James Fotopoulos

A drifter of a small storefront church's congregation stumbles across a large insect last seen before Christ and emerging en masse to render a new plague upon the world.

2002, 2 min, sound

A disgruntled veteran unable to adjust back into society justifies domestic terrorism by interpreting his actions with alien invasion.

A man and woman embark on a sexual journey to detach mind from body. The relationship slowly grows into one of emotional domination, physical disease, abandonment and the creation of personal pornography.

Low-budget film about a lingerie model who keeps getting hooked up with the wrong guy.

An actress living in New York performs an audition, then goes to meditation and winds up at a party of artists viewing a film. At home, she and her girlfriend explore buried memories and later nightmares trigger sleepwalking. Finally, the actress enacts a childlike performance inspired by a Frank Wedekind play.

The origins of the universe told through the lens of an experimental film and video sci-fi horror-show fusion: Alien women trapped in a colorfully hand-scratched film-textured hotel room, genetically mutated men slowly driven mad in a white digital prison, the high contrast landscapes of Mars, and a futuristic tribe of a giant, an elf and a witch in their decaying suicide-home.

The story of young sisters in the American Midwest left alone with their increasingly unstable mother while their father is fighting in the Civil War. The film traces the girls’ naturally fraught sibling dynamic and the ways that their father’s absence ignites their imagination. When they meet a stranger in the forest they become enchanted by a world of creative work and nature, a welcome distraction from their volatile mother. Play and the dreamlike space they inhabit provides an expansive and ultimately grounding setting for the girls’ response to war.

Short film from James Fotopoulos

Short film from James Fotopoulos, 16mm film (b&w).

Two of the female characters from Jerusalem (2003) appear in a new location: a black and white minimalist apartment. With the aid of drawings to illustrate their psychological probing, the ladies perform basic physical repetitions and frozen poses while being captured on video and re-lensed through low-fi cyan solariziations. Layered stereo monologues speak of their continuing personal explorations into the science-fiction dream-symbol terrain of their private histories.

The story of an aspiring young Hollywood actor who, while hitchhiking to see his agent, is picked-up by a lecherous, cynical Cary Grant.

Agents Mr. Rainbow and Mr. Lamb are sent to an alien planet fighting a civil war. Their mission to destroy a perpetual motion machine is interrupted by their capture. While their interrogations proceed the two men struggle to come to terms with their suffering and pending death.

Part 1 of 12. 4m

Thousands of years into the future, through the eyes of an alien life form, we see the fossilized beings of Ronald Reagan and William Casey enact their relationship as if in a crude ancient play. Through an array of text, sculptures, drawings, animations and monologues, alternate interpretations of the character’s histories and myths unfold.

Short film from James Fotopoulos

Deep blues. 30.40 is part of Mike Plante's Lunchfilm series of commissioned shorts (made for the cost of a lunch between Plante and filmmaker James Fotopoulos).

Video portrait by James Fotopoulos.

An adaptation of the 1886 musical “Alice in Wonderland: A Dream Play for Children” by Henry Saville Clark and Walter Slaughter, Fotopoulos’ feature length film propels the Clark/Slaughter score into the 21st century digital age. Sculptures, drawings, text, and original music are used to explore the late 19th century’s evolution of painting, literature, and theatre into early photography and moving pictures. The piece probes the interplay of art and science and in exploring these ideas certain lives and themes are touched upon – the relationship between John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll, Ruskin’s theories on drawing, Thomas Eakins’ painting and his use of photography, the burgeoning of early cinema with Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey, notions of amateurism and professionalism in art and the archetype of the condemned artist. The work is presented in two acts, remaining faithful to the musical’s original construction based upon Carroll’s narratives.

16mm film (b&w)