Mary Beth Reed

Course Of Empire Variations: Level Line

Silent B/W 16mm film depicting Thomas Cole's fourth stage of an empire - Destruction, before the final stage - Desolation. Macro shots of obsolete tools symbolize the end of the United States as a country of industrial manufacturing and production, leading to its role as a society based purely on consumption.

Vamos a los colchones

Video of the Woman's March on Washington on January 21, 2017 and video of a 2014 trip to Sicily.

After Creation After Icebergs

Visual music created with paint on an 8x10 canvas, an iPad, and After Effects as if working on an early cinematic special effects machine, the optical printer. The subtle hues above the water shift as the film dives into the depths of the icebergs, surfacing once more into a kaleidoscopic landscape.

Speckled Flare

In memory of filmmaker, English and Film professor, roller coaster brakeman, and computer programmer Phil Rowe, who loved giraffes and hated lens flares in Hollywood films

Speckled Flare

In memory of filmmaker, English and Film professor, roller coaster brakeman, and computer programmer Phil Rowe, who loved giraffes and hated lens flares in Hollywood films

Jake Seven

A few lingering brush flicks, olive drops of color splitting open on the vines, the roulette ball of our random lives dropped into the basket on some universal wheel and the road keeps winding out before him like a wick, excerpts from Steve Gehrke's poem Jackson Pollock Driving.

Richmond Study 1 - Travel Advisory

A car makes it way out of the snow.

Richmond Study 2 - Monument Avenue

Abstract hand painted film inspired by statues of confederate civil war generals and president (Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Davis), scientist Matthew Fontaine Maury, and tennis legend Arthur Ashe along Monument Avenue.

Sunday Afternoon

Film by Mary Beth Reed.

Moose Mountain

Inspired by foreign landscapes and the Rocky Mountains, the films 'Moose Mountain' and 'Moose Mountain Two' include animation, hand processing, and hand painted film.

Moose Mountain Two

Inspired by foreign landscapes and the Rocky Mountains, the films 'Moose Mountain' and 'Moose Mountain Two' include animation, hand processing, and hand painted film.

Garden Path

A depiction of the creative process of hand-painting film giant, Stan Brakhage. Inspired by Monet's paintings from Giverny, Brakhage's luminous abstract painting transforms the screen into an oneiric botanical landscape. Brakhage's painted loops leap out of black and white footage of the master at work, painting and printing.

Montessori Sword Fight

A young girl struggles to perfect her new found passion, swordfighting. She discovers her role model when a band of Montessori school children invite her to a demonstration given by a legendary Hollywood master. After intense training, the children's adroit sword play awakens their competitive instincts. They rebel against their teacher, and a harrowing duel ensues. The heroine faces internal turmoil, when the Montessori gang forces her to choose between her master's path and their growing power. The film combines optically printed and hand processed original and appropriated imagery.

Sand Castle II

A quiet and yet, in certain senses, noisy movie about the storm in someone's head. Purification or brainwashing? A compulsive evocation of the house as a mental concept, for some other people.

Moon Streams

The film builds up a surface tension that seems quite rocky and solid. This surface gradually begins to crumble and a bubbling of dusty gold begins, like a geyser, to break up this tension. The surface of paints and rhythms flows with the water and everything inside of the body of work spills out until electrical creative charges accompany the liquid gold and rock. Suddenly, out of this storm comes a red and yellow explosion of warmth and creativity, spilling out over the body like a lava flow.

Sand Castle

SAND CASTLE grasps for visual memories of home in the midst of a sense of displacement. In the film, paint, clay, sand, and jello, combined with images of houses embody the textures and impression of the past.

Pink Film

Three girls embark on an oneiric journey in search of a role model. After hearing Darwin's advice, the girls dissatisfaction leads to a rebellion.

Floating under a Honey Tree

Glimpses and sparkles of childhood memories.

Jakob

Super-8 images glued onto the frames of hand-painted 16mm leader becomes a study of movement within the frame and its boundaries.