HOPPLA!!!



Eddy Falconer - 21'33"
(United States)



Synopsis



The Death family is caught up in civic power struggles, natural and economic disasters, to the advantage of some and disadvantage of others. A not-too-linear story of gentrification wars that is humorously bleak, partly fantasy, and yet kinda real. A San Francisco native and a queer, the artist has created this cut-out animation with hand-painted and digital means. It is based not only on observation in Bay Area struggles, but on years spent in Berlin and New York watching and experiencing social and historical processes. Cartoon and collage at the visual level, Its fragmented use of language references Dadaist modes of expressing and processing trauma. HOPPLA is a little bit Brecht and a little bit Ubu, yet also definitely personal and contemporary. Available with additional English subtitles.



Trailer



Film



Director not to present this film for Public, the Jury can award the film through private screening.




Eddy Falconer



b. 1965 Cambridge, MA
1967-83 San Francisco, attending public and private schools
1985 Centre Odéon Paris---studied film theory
B.A. 1988 Yale University
1988 Tompkins Sq. riots, NYC. First personal experience of police violence.
1988 Umbrella House Video---doc about NY squat
1989-96 Berlin
1990 travels in former East Bloc
1990 some photojournalistic shows in Kreuzberg
1990-now Eduardo Falcone Scarpe per Donne Presentà. Transgender character realized out and about and in photographs, films, actions.
1991 San Francisco
1992-95 Some cartoons published in BLAU
1992-98 The Tarot of Berlin-86 min. S-8, completed on VHS
1992-95 HdK Berlin---expelled from Set Design program
1996 Psychiatric Lockup in Valhalla, NY
1996-2010 San Francisco
1999-2004 George Coates Performance Works---Associate Director of avant-garde, CGI-based theater
2001-2007 Ibéria, 65 min. digital video
2002 Founding member, The Icarus Project
2008 Spoke at First Global Conference on Madness, Oxford
2011 Personal REVolts, 7 min
2014 Spineless Deities, 4 min
etc
Some venues that have exhibited my work are: Anthology Film Archives, Artists' Television Access, Vortex Space, Queens World Film Festival, AK Press, Swansea Bay Independent Film Festival, PS 122, Entzaubert Berlin

I have this theory that if you push really hard in a limited direction, defined by structural elements or extreme, even exaggerated point of view, wild fantastical worlds emerge that can shift the center of ordinary thought to apprehend or consider another parameter. In my case sometimes this has resulted in some exploration of utopian/dystopian territories, and also in the articulation of worlds and patterns whose substrate are seemingly random and esoteric belief systems. I have tried in some early works to do this by referencing stringent color schemes or astrological motifs; conscious, alternative communities have sometimes assisted me in these efforts, and in other attempts, the community is realized as fictional or semi-fable-like content. Other concerns are ontological or metaphysical or theatrical or to do with mask and identity. The joke of HOPPLA!!! might be that outside of documentary, it's the most realistic thing I've made!



Blue Danube Film Festival