Category: Films

Interview with Nina Rota: Making Luscious (2006)

Photography & Editing: Kate Johnson. To watch Luscious, click here

The images in Luscious were captured with a digital still camera. The movement of the camera lens and the shutter made it impossible to register the images so my animator, Carolyn Stockbridge, and I used a camera with a removable manual lens and we locked the shutter in the open position. While we solved the problem of movement, the camera’s exposure was randomly off and we had to go back and manually adjust the brightness of most of the images.

Luscious (2006) – Written and Directed by Nina Rota

“Luscious” is an exploration of gender and flesh in eight scenes of luscious pencil-drawn animation.

Images in this five-minute animation are drawn, erased and redrawn on the same piece of paper. The erased pencil marks leave a trail as shapes move across the page. The shapes represent flesh separated from the body then thrown in the air, pulled apart, squeezed, and jumped on. Looking back, I realize that I was going through a mid-life gender identity crisis and the only way to work it out was to take my body apart and put it back together again in a form that I felt comfortable with. It seems to have worked.

The images were captured with a digital still camera. The movement of the camera lens and the shutter made it impossible to register the images so my animator, Carolyn Stockbridge, and I used a camera with a removable manual lens and we locked the shutter in the open position. While we solved the problem of movement, the camera?s exposure was randomly off and we had to go back and manually adjust the brightness of most of the images.

How Luscious was made
List of screenings

Director/Storyboard: Nina Rota
Animator: Carolyn Stockbridge
Composer: Carolyn Stockbridge
Post Production: Kate Johnson, EZTV Media
Foley Artists: Kate Johnson & Michael Masucci, EZTV Media
Photographer: Julia Brandreth

 

Spineless (2006) – Written and Directed by Nina Rota

A six-minute animation that answers the question: How many chiropractors, acupuncturists, Rolfers and psychics does it take to heal an aching back?

List of screenings

Writer/Director: Nina Rota
Composer: Carolyn Stockbridge
Animator: B.C. Boyer
Voiceover Artist: Charity James
Story Consultant: Charity James
Additional Consultation: Linda Cowgill
Sound Mix: John Chominsky
Timing Consultant: Lindsey Pollard

List of screenings

Otitis Media (2006) – Written and Directed by Nina Rota

Take a short trip through the body of an infant confined to a hospital nursery. Children in institutions have an unusually high instance of otitis media – inner ear infection.

Otitis Media was created painting with oil pastels on index cards.

Writer/Director/Animator Nina Rota
Composer Carolyn Stockbridge
Digital Processing James Olsen

Who Needs Hollywood (2000)-Written and directed by Nina Rota

Long before The Blair Witch Project, John Dorr took a B&W surveillance camera and Betamax deck and made what was probably the first feature-length film on video. This half-hour documentary looks at the movies he made and the work created at EZTV, the video arts center founded by John.

Who Needs Hollywood! screened at Getty’s Pacific Standard Time projectAnthology Film ArchivesPhiladelphia QFestChicago Underground Film FestivalNY Queer Experimental Film FestivalFace TV in New Zealand, and The New York Underground Film Festival, among other places.

Complete list of screenings

Director/Producer: Nina Rota
Composer: Carolyn Stockbridge
Photography: Julia Brandreth
Total Running Time: 28 minutes
Completion Date: February 2000

Terminator Seed (2000) – Written and Directed by Nina Rota

Hang out with the police, protesters, and biotechnology activists at The National Democratic Convention in Los Angeles and find out what’s in those potato chips you’ve been eating.

How many people know that genetically altered foods have been on grocery store shelves in the United States since 1995?

You’ll also learn about the terminator seed, an infertile seed developed by Monsanto and the United States Department of Agriculture that requires farmers to buy new seed year after year after year.

Terminator Seed has traveled to 47 states and 34 countries including Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Turkey, Malaysia and Kenya and won awards at Earth Vision and International SASÀ Award 2003 Film Festival.

Where Terminator Seed has traveled
List of screenings

Director/Producer: Nina Rota
Editor/Writer: Patric Hedlund
Composer: Carolyn Stockbridge
Photographer: Julia Brandreth

For more information about genetically engineered food, please contact:
The State PIRGs Safe Foods Campaign
Food First
Organic Consumer’s Association
Pesticide Action Network

Total Running Time: 6 minutes