Balancing on a Molecule (Dirt: Part Three)
Balancing on a Molecule uses animation, music, and incantations to enact a series of video rituals, trying to strike a balance between rapture and vulnerability. In order for rituals to be effective, we need to place our trust in them, which can open the door to revelation, but also leave us open to manipulation and madness.
A collage of poetic imagery, music, and invocatory language, the film follows two men in a series of esoteric experiments. Their words gives rise to desert landscapes, populated by sweat lodges, snakes, and an unusual game of tennis. A postmodern video opera, Balancing on a Molecule bathes the viewer in music, language, and visual spectacle.
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David FinkelsteinDirector
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David FinkelsteinWriter
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Ian W. HillWriter
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David FinkelsteinKey Cast
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Ian W. HillKey Cast
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David FinkelsteinMusic composed by
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David FinkelsteinAnimation and visual design
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Project Type:Animation, Experimental, Short
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Runtime:16 minutes 30 seconds
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Completion Date:August 1, 2022
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Country of Origin:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:miniDV
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Millennium Film WorkshopNew York City
United States
January 20, 2023 -
VideoformesClermont-Ferrand
France
March 14, 2024
DAVID FINKELSTEIN is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow. His video work has been featured in numerous film festivals around the world and has won awards at 25 of them. In 2013, he was an invited artist at the Traverse Vidéo Festival in Toulouse, France. His two feature films premiered at New Filmmakers in New York. He has had solo screenings of his films in Bilbao, London, Porto, New York, Chicago, Portland, Austin, North Carolina, Minnesota, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. His work has been funded by The Fund for Creative Communities, The Field, Movement Research, Meet the Composer, The Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BACA, and other sources.
DAVID FINKELSTEIN's videos combine meticulously crafted digital imagery with original music and improvised text to explore inner reality in an elliptical and poetic manner. He bases these works on improvised performances in which the actors collaborate to craft a verbal landscape from an inner world. He then composes a musical score and creates a complex visual environment to help the viewer perceive the tremendous thematic and emotional unity which underlies the fluidity of the improvisation.