In November and December, Ivan Ávila’s debut feature film Adán y Eva (Todavia) | Adam and Eve (Still) — which finds Adam and Eve, immortal and miserable, living in modern day Mexico City — screened at the Festival de Trois Continents, the São Paulo International Film Festival, and the Festival Internacional de Neuvo Cine Latinoamericano in Havana.  It received an award at the Festival Internacional de Cine Expresión en Corto in Guanajuato, Mexico in November.  Mexico

Kelly Anderson and Tami Gold's documentary Every Mother's Son, about the movement of mothers whose sons have been killed by the police, screened at Hunter College in New York in November.

Kenneth Anger’s latest experimental short Mouse Heaven, reflecting on the iconic power of Mickey Mouse and commenting on the cultural and sentimental value placed on commercial merchandise, will screen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in January.  The film will be presented with three other works by Anger: The Man We Want to Hang, Anger Sees Red, and Elliott's Suicide.

Ralph Arlyck’s documentary feature Following Sean screened in November at Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater.  The film updates the life of a 4-year-old “flower child” first filmed by the director in 1969 discoursing on such Sixties topics as marijuana and being busted by cops. 

Natalie Bookchin’s online experiment in collaborative gaming agoraXchange exhibited at LA Freewaves in November.  The website, co-created with Jacqueline Stevens, attempts to build a collective multiplayer game that offers a tangible political alternative to the current world order.    The CD-ROM installation Databank of the Everyday is on exhibit through January at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada.  The work looks at the quotidian, categorizing daily pedestrian activities into headings such as “wasting time” and “nervous habits.”  The work is part of Database Imaginary, a group show of 33 artists who have deployed databases to comment on everyday life in the 21st century.

Gregg Bordowitz gave two lectures in New York in November: at American Fine Arts he spoke on sexuality and its relationship to anti-war movements and at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art he addressed the structuring role of death underlying current aspects of daily social life.

Charles Burnett’s narrative feature Nightjohn screened in December at the Wexner Center’s First Annual Columbus International Children’s Film Festival.  The film tells the story of a 12-year-old girl enslaved on a southern plantation whose life is changed by learning to read.

Paul Chan’s latest work Now Promise Now Threat had its New York premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in December.  In this 30-minute visual "manifesto for the 21st century," Chan transforms digital video "mistranslated" by computer into images of undulating color.

Debra Chasnoff has been named Executive Director of Women’s Educational Media, a San Francisco-based non-profit media company.  The company supports social issue programs such as the Respect for All Project.

Seoungho Cho’s recent short Untitled had its New York premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in December.  In the work, spinning machine parts poetically evolve from hard-edged to softer, illusionary forms.

Jem Cohen‘s recent avant-garde documentary Chain will screen at the Museum of Modern Art’s Premieres series in January.  The film weaves together 16mm footage taken over a 6-year period, following two females left unemployed and adrift in the monolithic landscapes of Berlin and rural America.

Nathaniel Dorsky’s The Visitation and Threnody screened with an earlier film Alaya at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in December.  In these experimental silent films, Dorsky “transposes the delicacy of being” into visual poems reminiscent of devotional songs.

Juan Downey’s contribution to the history of video art was celebrated in a lecture by John Hanhardt, Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum.  The lecture, presented at Electronic Arts Intermix in December, included selected videos and installations to examine how Downy used a variety of narrative strategies to construct critical engagements with culture and society.

Sandi Dubowski‘s documentary Trembling Before G-d has been awarded a Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film and Media from The Council on Foundations, to be presented in April at their 56th Annual Conference in San Diego.  The film explores how Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are lesbian or gay reconcile their faith with the Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality.  Dubowski is producing a new film on Islam and homosexuality, In the Name of Allah.

Mariano Estrada’s short documentary video Nescafé: abono orgánico (Nescafé: Organic Fertilizer) screened in the fall at the Kitchen in New York as part of the MexicoNow festival. 

