Visiting Filmmaker: Devon Damonte

Workshop: 2-5 p.m., Madison Street Lounge, Student Center, open to all KSC students.

Screening: 6:30-8:30 p.m., Putnam Theater, open to all KSC students and the Keene community.

The Film Studies program will host a screening by Devon Damonte in the Putnam Theater. Damonte is a filmmaker and educator based in Olympia, Washington. He has been creating unique short films utilizing direct animation techniques since 1987. He is a faculty member at Evergreen State College and is the former programming director of the Boston Video and Film Foundation. He has also been teaching community workshops for over a decade.

In direct animation, a century-old camera-less form, artists use painting, scratching and myriad techniques to animate on motion picture film. It is an analog art that offers experiential escape from increasingly digital visual cultures. In this hands-on workshop, students will practice numerous methods of direct animation on 16mm film, as well as have opportunities to invent their own techniques. They will also be introduced to genre masters like Len Lye, Norman McLaren, and Barbel Neubauer and the history of visual music. Students will learn alchemical cinema secrets such as tape-lifts and hot-iron-printed-plastic-transfers to create film footage both in groups and individually, and then watch it right away in celebratory projection performances. Films produced in the afternoon workshop will be shown at Devon's screening at the Putnam Theater at 6:30 p.m.