Edin Velez

Shot in the Guatemalan Highlands, Meta Mayan II is a keenly observed, poetic video essay on the indigenous culture of the Mayans. Velez's vision is intensely personal; avoiding overt editorializing or ethnographic analysis, he depicts the landscapes, gestures, textures and rhythms of their culture in powerful, evocative images. The political and internecine conflicts confronting the Mayans are conveyed through the sound of American news broadcasts. Through subtle video effects — rapid, almost liquid pans, magnified close-ups, and slow motion — Velez expresses their strength and dignity. His highly charged, slow-motion image of a Mayan woman, gazing with curiosity and suspicion at the camera, becomes an eloquent metaphor for a culture in transition.

Shot in the Guatemalan Highlands, Meta Mayan II is a keenly observed, poetic video essay on the indigenous culture of the Mayans. Velez's vision is intensely personal; avoiding overt editorializing or ethnographic analysis, he depicts the landscapes, gestures, textures and rhythms of their culture in powerful, evocative images. The political and internecine conflicts confronting the Mayans are conveyed through the sound of American news broadcasts. Through subtle video effects — rapid, almost liquid pans, magnified close-ups, and slow motion — Velez expresses their strength and dignity. His highly charged, slow-motion image of a Mayan woman, gazing with curiosity and suspicion at the camera, becomes an eloquent metaphor for a culture in transition.

Shot in the Guatemalan Highlands, Meta Mayan II is a keenly observed, poetic video essay on the indigenous culture of the Mayans. Velez's vision is intensely personal; avoiding overt editorializing or ethnographic analysis, he depicts the landscapes, gestures, textures and rhythms of their culture in powerful, evocative images. The political and internecine conflicts confronting the Mayans are conveyed through the sound of American news broadcasts. Through subtle video effects — rapid, almost liquid pans, magnified close-ups, and slow motion — Velez expresses their strength and dignity. His highly charged, slow-motion image of a Mayan woman, gazing with curiosity and suspicion at the camera, becomes an eloquent metaphor for a culture in transition.

Shot in the Guatemalan Highlands, Meta Mayan II is a keenly observed, poetic video essay on the indigenous culture of the Mayans. Velez's vision is intensely personal; avoiding overt editorializing or ethnographic analysis, he depicts the landscapes, gestures, textures and rhythms of their culture in powerful, evocative images. The political and internecine conflicts confronting the Mayans are conveyed through the sound of American news broadcasts. Through subtle video effects — rapid, almost liquid pans, magnified close-ups, and slow motion — Velez expresses their strength and dignity. His highly charged, slow-motion image of a Mayan woman, gazing with curiosity and suspicion at the camera, becomes an eloquent metaphor for a culture in transition.

Oblique Strategist Too is a multilayered, tangential portrait of composer Brian Eno, and an evocative essay on the creative process. Eno's perspectives on his music and working methods surface elliptically, through interviews and footage of him in the studio and in lectures. Eno emerges as a meticulous musician, articulate critic, and, ultimately, an inscrutable personality. The tape's title is taken from a set of cards bearing aphorisms, which Eno uses as a random element of advice in his working process. Velez uses intricate audio and video effects to heighten the elusive nature of Eno's music and character. He begins the tape with a quote from Heraclitus: "The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself" a paradox that eminently suits his subject matter.

The dark sensibilities and cultural resonances of Butoh, the radical Japanese dance movement, are explored in this multilayered work. Profoundly rooted in both traditional and contemporary Japanese culture, Butoh arose in a spirit of revolt in the early 1960s. Characterized by frank sexuality and bodily distortions, Butoh transforms traditional dance movements into new forms, stripping away the taboos of contemporary Japanese culture to reveal a secret world of darkness and irrationality.

Over two hours of rare performances, interviews, animations, and experimental video. Milton Babbit’s discussion of the difficulties of working with archaic synthesizers in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the 1950s and ’60s is a firm reminder of just how foreign electronic sounds were to even the academic community only 40 years ago. Likewise, Paul Lansky’s private lesson with theremin inventor Leon Theremin is an example of how non-user friendly electronic musical instruments could be, even to people who should have the best sense of how to approach them.

The dark sensibilities and cultural resonances of Butoh, the radical Japanese dance movement, are explored in this multilayered work. Profoundly rooted in both traditional and contemporary Japanese culture, Butoh arose in a spirit of revolt in the early 1960s. Characterized by frank sexuality and bodily distortions, Butoh transforms traditional dance movements into new forms, stripping away the taboos of contemporary Japanese culture to reveal a secret world of darkness and irrationality.

Director Kelly Anderson's personal journey as a Brooklyn 'gentrifier' to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood along lines of race and class. The film reframes the gentrification debate to expose the corporate actors and government policies driving displacement and neighborhood change.

This cine-portrait of New York City uses digital effects to turn the countless riders of the subway system into living, breathing paintings.

Meaning of the Interval is an evocative, subjective essay that explores the inherent contradictions of contemporary Japan, from the rituals of Shinto religion to the nation's fascination with Western pop culture. Constructing a densely layered, nonlinear weave of the mythical and the everyday, Velez probes beneath the surface to unearth ancient, often anarchic tensions. In Velez's rich, transequential collage of imagery, emblems of contemporary Japan — the Bullet train, businessmen and McDonald's — collide with traditional ritual, from Kabuki and Sumo to Shinto. Defying documentary expectations of a narrative voice, Velez redefines the content through a carefully structured progression of visual and aural metaphors. The "interval" of the title relates to the Japanese concept of "ma" — the space between things, a source of energy, tension and balance.

An intimate space carved out of a quiet late summer day. Extreme close-ups of domestic life bathed in a ripe light slowly open up into wider landscapes of less forgiving time. This is a morning in Transylvania.

Featured are Black's Beach in San Diego, Paradise Lakes of Tempa, FL, Steph's Pond in Upstate New York, Cypress Cove, Rocquemont Beach on Guadeloupe Island, East Coast gathering of Naturists at a Poconos Mountain camp, Belezy in Southern France, Munich's Central Park in Germany, Mykonos Island in Greece, Sorobon Resort on Bonaire in the Caribbean and Cap D'Agde, the French Mediterranean city.