Ashes, Ashes...(2005) was part of a collaborative project that was commissioned and presented at the BAC!05 festival of contemporary art in Barcelona, Spain.  It is now included in the traveling program of works by American artists called For Life Against the War: A Collective Outcry curated by Lynne Sachs.


Ashes, ashes... uses a mix of personal and archival footage to probes the subject of war and violence, contemplating through visual juxtapositions how the residue of violent acts permeates to the present and into the future.  How do we extinguish this viscous cycle? The video creates an atmosphere that tugs the spectator between the aesthetic visual seduction of violent imagery and the reality of horror and pain of the acts themselves.

Ashes, ashes... (16mm, 2005, 4 min)

concept - camera - edit (Jeff Daniel Silva)

Selected Screenings & Exhibitions:

  1. Cinema Project, Portland Oregon, November 7, 2007

  2. Anthology Film Archive April 2007

  3. Harvard Film Archive “For Life Against the War” program March 2007

  4. Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, February 25, 2007

  5. Collective:Unconscious, New York, September 2006

  6. BAC! 05 Barcelona Contemporary Art Festival, Spain, December 2005

Available on DVD at the film-makers Cooperative as part of the For Life Against the War... Again DVD

http://www.film-makerscoop.com/forlifeagainst.html


For Life Against the War... Again

“In 1967, with the Vietnam War escalating wildly, an invitation was issued to filmmakers to create works running under three minutes in protest against the accumulating carnage. The original organizers chose the rubric For Life, Against the War, and eventually compiled sixty films from the likes of Robert Breer, Shirley Clarke, Storm De Hirsch, Ken Jacobs, Larry Jordan, Jonas Mekas, Stan Vanderbeek, and many others. Now, decades later, an invitation to protest yet another war seemed sadly urgent, inspiring the New York Film-makers Cooperative to ring the clarion once “. . . Again.” The response was overwhelming, with submissions from several generations of artists unified by a singular disgust for the war in Iraq and the foreign policy that perpetuates it. Compiled with works from the overtly angry to the formally forceful, For Life, Against the War boldly announces that artists can take a stand, again and again.” -- Steve Seid, Curator, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley Art Museum

*** Also available for installation or theatrical presentation on 16mm, DigiBeta or DVCAM 

email: info at jeffdanielsilva dot com