Rodney Evans’s feature debut Brother to Brother began its official theatrical run in November at Cinema Village in New York, and has played in theatres around the country, including Landmark’s Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco and Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in Los Angeles.  The film follows the emotional journey of a young man who embraces his heritage as a gay African-American artist after befriending an elderly writer from the Harlem Renaissance.    

Jeanne Finley and John Muse exhibited the video installation Guarded at LA Freewaves in November.  In the work, rotating projections and text threaten a catastrophe made more ominous by efforts to avoid or prepare for it. 

Isabel Christina Fregoso’s documentary Chenalhó, about the displaced tzotzile children of Chiapas, screened in the fall at the Kitchen in New York as part of the Dialogo series.

Juan José García Ortiz’s Seenau Galvain (So That Life May Continue) screened through mid-December at the Kitchen in New York as part of the Dialogo series.  The film depicts the weavers of serape, a long traditional shawl, and their fight to maintain their local craft with natural materials.

Janie Geiser’s new short Vapor Drama will screen at the Museum of Modern Art’s Premieres series in January.  In the film, a disembodied woman wanders, trancelike, through a landscape of paper-thin buildings, and through re-photography seems to disappear within them.

Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum’s Hybrid, an expressionistic portrait of McCollum’s grandfather, whose obsession was growing hybrid corn, screened in November in Los Angeles at 7 Dudley Cinema.  Gerstein's new short entitled Layette, in which a mature woman discusses her desire to have children, will premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this winter.

Charlene Gilbert’s latest documentary Children Will Listen premiered nationally on PBS on Thanksgiving Day.  The film chronicles a group of grade school students who produce and perform an adaptation of a Steven Sondheim musical at the Kennedy Center in 2002.  

Tami Gold was honored for her filmmaking by Jews for Racial & Economic Justice at their Marshall Meyer Risk-Taker Awards ceremony in November, as a “Voice of Dissent in Chilling Times.”  Every Mother's Son, co-directed with Kelly Anderson, a documentary about the movement of mothers whose sons have been killed by the police, screened at Hunter College in New York in November.  

Sylvia Gruner exhibited a new media installation entitled Away from You as part of the Dialogo series at the Kitchen Art Gallery in New York during the fall.  The two-channel video loop presents a swimmer repeatedly traveling away from the camera as a metaphor for the human attempt to recover from the loss of love.

Julia Heyward’s interactive DVD Miracles in Reverse exhibited as part of the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival in November.  The multi-media work is a hybrid family/music album that tells various versions of the artist’s life story from the point of view of Jesus, Mom and an alien.

Gary Hill’s 1990 video installation Inasmuch as It Is Always Already Taking Place is currently on exhibit as part of the newly reopened Museum of Modern Art’s “Inaugural Exhibitions” collection.

Louis Hock’s “cine-mural” Southern California was presented by the Getty Center in Los Angeles in November.  An 'evolving serial triptych,' the film envelops the viewer with contrasting images of an enchanted local landscape and the poignant reality of barrios, farmland and flower fields.  He also screened works at Filmforum Los Angeles.  His new installation Feral, a video loop grappling with the rise of government authority and scare tactics, exhibited at LA Freewaves in November. 

Dominique Jonard’s animated short Desde Adentro (From the Inside) screened at the Kitchen in the fall, as part of the MexicoNow series.  Made with children living in a juvenile detention center in Morelia, the film depicts survival in the streets, where drinking, glue-sniffing and smoking marijuana is part of everyday gang life.

Tom Kalin’s latest short Every Wandering Cloud will screen at the Museum of Modern Art’s Premieres series in January.  Oscar Wilde and Eadweard Muybridge come together in an idiosyncratic hand-drawn fantasy.

