The sixty-ninth meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Monday, December 2, 2013 at 7:00 PM at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public.
Presentation: Brian Dewan on his work with the filmstrip: a simple medium customarily used for educational purposes for most of the twentieth century. It delivers a cinematic experience without a moving picture.
The I-CAN-SEE filmstrips (script, pictures and music by Brian Dewan) employ an unseen narrator’s recorded voice punctuated with music, sound effects and a periodic signal-tone which instructs the projectionist to advance the hand-cranked filmstrip projector. Color illustrations projected a single frame at a time unspool in the time honored tradition of the once ubiquitious educational strips screened in classrooms and school cafeterias for most of the twentieth century. Ranging from unexpurgated folk and religious stories to modern treatises on historical, scientific and theological subjects, titles include “Before the White Man Came,” “The Course Of Your Research,” “Obey Signals,” “The Death Of The Hen,” “Deuteronomy” and “The Tide Waits For No Man.”
Brian Dewan has been making filmstrips since 1986. They have been screened at Pierogi gallery in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum and The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. His published musical recordings include Tells The Story, The Operating Theater, Words Of Wisdom and Ringing At The Speed Of Prayer. He lives in Catskill, NY.
