dan browne

march 2019

It's been a while since I've posted an update here – apologies for the absence! In December I welcomed a new baby into my family life and, while things have been a bit topsy-turvy, they are finally starting to settle again. In the meantime, there are a bunch of news updates that have accumulated so here's a rundown:

In January I started a new Patreon account. I've got a description of my intentions that you can read there, but in a nutshell I'm looking for alternative methods for funding projects and connecting with audiences, while recognizing my time is becoming scarcer with my developing family life. By becoming a patron, you'll get postcards in the mail and exclusive access to new work, including a feature-length diary film I am posting episodically on a monthly basis. (This project might not ever show at a festival or cinema either!) You can become a patron for as little as $1/month and get access to all the material, so please check out the link and consider pitching me $12/year – I would really appreciate it!

This month, Found Footage Magazine's Special Issue #5 was released, featuring an interview I did with the Hungarian filmmakers Péter Litcher and Bori Máté, their first in English. Our discussion covers such films as Polaroids, No Signal Detected, Pure Virtual Function, The Headless Appearance, and their new co-directed feature, The Rub. The issue has a great assortment of articles and images. Order it here! 

“'Bad' quality images will always be (and have been) more interesting to me than 'good' quality images, because when the cinema wants to become reality, it always fails to be art." – Péter Lichter

"...issues surrounding phenomenology, the corporeal turn, and sensuousness have become important within the past decade because we have strayed too far from our bodies and senses. What we, and many other artists, offer is a strategy to find our way back to the sensorium..." – Bori Máté

In other screening news:

Midway screened at the8fest in Toronto on January 25th, with the original Kodachrome reversal print hitting the light of a projector and the retinas of audiences for the very first time! This was a great screening that was especially resonant for me as I have worked as a technician at this festival in previous years, and was very happy to be able to share the film, which was shot at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition, for a hometown audience. You can watch Midway on Vimeo here!

Midway will also screen in a programme of 8mm films curated by Alex Faoro presented in Brooklyn on March 16th. This show features an amazing collection of films by Erica Sheu, Karissa Hahn, Tomonari Nishikawa, Annalisa D. Quagliata, Lynne Sachs, and Lorenzo Gattorna, as well as a great film by Alex.

Also this month, Reflections II screens at the 27th Artifact Small Format Film Festival in Calgary, March 7–8th. Congrats to my friend Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof who will be presenting a retrospective there! 

To wrap up, I've been posting monthly news updates on this site since I first built it in 2013. I've been blessed to have enough consistency with presentations of my work over the last five years such that I've always had something new to announce, and last December was the first month where I didn't have time to post something, or any screenings going on. The fact that this coincided with the birth of my daughter Maya was not a coincidence, as I'm trying to scale back right now and focus my time on new work and new family (plus some long-outstanding writing projects as well). 

Now that I'm active on Patreon, I will be shifting to monthly updates on that platform – including a new vlog – which will be rounded out by quarterly updates here. 

Until next time...