~ Filmmaker: Sara Mithra ~
Deflowered by Sara Mithra
Sara Mithra’s latest videopoem once again makes good use of old home-movie footage from the Prelinger Archives. She calls it
A story of flowers with sharp desires, set to a bricolage about women who go into the woods in search of deer and the hunters they find. The film is entirely sourced from super 8 home movies of unknown origin and authorship. The score, by Lee Gerstmann, is taken unaltered from a damaged reel-to-reel recording, adding a warped, unsettling soundtrack.
Pheasant Hunting by Sara Mithra
Another videopoem using found film by Sara Mithra. The description on Vimeo reads:
A poem film by Sara Mithra with music by Maali Maal for Hameenia. I edited footage from the Prelinger Archives of color home movies from the 50s and 60s, cataloguing at least ten hours of film to select these two minutes of clips. The amateur quality of these films, together with the hand-held cinematography and lack of zoom, inspired me to select clips which show the film’s age and draw attention to its material quality by being discolored, scratched, poorly digitized, etc.
As far as my poem, I wanted visuals which were rich, vibrant, and if not capturing the narrative quality of pheasant hunting, could match its erotic power.
Broken Horse by Sara Mithra
Sara Mithra is a Vermont-based poet with a particular interest in the use of old home movies and other archival footage for videopoetry. She’s also active on SoundCloud. About Broken Horse, she writes:
This poem film explores the relationship between the labor of the Western frontier and its emotional legacy. Choosing semi-professional archival footage allowed me to present a story of wreckage. Thanks to the Prelinger Archives for providing such a rich trove of creative commons films.
