Rob Cunningham
As a teenager I would sometimes make very short super-8 films. In college I drew a comic strip, “Secretman” for the University of Washington student paper, getting paid $8 per strip. I continued drawing comics for several years (“Jeffrey Smarmer” and “Magnetic Frog”), and in 2000 the Northwest Film Forum / Wiggly World put on a program called “Comic Artists Make Movies”. I and several others made super-8 films and screened them at the Wiggly World theater on Capitol Hill. A friend convinced me to enter the film I’d* made for that (“The Devices of Gustav Braustache, Bachelor of Science”) into the first annual film and video contest from The Stranger. The film wound up winning that contest, and I got to screen it at that year’s Bumbershoot** festival. Since then I have been making short films off and on over the years, and screening them at various film festivals. I was able to participate in the Seattle International Film Festival’s “Fly Film” challenge in 2008, and have done a few film collaborations with modern dancers over the years. The Telephone 21 project, with its 2-week deadlines and theme seeds made me try out different styles of working, which was a lot of fun. I didn’t have time to overthink things… typically just a week to think and a week to make something.
*The Devices of Gustav Braustache” was made in collaboration with Tony Mullen and Kenneth Jarvey.
**The Stranger had a pretty great prize package for that contest. Not only did the film get to screen at Bumbershoot, but they gave me a video camera, 25 rentals to Scarecrow Video, a flask, etc.