Leandro Katz will present a collection of photographs of Charles Ludlam and his Ridiculous Theatrical Company in an exhibition entitled Bedlam Days, from January through March at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts.  The 67 photos document the Off-Broadway troupe that developed into one of the most consistently experimental companies of the late 1960s and 1970s.  An essay by Jesse Lerner on Katz’s Paradox can be found here.

Paul Kos spent the month of October as Artist-in-Residence at the Stags’ Leap Winery’s Salon Series in California.

George Kuchar’s latest autobiographical short SuperCell, which documents ‘tornado country,’ had its New York premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in December.

Jesse Lerner’s recent short T.S.H. (Telegrafía sin hilos | Wireless Telegraphy), which combines static from the first Mexican radio broadcast in 1923 with avant-garde poetry and visual images of the period, had its New York premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in December.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer spoke about his work as part of the MexicoNow festival in New York.  The public discussion, at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, included discussions of his recent interactive installation Standards and Double Standards, a commentary on surveillance that consists of 50 fastened belts suspended at waist height that rotate automatically to follow passers-by.  Mexico

Mary Lucier’s 1975 Dawn Burn, a seven-channel installation exploring nature and light’s intersection with video, can be viewed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through January 2005.  Her new short Arabesque, which uses rodeo imagery to depict the American West, had its New York premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in December. 

David MacDougall’s latest film The Age of Reason, an intimate study of India’s most prestigious boarding school for boys, received its U.S. premiere at the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival in New York in November.

Crisanto Manzano’s documentary Guia'a Toó (Montaña Poderosa | Powerful Mountain) screened in the fall at the Kitchen in New York as part of the Diálogo series.  The video is a visual essay about the indigenous people of the Guia’a Toó forest in Oaxaca and their relationship to the environment.  Mexico 

Victor Masayesva, Jr.’s recent video Paatuwaqatsi: Water, Land, & Life, screened at the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival in New York in November.  The grassroots advocacy video illustrates the battle fought by the Hopi-founded Black Mesa Trust as it attempts to save a Navajo aquifer from a mining company.  The film was accompanied by his work-in-progress Pensoyungkam, a video which critiques Western modes of history-making by looking at the transport of 19 Hopi men to Alcatraz in 1894.  

Monteith McCollum and Ariana Gerstein’s Hybrid, an expressionistic portrait of McCollum’s grandfather, whose obsession was growing hybrid corn, screened in November in Los Angeles at 7 Dudley Cinema.  McCollum's new short Lawn will premiere at the Museum of Modern Art this winter.  Using time-lapse, stop-motion, long takes, and traditional animation, the film collages story layers and music to explore lawn as a reflection of character.

Ross McElwee’s Bright Leaves, about his great-grandfather's doomed career as a North Carolina tobacco baron, screened in December at the Wexner Center and at the Northwest Film and Video Festival in Portland.

Julia Meltzer and David Thorne’s It’s Not My Memory of It: Three Recollected Documents won Best Documentary at the Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival in December.  The film uses relationships between images, sound and text to question how the government controls the flow of information.  

Sarah Minter’s video series Intervalos (Intervals) will screen through January at la Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana.  Mexico  

Guillermo Monteforte’s short video documentary Mujeres, textiles y esperanzas (Women, Textiles and Hopes) screened through mid-December at the Kitchen in New York.  Mexico 

John Muse and Jeanne Finley exhibited the video installation Guarded at LA Freewaves in November.  In the work, rotating projections and text threaten a catastrophe made more ominous by efforts to avoid or prepare for it. 

Pat O’Neill presented a lecture sponsored by UCLA Design/Media Arts department in December.

Tierra Sagrada, a film edited by Carlos Efraín Pérez Rojas, screened through mid-December at the Kitchen in New York.  Mexico 

Rigoberto Perezcano’s documentary XV en Zaachila | 15 in Zaachila screened at the Kitchen in November and at New York University’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center in December.  The film follows a young Zapotec girl's preparation for her quinceñera, the traditional Mexican coming-of-age party.  Mexico

Walid Ra’ad’s video short I Think It Would Be Better If I Could Weep screened at LA Freewaves in November, as part of a program of works investigating the extreme ways inhabitants of rapidly expanding cities use built environments to their full potential. 

