With the excuse of freedom, we lose so many things.
- Silvio Barile

Following acclaimed screenings at the Sundance and the Rotterdam Film Festivals, Small Change is proud to present,          "O'er the Land", the newest film from Chicago-based filmmaker Deborah Stratman. In conjunction with the film we are also proud to present  older works from two of our favorite filmmakers, Bill Brown, and former Small Change co-founder Michael Robinson. Presented on beautiful 16mm film this program takes us on a tour of the national psyche while looking down on us from the clouds.

O'er the Land
Deborah Stratman, 2009, USA, 16mm film, color, sound, 51:40 min.
A meditation on the milieu of elevated threat addressing national identity, gun culture, wilderness, consumption, patriotism and the possibility of personal transcendence. Of particular interest are the ways Americans have come to understand freedom and the increasingly technological reiterations of manifest destiny. 

This film is concerned with the sudden, simple, thorough ways that events can separate us from the system of things, and place us in a kind of limbo.  Like when we fall. Or cross a border. Or get shot. Or saved. The film forces together culturally acceptable icons of heroic national tradition with the suggestion of unacceptable historical consequences, so that seemingly benign locations become zones of moral angst.

You Don't Bring Me Flowers
Michael Robinson, 2008, USA, 16mm, color, sound 8:00 min                          Viewed at its seams, a collection of National Geographic landscapes from the 1960s and 70’s conjures an obsolete romanticism currently peddled to propagate entitlement and individualism from sea to shining sea; the slideshow deforms into a bright white distress signal.

Hub City
Bill Brown, 1997, USA, 16mm, color, sound 15:00 min                            "HUB CITY conflates an account of a devastating tornado (illustrated by an image of a cowboy twirling a rope) with the death of Buddy Holly, a fellow native of Lubbock, Texas." - Fred Camper, Reader