Mark Street

An unflinching look at street vendors who make their living selling toy lights to the parents of children attending theatrical plays in Buenos Aires.

A walk through Berlin; eyes open, camera ready. Countless vignettes unfold around me, and I imagine storylines for each set piece.

The X Y Chromosome Project is the creation of artists Lynne Sachs and Mark Street. In addition to our two daughters, we make films and performances that use the split screen to cleave the primordial and the mediated. After returning from an inspiring week long artist retreat at the Experimental Television Center, Lynne asked Mark to collaborate with her on the creation of a piece in which they would each ruminate on the other's visual, reacting in a visceral way to what the other had hurled on the screen. Lynne would edit; Mark would edit. Back and forth and always forward. No regrets or over-thinking. In this way, the diptych structure is sometime's a boxing match and other times a pas de deux. Newsreel footage of Ronald Reagan's assassination attempt is brushed up against hand painted film, domestic spaces, and Christmas movie trailers. Together, we move from surface to depth and back again without even feeling the bends.

A smattering of repeated performances culled from old porno films and hand painted. A man bends over a body, but what we really notice is the texture of the wall behind him. A woman stares back at the viewer with annoyance. On the soundtrack Anais Nin declares: “but while I’m doing this I feel I’m not living.”

A pandemic diary filmed mostly in NYC, incorporating Super 8 and digital video recorded with Street's unique experimental eye. "From the uncertain first months when every foray felt perilous to various re openings, outings are recorded and reflections shared. Stills punctuate abstract and documentary footage, offering a collage of mediums in the face of the unknowable. "Sorties" is a military term-- a mission launched from a defensive position. That's sort of what a walk felt like in March 2020 in NYC. And then of course things changed; cases went up and down, the science evolved, fear waxed and waned. Of course, the pandemic continues; but I had to limit myself in making the film; March 2020-August 2021."

4 minute hand painted 35mm film digitally collaged to create an abstract nest. -MS

An outsider's meditation of the city of Buenos Aires, created during an extended visit. From high above and down in the street, the filmmaker considers Argentina's obsession with psychoanalysis, European culture and Eva Peron.

Fragments and minor moments coalesce and argue in this paean to overlooked and forgotten sketches. Recorded over five years in New York City, Berlin, Barcelona, Athens, New Orleans, Rome, Paris, Havana, Madrid, Budapest and Marseille. A shadow dances, a kite dives into the ground, a smoker exhales in a public market: this is a song about looking when you're not at all sure what you’re looking for. And a testament to the ethos of always carrying a camera even when you don’t know why.

A wabi sabi summer in Japan: Observing that which is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete produces a series of visual haiku in teeming street life; Bodies in emotion, and leafprints in the mud.

In this short version of what was once an hour long live performance, three altered versions of the same film (made in 1974, 1998 and 2009) are projected side by side. Sound will be mixed from each of the three along with music by Marco Testoni. Narrative slippages, abstract fugues and time-travel counterpoints collide and mingle in this fractious and riotous remake of a remake of a remake of a book adaptation. NYC manages to both evolve and stay the same over the course of 35 years.

Using hand-manipulated images, ECHO ANTHEM attempts to uncover the underbelly of jingoism in 1991 America, and show its destructive conclusion. In a perverse twist, the film invites the viewer to be at once soothed and repulsed by the seething display of the flag and what it leads to. The film establishes a tension between visual beauty and narrative and thematic concerns. ECHO ANTHEM is made up of three sections, each suggesting the same sequence of events. The viewer is challenged to fluctuate between states - from being engulfed by the visuals to being concerned about the narrative particulars and thematic possibilities.

Hand painting and bleaching a 35mm Dutch/French thriller reveals another layer of psychological complexity.

Tearing away at the emulsion, searching for a soundtrack amidst everyday objects.

An observational documentary made in Peru’s capital. The film begins with the legions of street sweepers who attack the sidewalks with a balletic intensity, and moves on to consider other urban vignettes in this powerful, dense city. The protagonists of the film quixotically and optimistically chip away at the dirt of this locale through a series of repeated gestures.

An investigation of issues surrounding Scottish independence, nationalism and Brexit. Voices float in and out, agreeing and disagreeing as images shot on the street in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness create the visual world of the film.

Based on Barbara Hammer’s 1973–85 correspondence with Jane Brakhage, as well as outtakes from her 1974 film "Jane Brakhage".

A Year is a dynamic and conflicted middle aged diary film featuring Street's anxious, deadpan onscreen commentary.

An homage and reimagining of Norman McLaren’s 1971 film.

Shot at night in Paris through various magnifiers, this most iconic city becomes unfamiliar, and then somewhat familiar again.

A skewed take on film detritus: 35mm movie trailers rescued from the trash and affected by hand and digitally, holding up a funhouse mirror to the industry of expectations.