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A recycled dollhouse and four films are the basis for Dorothea Braemer’s piece at UB Center for the Arts Gallery. This idealized symbol of a home is fraught with conflict as the four films capture the complex family dynamics that evolve over the selling of Braemer’s childhood home and her mother’s move to an assisted living facility. The tiny projections and screens inside the windows of the dollhouse make for an intimate melancholy, a metaphor for psychology.

Passive main characters inspire Braemer’s work; she uses documentary footage and fiction, where she casts people to create characters, and makes the most of mixing formats. Her video, also about her mother, will be screened as a part of the Beyond/In Western New York exhibit at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center on Saturday, November 3 at 8:00pm.

Buffalo Rising is taking …

Using the body in art is nothing new, but media, politics, war, poverty, wealth, sex, religion, fashion, violence, our parents, technology, design, and well basically everything that surrounds us every day are constantly redefining the way the body is being used. Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center will screen 20 short videos that incorporate the use of the human body in their content tomorrow night. The total running time is 88 minutes, so these really are short videos (perfect for our 21st century short attention spans).

Raw Tactics Of The Subversive Body was organized by Andres Tapia-Urzua of Pittsburgh, and includes works by international artists, as well as Buffalo’s own, Caroline Koebel. The screening investigates – in video – our bodies as we see and u…

In early winter 2006 I found David Granville in the parlor practicing a song on his piano and singing along * and if you know David, that's not an unusual experience. However, I was struck by the beauty of the music and its message. It reminded me of a well crafted and moving folk song, the kind that would have been heard frequently during 1960s-era of musical and political empowerment.

I asked David "who wrote that song?" He responded, "I did!" I was surprised only because I had never known David to write a song before, and as he is quick to point out, although he has written music before and poetry before, he has never before had the inspiration to put the two together.

In the days that followed, David played the song for a few friends, who, like myself, were impressed by the song's beauty and clarity. The song is called "Peace Prints" and is inspired by the PeacePrints …

Many Buffalonians were saddened when they heard that their cherished Italian Movie Night, hosted by Cinema Sotto le Stelle, would not be returning this summer. The non-profit organization is taking a much needed break, but while they are vacationing, the Unitarian Universalists Church has decided to carry on the tradition, with Movie Night on Elmwood.

“We didn't want to trespass on Cinema Sotto le Stelle's turf, so instead of showing Italian movies, which they do better than anyone, we're showing oldies," said Vincent Kuntz, a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Church and movie organizer.   The event will take place every Friday, at dusk, for the month of July. Volunteers will be setting up in the yard between the Church and M&T Bank on Elmwood just north of West Ferry.

"Movie Night on Elmwood' will feature classics from the silent era up to the film noir period," prom…

On Saturday June 23rd at 8pm, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center will present the award-winning film The Guatemalan Handshake, (2006, 96min). A hit among the underground, and winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival, director Todd Rohal’s debut feature "suggests what Jacques Tati may have done with rural America" (Variety). When a power failure occurs in a small mountain town, it sets in motion a bizarre chain of events. The sun rises sideways, a woman attends her own funeral, cars drive circles in the dirt, and Donald Turnupseed, an awkward demolition derby driver (played by musician Will Oldham, aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and the recent star of Old Joy) disappears. His vanishing affects the film’s eccentric characters, which includes a pack of wild boy scouts, a lactose intolerant roller rink employee, and a ten-year-old girl name…

If ever you've been wandering the streets of Buffalo wondering why, with such flourishing culture and young talent, we have never been home to a television series, your question has been answered. Elmwood Avenue makes its debut in Norman Toy's DISCS. Buffalonian Norman Toy, director, takes full advantage of the area's creative hub by filming his series in some of Buffalo's most notorious hot spots.

The sight chosen for the series needed to reflect an urban American landscape. Executive Producer Milly Toy (Bidwell Productions) and Co-Producers Evan Pease and Peter Williams (3C Multimedia) have pooled resources and decided that DISCS Record Store would be brought to life through Spot Coffee and New World Records. The setting will feel authentic and familiar and for most of us here in the Elmwood Vill…

In potentially one of the best-named fund raisers ever, The Infringement Festival will be holding the Bizarre Bazaar this coming Saturday at Soundlab, and trust me, based on the line-up alone, it's going to live up to its name.

For a mere $5, audience members will be treated to 6 bands, 4 performers, short films and animations, and, with great potential a 50/50 raffle and an indoor garage sale. All proceeds will benefit the 2007 Infringement Festival, and even the door money will co cover printing costs for the festival brochure and other important festival expenses, so be generous if you're in a position to do so.

