Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe made experimental videos and films from 1982-2006—exploring an edge between formal experimentation and personal/social issues. She used texts and visuals with quirky and surprising rhythms and associations. Her work asks us to look again at things we might have thought we knew already. [more]
Most of the works are available for viewing from either YouTube or on the Internet Archive via the "More..." links below. Please also check individual film pages for distributors for screenings.
HOW STRONG THE CHILDREN
Experimental video in which the relationship of a mother with her two young daughters is examined—finding the terrain chaotic and hardly conforming to prior expectations.
1998. 28:00 minutes.
IF SPRING, THEN HOPE, AND ALSO WINTER
Video meditation on the death of a young life. A young girl is apparently dying or has been killed. A recording of parental responses to this death is repetitively re-recorded until the ambient sound included in each re-recording renders it an abstract sound. These recordings are used to process the images, creating an ambiguous and transformative sound-image relationship. Occasional texts allude to the difficulty of understanding death.
1997. 9:30 minutes.
More...
EVERYONE MUST TIGHTEN THEIR BELTS
A whimsical piece in which a late-night television interviewer attempts to get an unusally wordy guest (a labor relations expert of sorts) to explain the relationship between unemployment and inflation. The language is repetitive to the point of becoming almost abstract in its rhythms—setting up an interplay between the ideas and the aural pleasures of the text.
Winner, DIRECTOR’S CHOICE, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1998
1997. 4:30 minutes.
More...
QUEEN OF THE MIST
Narrative video telling the story of Annie Edson Taylor—who was, in 1901, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. A 63 year-old woman, Taylor met with hostility and a succession of betrayals rather than the fame and fortune P.T. Barnum’s long-standing challenge had led her to expect. Impressionistically combining archival material with re-enacted scenes, QUEEN OF THE MIST was made in collaboration with the poet Joan Murray and is based on her book of narrative poems of the same name.
Winner, FIRST PRIZE, NARRATIVE, NAP Video Festival, 1997 Winner, DIRECTOR’S CITATION, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1997
1996. 29:00 minutes.
More...
LA BLANCHISSEUSE
Meditative video suggesting possible roots of the tendency that still exists for women to take a greater responsibility than men for domestic work and nurturing. Images of a woman ironing that pay homage to impressionist paintings of laundresses, original and borrowed texts alluding to the “pull” for a woman to provide nurturing care for a family, and a meditative music soundtrack afford the viewer an opportunity to develop new and creative readings of images of women performing domestic work.
Winner, DIRECTOR’S CHOICE, Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1995
1993. 11:00 minutes.
More...
KEEP MOVING
Structural film in which the everyday activities of a small environment are distilled in repetition. Two women walk, run and gaze across an industrial-looking street-end over which trains pass constantly. Small changes take place in the actions, the environment and in the treatment and use of the still and live images. Compositional relationships are explored.
Winner, DIRECTOR’S CHOICE, Black Maria Film Festival, 1985 Winner, 3RD PRIZE, EXPERIMENTAL, Baltimore Int’l Film Festival, 1986.
1984. 10:00 minutes.
More...
VENEO VIDEO VICEO
Experimental video deconstructively examining issues relating to video, television, fictions, beliefs and the marketplace. Central to the work is the unlikely story of a woman who makes an aerobics tape which she hopes to market to the downtown punk scene. The dramatic continuity of the story is frequently interrupted by images of its characters recontextualized in portrait format and overlaid with a chorus of texts commenting on the construction of the believable video image.
1991. 55:00 minutes.
More...
CARS ARE LIKE A PARTY
Color videopoem about the seductions of cars. Poem co-written and read by Mia Witte.
1996 2:20 minutes.
More...
AFTER THE PAINT HAS DRIED
Film in which street images, sounds and fragments of stories merge in constant states of transition, suggesting the process by which stories grow. Attention is captured, the storyteller revealed. Yet the outcome is ambiguous, reflecting the less than final understanding that knowing someone through their stories involves.
Winner, DIRECTOR’S CITATION, Black Maria Film Festival, 1987
1986. 15:00 minutes.
More...