The Door by Rene Sing Brooks

Description

An experimental film created by René Sing Brooks. This piece was the final project in (Lecturer) Thomas Seymour's Video Production class this Spring II semester. The artist statement is below. Growing up under the back then kerosene lamp nights of Bluefields, a small city on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, had a strong influence on my film and writing sensibilities. My Caribbean childhood and early adolescence have nurtured a lifelong concern with time, memory and personal/communal story, which is reflected in most of my work to date. I have been a digital filmmaker for nearly nine years, mostly as a short form documentarian covering issues of justice system involved individuals and of other community protagonists—mainly fellow artists—dedicated to social-justice struggles. Although my artistic sensibility is significantly shaped by socio-political concerns, this does not preclude the aesthetic exploration of filmmaking’s form and structure for implications beyond—or beneath—the “message”, which in my case draws from dream textures and narrative flows derived from Nicaragua’s African, aboriginal and mestizo magical imaginings. Along the road, I have gathered influences from Béla Tarr, Andrei Tarkovsky and Chris Marker, among others. These creators deftly explore the relationship of form, structure, tempo and meaning, an exploration that is at the heart of my creative concerns and that guides my efforts to develop a personal voice that isn’t alienated from the visual and narrative syntax of my evolving communal experiencing.