Kristie Alshaibi
Directing
Biography
Kristie Alshaibi changed her name to Viola Voltairine in 2021. Viola has participated in many illicit occupations to support her artistic habits, from being the program director of the Z Film Festival and festival director of the 72 Hour Feature Project in Chicago to running a commercial BDSM studio/art space and later becoming a kink educator for in-person and on-line workshops. Voltairine founded the production company Artvamp in 2000, and has since produced a number of award-winning feature films. These include the experimental narrative film Profane, which won Best Feature at the Boston Underground Film Festival and Best Film of the Year in the Underground Film Journal, as well as the Creative Capital award-winning documentary Nice Bombs, shot in Baghdad a few months after the beginning of U.S. occupation. Her work has appeared on the Sundance Channel, and many of the films she has worked on have gotten international distribution and been shown in festivals and on television around the world. For her short films, she has received grants from the Princess Grace Foundation and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. She was given a full merit scholarship to the School of the Art Institute Chicago where she received her Master's degree in Film and Video.
Known For
In a pseudo sci-fi trip of pornographic proportions. In Other People's Mirrors, the camera feels like an extension of the unstable characters it is following, taking on a near-home-movie style documentation of street performance and improvised art. It centers around the journey of Echo Transgression, a schizophrenic sex addict, who believes that if she follows the instructions being transmitted directly into her spine, then she will escape to her own version of nirvana. Underground legend Nick Zedd plays the alien phantom of Narcissus, a secret agent who makes sure she stays on course.
Other People's Mirrors
A young Muslim Dominatrix in the midst of a spiritual crisis.
Profane
An adventure in pornographic surrealism.
Convulsion Expulsion
Muhammad Zeromski, raised in Iraq and Poland, returns to the U.S. after being away for almost a year. The climate he enters is ominous and confused. He meets a woman who calls herself Jane Doe. They share a common fear and are drawn to one another through their paranoia.
Muhammad and Jane
Formally, an intriguing depiction of video as forward motion, or as technology of road movies and dreams. Alshaibi intercuts footage of a Southeastern Asian trip with a young man’s venereal disease-influenced fantasies of a strange young woman.
Soak
A woman is chased across a field by an unseen assailant.
Slaughtered Pigtails
Close-up of a woman crying.
Crying
What is preventing these people from completing video penetration?
The Amateurs
A woman lying on a hardwood floor covered in plastic wrap.
Self-Contained
Chicago, 2008.
Looking at Clouds
"Signal Cross Over is about assisted love suicide and the noisy transition into the afterlife. He is dead and, with his guidance, she will join him via a ritualized live cremation process. Shot on an old studio tube camera from 1983, all effects were done live with alcohol, glass, fire, and lights. The sounds were also created using old technology: a burning ear cone/candle, a police scanner, and a Theremin. The music of the afterlife consists of old-time Gospel, Hindu devotionals, an Islamic call to prayer, and pre-Christian Celtic folk singing. The songs were shredded, performed, and then remixed to signify all of the souls passing on." - Kristie Alshaibi
Signal Cross Over
Study of a schizophrenic girl in her own language.