Dicky Bahto
Directing
Biography
Dicky Bahto has exhibited work utilizing still and motion picture photography, sound, and performance at a variety of museums, galleries, microcinemas, film festivals, conferences, alternative spaces, and scenic locations spanning the Northern Hemisphere, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to a series of nooks, crannies, and underbrush along and under Sunset Boulevard. He has works in the permanent collections of The Getty Museum and the Huntington Library, Museum, and Gardens. He frequently collaborates with musicians, both as a performer and as a visual artist, including Sarah Davachi, Liz Harris, Julia Holter, and Tashi Wada, as well as with his lover, Patrick Londen, and their cats Simone and Katoosh.
Known For
CHATTY CATTIES is a black comedy set in an alternate reality where cats can communicate with people. At the center of the film are Shelby, a Holly Godarkly type, and her cat, Leonard. When Shelby begins dating a friendly musician named Nate, Leonard starts to see a light at the end of the tunnel. At its heart the film is about communication and agency. In order to highlight this theme the cats are voiced by Deaf/HoH actors. We aim to address issues facing the Deaf community and other under-represented groups in a subtle way, and to give Deaf actors opportunities to play the kinds of roles that they are not normally offered, roles in which their hearing loss is not part of the plot.
Chatty Catties
Music for a Bellowing Room' is a collaborative durational work by musician Sarah Davachi and filmmaker Dicky Bahto, both based in Los Angeles. With a performance/running time of three hours, 'Music for a Bellowing Room' is an exercise in resolution, inviting the audience to shift their concentration and perception through gradual changes in sound and image. This piece was originally commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and received its premiere performance in September 2023.
Music for a Bellowing Room
silent, 10m, digital
Tout par compas suy composés
sound, 13.5 minutes, Super 8mm
Six Pages from a Diary
Combines home movie footage of his father with visual variations based on the game backgammon. Commissioned by the television station Canal180 in Portugal with a composition scored for it by Matmos, or shown silently.
A play in black & white (for baba)
A portrait of Cesar Cofone
A portrait of Cesar Cofone
Daily afternoon ritual. Made with the help of my partner, Patrick Londen, and featuring Katoosh.
4pm, Coffee
Short film by Dicky Bahto
Alas, Departing
Super 8 to video, color & b/w, music by Raum.
Sunlight Crying
"What's a Life?" is a project that developed over the course of a few years incorporating material recorded on Super 8 film, cell phone video, and audio recordings. The recordings are a mix of portraits of musicians as well as diary material focused on sound and music. While the project was "alive" and I was still accumulating new material, I would present it as a multimedia installation or as expanded cinema performances involving multiple television screens, video and Super 8 projection, cassette tapes, and mp3 audio playback, editing the material anew for each presentation and incorporating varying amounts of chance and site-specificity into each version. After a few years of letting the work live, breath, and grow, I decided to stop it's life in this form, and have since edited an hour and a half long single channel video work, some sections of which (the one you are seeing now for instance) may be shown independently.
What's a Life? (Tio's Remix)
A feature length film by Dicky Bahto, to accompany Grouper's live performances in 2022.