Martha Colburn
Directing
Biography
Born in rural Pennsylvania, Martha Colburn is an artist filmmaker based in Pennsylvania, USA and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She travels extensively exhibiting and lecturing on her work. She has a B.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art and MA equivalent from Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunst in the Netherlands. In the 2007 Sundance Film Festival she was invited to initiate the ‘New Frontiers’ film and video installation program, with ‘Meet Me In Wichita” and in 2008 to opened the Museum of Art and Design (NY) with a live performance of films and music. In 2010 two of her films joined the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2013 her film ‘Metamorfoza’ was invited to participate in the series ‘Visual Arts’ by curator of the Collection de Bruin‐Heijn and performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. She is a 2015 recipient of the Creative Capital Award for film for the production of ‘Western Wild’. Recipient of the Mondriaan Foundations Working Artist Grant in 2016, she also did a number of performances including Amsterdam Art Week (with singer/ songwriter Rita Braga and Into the Great Wide Open Festival-with musician Jacco Gardner and cellist Helena Espvall. She also had a film retrospective screening in the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, Spain. In 2017 her film ‘Metamorfoza’ was included in the B3 Biennale of the Moving Image in Frankfurt, Germany and participated in the Mondriaan Foundations’ Delta Workers Art Residency in New Orleans, LA, USA. Her films are included in a number of exhibitions and films premiering in Sundance Film Festival (a collaboration with the performance artist ‘Narcissister’ and she is included in the Rotterdam International Film Festival with a live performance with composer Jeroen Kimmans’ musical group ‘Orquesta del Tiempo Perdido’ and her newest film, created with a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation Award for film ‘Western Wild…or how I found Wanderlust and met Old Shatterhand’.
Known For
A lyrical telling of the coming of age of a 14-year-old boy who learns to cope with his new found sexuality and his unrequited love for the cool kid in school.
Wild Tigers I Have Known
In a time of universal manipulation, deceit and monopoly a failed attempt to strip our identity both individual and collective are transcended by our true in identity in Christ the Lamb.
Broken Dream
A stop motion animated 16mm film combining the Wizard of Oz and the hunt for Bin Laden, with music by V. Vale and Jad Fair.
Meet Me in Wichita
An exploration of the visual and psychological parallels between the American western frontier and the conflict in the Middle East.
Destiny Manifesto
A film about smoking.
Asthma
"This film is set to the chaos-poetry of New York poet “99 Hooker”. It is a hyper-speed rant on the evils and absurdities of American television. An over-the-top tumble in a TV mindscape in which there are attacking baboons, a mutating Michael Jackson, gameshows based on body parts and more. “What’s On?” is a flat puppet-collage-paint and hand colored-animated film." - Martha Colburn
What's On
An interstellar Sex Capade of Astro-Porno-O-Naughts strobing and sucking through the Outer Limits. NASA Nymphets float through the Galaxies insinuating rocket blow jobs and releasing their Planetary Pleasures, ending in the dispersion of a capsule/parachute. Originally a double-projection of 16mm color space footage and animated, hand-colored collage animation Super 8.
Lift Off
Super 8mm color stop motion animated film (music video for Deerhoof).
Wrong Time Capsule
A film revealing our animal instincts. Half naked/half furry cats shake their hips and transform into human-like manifestations with too much make-up and sexy clothes. This film uses flat collage animated puppets and hand coloring of the film.
Cats Amore
A number of historical perverts in a pool together…
There's a Pervert in Our Pool!
"Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical," while containing stylistic affinities with older work, also presented more extended and inter-relational riffs, as well as a more nuanced pacing.
Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical
Short film.
Day of the Dutch
A look beneath the surface of porn.
Skelehellavision
16mm color found footage film about the distasteful diets that lead to cholesterol through re-editing a film about Cholesterol.
Cholesterol
In the 17th century Jan Velten made a book of amateurish drawings of animals, plants and circus artists which he had in his personal 'zoo' in his backyard in Amsterdam. The book is in the collection of Artis Zoo in Amsterdam. For this film Martha Colburn animated these drawings and married it with music by McCloud ZICMUSE on a re-make of an early harpsichord.
The Wonders of Nature
Super8mm color stop motion animated film about the adventures of two musicians taking them underground and to Hawaii, soundtrack by Jad Fair and Jason Willett.
Persecution in Paradise
Short film portrait using narration and artworks by Pat O’Neill and edited by Martha Colburn.
Messages
Short film portrait using narration and artworks by Pat O’Neill and edited by Martha Colburn.
Messages 2
Short by Martha Colburn.
Friendly Fire
Super 8mm color stop motion animated film about the chaos and lifestyle of Amsterdammers, set to the music of Hilary Jeffery.