Rhythmic depiction of the romantic landscapes of rolling Pennsylvania farmland.
1979, S8mm, color/so, 9m, $25
Made in collaboration with Dinty Moore.
An experimental document of the thriving economic culture of rural auctions in south-central Pennsylvania. It captures the feeling of being there: the confusion, the humor, the profusion of all manner of expensive and virtually worthless merchandise, the social interaction, and the personalities of the auctioneers and the auction goers.
"Whether it's a cattle auction or a sale on the courthouse steps, there's something of a social event behind it all." - Robert Vucic, Morning Herald, Maryland
"Shows an interesting kaleidoscope of the people, the ones doing the selling, the ones doing the buying, and those who just watch." - Dave Dunkle, Public Opinion, Pennsylvania
Supported by a Youthgrant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
1980, 16mm, color/so, 24m, $70
"A fragmented narrative which pretends to be autobiographical, THE ROLE OF THE OBSERVER asks audiences ('observers') to examine themselves, who they have been and their 'roles' in the process of change, including sexual and social roles now and in childhood." - Mary Guzzy, The Independent
"Formally it reminded me of the collage work of Bruce Conner while its narrative structure seemed a cross between Stan Brakhage and Sam Fuller. There is indeed a menacing quality to the work at times explicit (the homage to The Cat People) at other times simply 'overtonal' (as Eisenstein might say). The film, in any case, is very engaging." - Bruce Jenkins
"What struck me the most, I guess, was its tendency to use a great deal of what's been happening in independent film and film criticism in recent years: the mixture of forms and modes, the use of found footage, home movies, dream ... and of course the ideas of history as construction. It seems a well-made film, put together with care, easy to look at." - Scott MacDonald, from a letter to the filmmaker
1982, 16mm, color/so, 57m, $135
A personal and at times expressive essay concerned with film education and its effect on the relationship between women and media.
"That the filmmaker is male is never disguised and has much to do with the meaning of the film. When not actually on screen, the artist's presence is made clear by a variety of image manipulations which remind the viewer that film is a physical, pliable medium. NO FAMILY PICTURES is itself an example of what it advocates - low-cost media available to everyone. It questions why small format media are not taken up more often as a tool in education, and particularly as a weapon for women to forge their own identities in the media landscape." - Cinezine, San Francisco
1983, S8mm, 22m, color/so, $65
A dimly lighted soiree. An evolving structure. Visual stories are begun but not completed. On dark evenings filled with nothing but time, surrounded by friends, Mary Shelley initiated Frankenstein in this way.
1984, 16mm, color/si, 8m, $25
The city is friendly, it talks to you in fragments. An apartment building goes up in flames, while the signs of the city speak their mind. The semiology of consumption.
1985, S8mm, color/so, 5m, $20
Some arguments are more important than others. Some arguments stay in your mind, in your memory, for a long time, no matter what their outcome. Some arguments are the turning points of relationships.
Award: SF Art Institute Film Festival
1985, 16mm, color/si, 3m, $20
A menage-a-trois that becomes a menage-a-quatre with some creative surgery.
"HAT BOXING is a fifteen-minute wicked joke. The story is carried on the soundtrack as a radio play which includes murder, attempted suicide, adultery and other indoor sports. The visuals play off the soundtrack, using children's toys and 1930s pulp comics. Underneath the mischievous wit of HAT BOXING Irwin makes some pointed comments about the illusions we go to great lengths to maintain about the ones we love." - Michael Fox, Film Month
"HAT BOXING is not only funny but represents a clever kindling of the viewer's imagination." - Kevin Thomas, The Los Angeles Times
"HAT BOXING is a hilarious send-up of the typical murder mystery. Doris, Roger and Emily are distinct characters ... who exchange clothing, identities and even bodies, as might any perverse contemporary menage-a-trois." - Will Torphy, Artweek
Supported by a grant from the NEA/AFI/Western States Foundation.
1986, 16mm, color/so, 15m, $45
"[The TALKING FILMS] employ non-camera animation, associative editing, and text written (or scratched into) the emulsion. The words may join with the other images to tell a story, or they may directly address the audience and initiate an explicit 'dialogue.' Yet while these are experimental techniques to be sure, Irwin is more interested in including the audience as a participant in exploring an assumption or unfolding a story." - Michael Fox, Film Month
"I.D.N.O. employs a collaged technique of carefully interwoven broad painterly gestures composed of image and text. Using words that blip on screen for just over a second, the technique demands intense concentration on the part of the viewer. A sound text of altered noises and garbled speech accompanies the animation and written text, creating a demanding interplay of elements." - Will Torphy, Artweek
"In cameraless, direct-marking technique, I.D.N.O. poses a series of sequential, additive queries and responses to the audience." - Anthony Reveaux, Artweek
"I.D.N.O. is challenging both visually and intellectually with the residual impact of a self-analysis as we consider how much we 'see' and 'comprehend' when we look at words and images." - Catherine Sullivan, SECA Catalogue, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Awards: Film as Art Award, Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, SF Museum of Modern Art; Humboldt Film Festival; Ann Arbor Film Festival and Tour; Chicago Experimental Film Festival; Kent State Film Festival.
