A Whole Lot of Nothing Going On: Images from Rural America

Lissa Gibbs is Director of Film Arts Foundation's Annual Film Arts Festival. Simply put, the five works included in this program are about everything and nothing all at once. They are about the rich fullness of rural life-seemingly boring and without event when viewed by outsiders, but with a complex sense of time, purpose, and belonging as seen through the eyes of these makers, all of whom have chosen to live and work within the communities they have documented. Each speaks about the cultural and geographic fringes which she or he inhabits-places of tremendous natural beauty, financial hardship, eccentricity, and banality. From a profile of Steven Olpin's grandfather and the family mortuary business in Fillmore, Utah; to a rarely screened film by photographer Danny Lyon on a New Mexican village and its inhabitants; with stops in Iowa and Wyoming in between, these works reflect a way of living and working which is not always attractive, sometimes ridiculous, but always eloquently forthright.-Lissa Gibbs The Cooling Board by Steven W. Olpin (1994, 10 mins). On the Road Going Through by Leighton Pierce (1987, 15 mins, video). Remembering the Wind by Amy Brakeman (1993, 8 mins). Beartooth Catch by Amy Brakeman (1993, 4 mins). Llanito by Danny Lyon (1971, 51 mins) (Total running time: 88 mins, 16mm except as noted, From the artists)

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