the help the church as well as Disney, we often personify this “other half” - death, chaos, darkness, mystery and destruction - as the archetypal witch. The Black Madonna. In 9, ballerina meets witch. Maiden meets Crone.
In many ways, the unexpected death of my father when I was 18 was my own introduction to the witch. Suddenly my shiny fortress of perfection built from pointe shoes and leotards felt unsteady and false. However, this violent and harsh encounter with the unknown only reinforced my need to make sense of the world, so I traded slippers for science. Pliés for reason. Instead of welcoming the wisdom of the Crone into my home, I locked her out.
My father’s death may have formed a crack in my foundation but it would take another decade for the house to fall. I found a new passion in pursuing perfect health and chasing degree programs in medicine, all the while my own body crumbling under the stress of avoiding the inevitable - the emotions that didn’t have answers, the mess I felt inside that didn’t respond to pills or herbs. As Jungian analyst Marion Woodman notes in her book Addiction to Perfection, “Perfection is static, unlike life which is constantly changing and moving. Therefore, perfection is more closely related to death than it is to life, and the pursuit of perfection can be seen as the unconscious pursuit of death.” So on the one hand, in the pursuit of my dream of fulfillment, I did everything in my will to avoid the pain of the unknown but on the other hand, within that very darkness lived the vitality and passion that I needed to bring my dreams to fruition.
When we avoid the darkness we are also cutting ourselves off from a limitless reservoir of intuition, insight and energy that are burning at its core. Many of us live entire lives without really immersing ourselves in this heat or use addiction to skirt around its cathartic edges. When 9’s protagonist comes face to face with her own transformation, her street that was once full of magic, serendipity, aliveness and booming orchestral notes is nothing more than an unresponsive, empty city block. She is small and insignificant, no longer in control, and the street answers back with silence. Baba Yaga, 9’s archetypal Crone, appears in our heroine’s journey to challenge her to step into the fire. To go beyond an immature, dualistic stage of development and into a world that embraces opposites.
She meets the witch and opens the door.
We are both perfection and chaos. Light and darkness. Our journey is full of understanding and meaninglessness. We are made of magic and wonder and we are also water and carbon. Our entire human existence is this duality. To dance is to embody this dichotomous tension, constantly listening and responding to the opposing forces that live in and around us. As Nietzsche once said, “The tree that would grow to heaven MUST send its roots to hell.” The trees have been doing it for millions of years. So why are we so afraid?
So with arms stretched to the cosmos and feet grounded into the earth, the maiden and the crone fall into step. The silent sky is their orchestra. And we, the fleshy, exquisitely graceful and messy nerve endings of consciousness, become the dance, dancing itself.
Let there be color.
(Using a fancy box of crayons with Jalal Jemison at Portland’s Mission Control)
I am thrilled to announce that actress Orianna Herrman has brought her blazing talent to the voice of 9’s stern dance instructor, Miss M…
Since Orianna is in LA and I’m up here in the wild north, we communicated about the character via email, I sent over a few youtube clips with examples of Royal Ballet master class instructors, and worked via Skype with the actual footage and text. Sounds challenging? Not really… with Orianna’s wicked versatility, consideration and intuitive sense, she nailed the performance in one take. In fact, it was so good, that while I was listening at my desk, I found all my old ballet neurosis coming back as she brought the text to life. My posture straightened, my toes pointed, and I found myself both longing for her approval and fearing her scrutiny. PTSD anyone?
I am delighted to have reconnected with Orianna and am already looking forward to the next project when she and I can really dig our heels into something longer term.
You can enjoy her reel above, or better yet… rent her latest feature film, James Westby’s Rid of Me, tonight. Orianna spent 4 months on Scott Feinberg’s (The Hollywood Reporter) Oscar watch list under the category of Best Supporting Actress for her role of Trudy in Showtime’s 2012 release of Rid of Me.
Behold, a synesthete is among us.
What a treasure it was to receive an email from 9’s sound designer, Tim Harrison, a few days ago that shared a link to his “visual sound design treatment.” Wait. Visual sound design? A lover of boundary blurring myself, this idea thrills. And then on further investigation, not only thrills, but makes ridiculous sense. Suddenly all those months of narrative conflict and development are mapped for both my eyes and ears so I can sit back and understand the tension, the ache and the resolve not just in my mind but in my bones.
Tim’s process is very much inspired by filmmaker David Sonnenschein and he is presently using 9’s script and David’s theories and strategies as a teaching tool for his students in Barcelona. http://www.sonicstrategies.com
Tim’s next treatment will be delivered with a dinner menu and a scratch and sniff timeline as well.
Cardboard Castle, an inventive motion production studio in Portland, gets a huge nod from the great Baba Yaga. A pain-free operation for everyone involved, Cardboard Castle’s designers executed the task at hand with surgical precision. With talent, vision and radiant bedside manner, I would highly recommend this team for any of your practical or otherworldly motion production needs.
Headed by the creative spirit of Cooper Johnson, Cardboard Castle is a motion production studio specializing in imaginative, high-end visual content. Faithful to the magic of the imaginary, artisans of the practical, they make castles that are real foundations. Armed with brave minds and big hearts, they turn the everyday on its head, infusing it with the wonder and playful spirit of daringly imagined worlds.
Cardboard Castle is the natural extension of rich artistry that has guided Cooper Johnson throughout his life. His childhood – spent in the wilds of Alaska – was filled with long winter nights and endless summer days drawing and creating. This gift soon found expression in other places and mediums—from Cooper’s bohemian period as a tattoo artist in Paris, to fifteen years in motion graphics artistry and filmmaking for clients from the East to the West Coast. Now settled in Portland, Oregon, he is at the helm of Cardboard Castle, from which many creative quests continue to be launched.