Maïa Cybelle Carpenter is an experimental film-artist and curator born and raised between New York and France. She studied contemporary experimental music at the McGill University Conservatory of Music in Montreal, graduated with a BA in Women's Studies/Film from Barnard College, Columbia University in 1997, and has an MFA in Experimental Film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2001.
Maïa has taught hand-processing and alternative film technique workshops and given artist lectures at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Academy of Arts in San Francisco, at Phil Hoffman's Independent Image-Making Residence in Ontario, and at private photo studios in Chicago.
Right now, Maïa is working on a short film about consumption and the libidinal economy. She is currently curating and writing a text on physically manipulated landscape films from North America that will be premiered in 2001.
Entirely hand-processed and hand-painted. This film visually evokes a series of fantasy maps and the imaginary 'sites' visited by following the paths laid out. The process of the film can be interpreted as the content of the film, however, metaphorically it depicts the impossibility of concretely mapping disease in the human body, especially the emotional consequences. The degradation of the emulsion through bleaching is a parallel to the slow degradation that occurs in the body stricken with cancer. The seemingly uncontrolled application of color is an attempt to show the disjunction between the disease and attempts to control/map it out.
Screened: Anthology Film Archives, Ontario Cinematheque, Blinding Light Cinema, Squeaky Wheel Media, Bard College, Bates College, MacAllister College, Women in the Director's Chair, Art Institute of Chicago, Faits de Lumiére (video), Sarah Lawrence Experimental Film Festival, Chicago Filmmakers.
1998, 16mm, color/so, 10m, $40 - xenon print available by request
A hand-processed and optically printed film. I manipulate the film process to disrupt viewing expectations on a textual and aesthetic level. This repositions the subject and discourse of gender ambiguity available in the gaze. Specifically, I attempt to interrupt and re-shape the triadic gaze operating between the subject, viewer and filmic apparatus. By shifting the discourse of the gaze, the film implicates viewers in the gazes operating between the lesbian filmmaker and her self-identified butch subjects. Screenings include: San Francisco Cinematheque, OutFest (LA), RoARaTio, Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, MIX BRASIL, Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, IMMAGINARIA (Bologna).
2000, 16mm, color/si, 7m, $35
Optically printed, hand processed and painted. Horizontal and vertical light as recorded and manipulated on the blackness and lightness of hi-contrast film. The film attempts to remove the Form of abstraction from Matter and thus places the viewer in a virtual temporo-space. The last minute of film is comprised of clear leader leading into the light of the projector with no film running through it.
2001, 16mm, color/si, 8m, $35
"A document in the form of a portrait. Shot in June 2000 at Phil Hoffman's Independent Image-Making Workshop, this film stays close to the participants and the film medium itself as they work on their projects. With Becka Barker, Helen Hill, Deirdre Logue, Kelly Krotine, Alexis Rubenstein (1975-2002), and Karyn Sandlos. Thanks to Phil Hoffman, Sebastjan Henrickson and LIFT. "
2005 16mm, b&w, silent, 8 min., $40 Rental
