Shot on Super 8mm film and digital video, Lamiai is an experimental dream film. Lamiai is loosely derived from the Lamia in Greek mythology as well from John Keats’s poem Lamia and Peter Gabriel’s song The Lamia from Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway album. Lamiai is the third part of an experimental dream film trilogy that includes Dream Screen and Pizzica.
Pizzica (2024) Directed and Edited by Albert Gabriel Nigrin With Alexia Fraser and Evelyn Reese Cinematography by Albert Gabriel Nigrin Edited by Albert Gabriel Nigrin, Irene Fizer and Anita LaBelle Sound Design by Albert Gabriel Nigrin Costume Design by Irene Fizer Special Thanks to the Rutgers University Cinema Studies Program, Pro8mm, the New Jersey Media Arts Center, Anita LaBelle, Lili Dolly Nigrin, and Irene Fizer. Shot on Super 8mm film and digital video, Pizzica is an experimental dream film. Pizzica originated as a folk dance in the 1400s in Southern Italy. Though there are several different theories about its origin, the most accepted story is that this dance could fight off the poisonous bite of a tarantula. Color/Sound/10 minutes.
Shot on Super 8mm film and digital video, Dream Screen is an experimental dream film. As a woman dreams about herself dreaming, she brandishes a mirror that reflects and refracts sunlight onto alternate versions of herself who, in turn, begin to shine mirrored sunlight towards each other. The reflected sunlight summons the dreamer's selves to wake from their own nocturnal slumbers and move through a dreamscape fractured by rivers, canals as well as other surreal elements. Dream Screen pays homage to the films like Don Siegel's 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alain Robbe-Grillet's 1963, Kenneth Anger's 1980 Lucifer Rising, and Maya Deren's 1943 Meshes of the Afternoon.
Rummage is an experimental documentary of the legendary rummage sale that takes place in Far Hills, New Jersey every first weekend in May and October.
Gradiva deals with a man who constructs/creates an idealized image of a woman, seductive but false.
Shifting Margin Part 1 (1991) Produced, Directed, Photographed, and Edited by Albert Gabriel Nigrin Special Thanks: Brodsky and Treadway and DAK Productions Length: 3 minutes A statue of a horse [located in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, France] shot at 18fps on Kodachrome color super 8mm film transferred to high quality video. The film camera was shaken at various intensities to simulate the various forms of horse locomotion -- walk, trot, gallop, etc. The film is silent yet one hears the rhythm of hooves. The green color of the statue's faded bronze was amplified, as was the blue sky in post-production. A homage to Pegasus, Le Magnifique in Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, and Eadweard Muybridge.---AGN
A woman sleeps. She dreams of a troubling encounter with a man at a futuristic cathedral. In this dream, the proliferation of a day's images is reduced and refined into more enigmatic renderings. The world of color and movement translates into one of stone, shadows and light. In the epilogue, the woman, now awake, lingers over the dream scenario which has just played; she prepares new variations. As such, the film poses the problem of defining the relationship between dreaming and waking consciousness. AURELIA was shot on location in Barcelona, Spain at the unfinished Sagrada Familia church designed by Antonio Gaudi. The film is based in spirit on Gerard de Nerval's novella Aurelia. —Irene Fizer
Light Pharmacy: 4.1 is part of a series of 'film haiku' concerned primarily with the reflection and refraction of sunlight, and dream representation.---AGN "A surreal fantasy - almost a homage to Maya Deren. Nigrin has a fine feeling for imagery and pacing."---William Sloan, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1988.
The Furies is a modern dress reworking of Aeschylus's classical play entitled The Eumenides.The Furies is recounted in silent film form with ambient sounds and vocalizations punctuating a musical soundtrack.
Echolalia, is an experimental black and white 16mm film suggested by a Rilke poem ("Sonnets to Orpheus II, 14").