1982, 16mm, color/so, 9m, $27
Speaks silently to the viewer metaphorically about power, manipulation and the complicity in all of us. "THE BIG RED AUK gives evidence of both [Irwin's] preference for humor and imagination in the medium, and the filmmaker's preoccupying love of image for its own sake, as well as of the shoe-string school of filmmaking. The three-minute work blips along spasmodically, a field in semidarkness brightened by haphazard, colored geometric figures and blurred humanoid images, centered over a recurring central flash of pithy, mostly monosyllabic text whose cerebral undercurrent is sparked by sexual innuendo." - Calvin Ahlgren, San Francisco Chronicle
"The scratched-on-celluloid text of THE BIG RED AUK creates a densely beautiful texture that seemed aesthetically determined more by Irwin's ambitious penchant for experimentation than by a desire to inform his audience. Seamlessly created ...." - Will Torphy, Artweek
Award: Humboldt Film Festival
1984, 16mm, color/si, 3m, $20
A lone search among the debris of civilization, a scavenger's-eye-view of options. On the surface of the emulsion, in the writing on the film, the dilemma is raised: no matter where you go, fear is what you find. It certainly is what faces you here.
"... a mature film artist who explores the medium as it can relate to and inform the average intelligent viewer. Irwin seems to approach the creation of his films much as if he were a painter who uses appropriated imagery and text to confront the audience .... The confrontational nature of Irwin's work relates it to the films of Michael Snow and even more specifically to the work of artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger." - Will Torphy, Artweek
"Irwin is witty and ingenious in his exploration of the resources of the medium ...." - Kevin Thomas, The Los Angeles Times
1985, 16mm, color/si, 3m, $20
The text and non-camera animation involve the viewer in a feisty conversation of sorts concerning their relationship, and ask the audience some testy questions.
"LET'S BE PALS! engages in an amusing and accessible dialogue with the audience about the nature of the film experience." - Scott MacDonald, Afterimage
"Despite its conversational tone, LET'S BE PALS! is essentially a philosophical meditation on the nature of films. PALS, which consists of an ersatz verbal dialogue with the audience and the artist himself, asks: 'Why are you here? What do you want from me?' and then posits a judgment Irwin may often consider but seems to reject: 'A film must be easy to look at, to the point.'" - Will Torphy, Artweek
Awards: Ann Arbor Film Festival and Tour; Independent Film Exposition.
1985, 16mm, color/si, 8m, $25
The Private Eye. The Femme Fatale. The Obscure Motive. The Ambivalent Morality. The Unresolved Resolution. The Deep Blacks and Bright Whites. "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand," wrote Raymond Chandler facetiously.
"DEAD MONEY utilizes a character (in this case, a private eye) as the filmmaker's alter ego, asking questions of himself and relentlessly quizzing the audience." - Will Torphy, Artweek
1986, 16mm, b&w/si, 6m (18fps), $20
"MY DAY is an eight-minute excerpt from the film component of a collaborative performance created by Irwin, comedian Robert Arriola and sculptor Bruce Hogeland. Its subject is the ironic contradictions between an actor's (filmmaker's?) creative life and the mundane daily existence he endures in order to pay his bills. This film journal is considerably more personal than his earlier works. Consisting of spoken narrative spiked with psycho-sexual revelations, MY DAY systematically utilizes common generic black and white symbols flashed on the screen to create an aural and visual rhythm that is continuous and lulling .�" - Will Torphy, Artweek
"The most accessible of [Irwin's 'Talking Films'] is MY DAY. ... [H]is narrative is written out one word at a time, and it is punctuated by stroboscopic flashes of such familiar images as a milk bottle or a cereal bowl." - Kevin Thomas, The Los Angeles Times
Supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Rockefeller Foundation.
1986-1987, 16mm, color/si, 10m, $30
"BY THE LAKE blends Irwin's assortment of visual techniques to depict a chance meeting between an unsuccessful farmer and an experimental filmmaker. [Irwin] delicately reveals the questions and issues that the farmer and the artist are each living with, and how they affect the control each experiences over his own life. What ultimately makes the film richly powerful is the connection between the characters, how they stumble onto both common ground and unbridgeable gaps, and that the farmer has all the good lines." - Michael Fox, Film Month "A moving evocation of one's choices to comply with or resist social forces that impinge upon personal expression and self-determination, BY THE LAKE juxtaposes images of the material world with manipulated imagery in order to question the nature of interpretation." - Will Torphy, Artweek
Supported by a grant from the NEA/AFI/Western States Foundation.
1987, 16mm, color/si, 12m, $35