Why? Well, with the Infringement, you're not getting your normal, comfortable night out. These people are pushing the limits, not for some additional number of myspace friends or a potential contract, but simply because they can. As a result, the work is pure – y…

It was a busy and well-attended organizer's meeting tonight at Staples' of Allentown. Fresh on the heels of an Artie Award, Lead Scheduling Dude Kurt Schneiderman Publicity Dude Ron Ehmke and Treasury Dude Scott Kurchak met with a team of approximately 20 performers and organizers, and outlined upcoming meetings, events, and positions still needing to be filled. The festival itself will be held from July 26 through August 5, 2007 at various locations throughout Allentown. Roughly 110 performances, workshops, films, and other happenings are anticipated throughout the eleven-day celebration.

Not familiar with the Infringement? Well, if you liked Artists and Models, you're bound to have a great time at the Infringement Festival – eleven times as much, right?. As briefly described by puppeteer Michelle Costa, the proper response to "W…

Buffalo Rising has two tickets available to the first caller for the Opening Night Gala of the Buffalo International Jewish Film Festival tomorrow night. The Festival begins Saturday Night, at 7:30 PM, at the Market Arcade Film & Art Centre with two feature films, complete with a dessert reception and live Klezmer music! First reader to call the Buffalo Rising offices at 923-7603, extension 207 will get two free passes.

The feature films are West Bank Story followed by Three Mothers. West Bank Story was the Academy Awards' choice this year for Best Live Action Short Film, and will most likely be Buffalo's only showing of this cinematic gem. The full description is below, but the tagline "A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands in the West Bank," pretty much says it all. Following is the feature film Thre…

So, we celebrated the Buffalo-Niagara Film Festival (BNFF), and the Buffalo International Film Festival (BIFF) is on the way -- but there's another Buffalo film festival that you may not have heard of -- The Buffalo International Jewish Film Festival. Sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo, the festival is one of the oldest of its kind in the nation, with co-chairs Ruth Goldman and Michael Silverman and the Film Festival Committee developing the content for this year’s Festival and adding to Buffalo’s rich pageant of artistic events.

Film takes a very special place in the heart of a culture, capturing stories in both visual and verbal form in a way that few other mediums can -- it preserves history, explores emotions, and illustrates the subtle dynamics of human relation on we don’t even know we’re experiencing. A film festival of this caliber and d…

June 18th is about three days before the official kick off of summer. This day stands out above the other Mondays, because this is first day to sign up for the 48-Hour Film Festival in Buffalo. Will you be tired of big crowds and walking around in art festivals and partying in the square every Thursday by then? Me neither, but if putting together a group of friends and creating a film from the screenplay to the final edit, over the course of 2 days does not sound like fun, I do not know what does. “This is something for fun,” explains Eric Ayotte, director of the Gadabout Traveling film festival and local producer for the 48-Hour Film Festival, “groups come together and make a film. A novice would have fun with it, not knowing how long it’ll take to make a film—anyone can come along and do it.”

Here is how it works: each team, which can be as small as one per…

In a very special edition of Gusto at the Gallery, the Albright-Knox pairs with the Just Buffalo Literary Center to present Tell My Horse: Zora Neale Hurston at the Albright-Knox. Tonight's events will be filled with material inspired by the Big Read selection, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as fun art activities for the kids, and a moving performance of A Symphony Down in My Soul . The evening is capped off by a live taping of Off-Beat Cinema, presenting White Zombie. (In addition to her classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston also wrote a famous study of Caribbean voodoo called Tell My Horse. The cast of Channel 7’s Off Beat Cinema will do a live taping of the show on site and present a classic B-Horror Film about voodoo and zombies.) Full schedule below.

Friday, May 18, 2007 Free Albright-…

Driving up to the Central Terminal to see—rather experience—Don Paul Swain’s “Ghost Train,” with the modern cars parked just outside the entrance, does not begin to suggest what is inside. Even milling about, waiting as the train is “repaired” as the conductor explains, does not prepare you for the “epic carnival of unlikely passions” as Swain calls it, on the other side of a very unassuming door. Inside the decaying Central Terminal, Swain and his collaborators have created another world, filled with films, video, robotics, a gigantic Ouijii board, and performance art that feel at home among the walls of the Terminal.

While the Terminal’s unfortunate appearance gives a lot to the atmosphere of the “Carnival of Souls”, the films, performances and gadgets throughout the space bring it to life. The ghosts that you are sure exist inside the crumbling c…