Handmade

Handmade

Title	Director	Publisher	Price
Lydia and Her Friends		Self-published	$2.00 ($2.00 list)
Read more and comment...	Lydia and Her Friends by Gretchen Neidert Are you despondent and despairing? dragged down by dominating dodos, day to day drudgery and derelict dregs? The antidote is at hand: Lydia and Her Friends is a power-packed little wonder; a 10-minute burst of melodiously manic energy that situates the viewer in an endless loop at the edge of the galaxy from which vantage point it becomes clear that while time is passing all around us as we spin through space, life is lived in the moment, and that moment is NOW! An infinitely renewable pick-me-up for less than the price of a capuccino, packed in a hand-colored sleeve and made right here in tha 'burgh. copacetic price - $2.00
Encyclopdedia Destructica: Volume Bumba, Issue the Fourth	Gordon Nelson	Encyclopedia Destructica	$15.00 ($15.00 list)
Read more and comment...	This, the final installment of "Volume Bumba," is the film and video issue. It comes with its own DVD containing a whopping 38 original film and video works running a mind-bending three and a half hours ensconced in a 118-page illustrated catalogue that is hand bound in a hand-silk-screened hardcover. Produced in a limited edition of only 500 copies, this is an excellent survey of the great variety of talent working in film and video in Pittsburgh, and an amazing value that you won't want to miss. While, yes, some of the works here are amateurish and some are obviously student films, others are totally amazing. We are still reeling from the experience of watching Gordon Nelson's 15-minute and 48-second "Sixties Teen Dance Party," which contains what is quite possibly The Greatest Found Footage of All Time, footage which has, in turn, been artfully optically printed by Mr. Nelson, who has also added an original soundtrack which itself was recorded live (although, you might find yourself unable to resist the temptation to turn down the volume on your TV and put some classic '60s dance music on the hi-fi and crank it up while you watch this amazing film). "Sixties Teen Dance Party" alone is, in our humble opinion, easily worth the price of the entire package. But there's so much more. Other highlights include Suzie Silver's "Peggy Love 101," in which the lyric "love" has been excised from the catalogue of Peggy Lee songs and rhythmically edited along with found footage (yes, we seem to have a predilection for this...) of her performances to create an abstraction of pop love. "Sports and Diversions" by Bum Lee, a series of black and white animations inspired by Eric Satie's Sports et Diveritissements, a series of short piano pieces that are performed (and quite well, too!) here by Pei Wei Lin, is quite a marvel and might very well be the single most original piece you'll see this year. Watching Jessica Fenlon's "Crossroads" provides a meditative three and a half minutes that will lower your blood pressure. And, we can't leave off without mentioning John Allen Gibel's "Pleromadromadhatu (trailer)" which is either a parody of or an homage to -- or both -- the films of Dusan Makavejev and Alejandro Jodorowsky. We could go on and on here as there are still over thirty pieces we haven't even mentioned yet, many of which we'd like to tell you about. Suffice it to say that this is something that you'll kick yourself (hard) if you miss out on it. So don't!