Biography of Kerry Laitala




Laitala grew up in the wilds of the Maine coast, while developing a chronic passion for old things. She attended Massachusetts College of Art studying Photography and Film and received her Masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in Film. She has been awarded the Princess Grace Award in 1996, and the Special Projects Grant from PGF in 2004 and 2007. Awards have also been received from the Black Maria Film Festival and Big Muddy Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival as well as residency at the Academie Schloss Solitude near Stuttgart, Germany. Her penchant for medical imagery and artifacts of decay springs from occupations in medical and dental institutions where she works during the day when she is not teaching film classes at the San Francisco Art Institute. For every work she produces, she places her fingers on the pulse of the piece and allows it to grow organically without a script or prescribed plan. She prescribes to the concepts laid down by Germaine Dulac, maker of surrealist films in the 1920’s, that cinema should not be enslaved by narrative and theatre, and is interested in expansive forms of media production. Laitala is deeply invested in the process of working directly with the film medium basically is involved in all aspects of production: shooting, developing, editing and sound design as well as optical printing much of material to further re-work it into another form.



Laitala's second 35mm film entitled the "Muse of Cinema" has recently premiered at the 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam, has won the Director's Choice Award from the Black Maria Film and Video Festival, and the Best Bay Area Non Documentary Film Award from the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival. "Torchlight Tango", completed in 2005, is a film that lyrically demonstrates the hand- made film process and shows the maker at work on the first film in the Muse Series. Torchlight Tango has garnered awards at both the S. F. International Film Festival and the Black Maria Film Festival.



Projector performances include a piece entitled "Hocus Pocus… Abracadabra!!!" which won the Chris Holter Visionary Film Award from the 2007 Madcat Women's International Film Festival. Otherwise known as expanded cinema, this hybrid multiple projector work incorporates several different media including 16mm loops, 35mm slides and video with a stereo soundtrack. "Hocus Pocus… ABRACADABRA" is a true hybrid, performance piece: conceptually, anachronistically and technologically speaking. Intertwining live sleight of hand illusions and the magical evocation of past spirits, "Hocus Pocus…" highlights the intersection of these two types of spectral displays. Laitala was also invited to perform this piece at the Rubicon Estate's Centennial Museum's Gala opening in Napa Valley with Francis Ford Coppala in attendance.



She is currently in post production on the hand made, hand processed films entitled the "Muse of Cinema Series" with a flashlight in her studio. “Phantogram” is her most recently completed project and she is in the process of finishing “Spectrolgy” on 16mm film with an optical soundtrack. This film artist uses the “Muse Series” to directly address the audience by re-animating Magic Lantern slides from the early years of cinema, and incorporating them into a cinematic collage. Her work has been screened internationally and in the celestial ether which connects us with the music of the spheres.



Laitala was also chosen as a recipient of a GOLDIE- (Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Award) -2007 from the San Francisco Bay Guardian