Alex Rivera‘s The Sixth Section, about a group of Mexican immigrants in upstate New York who support their community back in Mexico, was shown at the New York Film Academy in November as part of the MexicoNow festival.  Why Cybraceros?, an animated short made with Lalo Lopez, screened at the Fifth International Documentary Festival ESCENARIOS 2004 in Mexico City in the fall and at LA Freewaves in November.  The mock promotional film lays out the history of the U.S. Bracero Program and ironically advocates a dystopic future in which only labor is imported to the United States.

María Santiago Ruiz’s Yah Gaal Biaa (The Tree of Soap) screened at the Kitchen in New York City through mid-December, as part of the Dialogo series.  In the video, the filmmaker mixes fiction and documentary to show that homemade natural soap is a more viable option than expensive, polluting commercial detergents.  Mexico 

Carolee Schneeman’s 1965 photo grid and video projection Viet-Flakes screened in several New York film series this fall, including the Howl Festival and the Museum of Modern Art (where it screened with her short Plumb Line).  Devour, a multi-channel video projection looping fragments of political disasters and domestic scenes, along with Viet-Flakes and several of her other films, screened in November at Lumen in Leeds, England as part of its “Evolution Festival.”  Snafu, a new motorized sculpture and video projection, was presented as part of solo exhibitions at Remy Toledo and PPOW galleries in New York, also in November.  

Nida Sinnokrot exhibited work at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna in November in a group show, American Visions and Revisions, critiquing American foreign policy and its portrayal in the media. 

Scott Snibbe’s new media installation Shy continues to exhibit through February 2005 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.  Drawing upon the classic tradition of cartoon animation, the interactive projection lets a viewer give personality to a screen image through physical movement. www.snibbe.com

An excerpt from Renee Tajima-Peña‘s documentary Labor Women, which profiles a new activist generation in the Asian American labor movement, screened at the LA Freewaves Festival in November.

David Thorne and Julia Meltzer’s It’s Not My Memory of It: Three Recollected Documents won Best Documentary at the Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival in December.  The film uses relationships between images, sound and text to question how the government controls the flow of information.  David Thorne presented new work from his ongoing collaboration with artist Oliver Ressler in American Visions and Revisions, an exhibition critiquing American foreign policy and its portrayal in the media, held in Vienna in November.

Juan Francisco Urrusti’s documentary Tepú screened through mid-December at the Kitchen in New York.  In the film, the Huichol mara'acame Don Agustín visits the city's ancient foundations and performs a healing ceremony for the ailing urban environment.  Mexico

Bill Viola’s new video installation Five Angels for the Millennium had its New York premiere at the Whitney Museum in November and will run through March 2005.  Jointly acquired in 2002 in a three-way partnership with London’s Tate Gallery and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the exhibit involves 5 large-scale projections of figures in slow motion descending and ascending into and out of water. 

Norman Yonemoto continues his one-man show at the LMAN Gallery in Los Angeles through February 2005.  Entitled It’s About Time, the exhibition includes his Wall Clock Series, a series of boxes inspired by Joseph Cornell containing assorted objects including a mirror, a hidden clock and video equipment.

Marina Zurkow’s non-linear installation Nicking the Never is on display through January at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool, England.  A set of animated allegories based on the Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Existence, the world premiere is joined by another interactive project: Pussy Weevil, a 2D animated character who lives in the wall.  Mobile Scout: A Field Guide is on exhibit through January at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada.  Co-created with Julian Bleecker and Scott Paterson, this “sonic field guide” is based on people’s recorded experiences of a location.  It is part of Database Imaginary, a group show of 33 artists who have deployed databases to comment on everyday life in the 21st century.