Born in San Francisco in 1976, Nara Denning is a native of the fringes and seeker of invisible realities. She has made a body of work which interprets what she has so far encountered, collecting antique elements to create seductive, turbulent dreamscapes inspired by personal memoir as recalled by the symbolic language of the heart.  Denning creates a heightened reality that merges the external and internal experience. Her current film series “Under the Pavement” explores identity crisis in the modern age.  Denning was awarded “Best New Silent Filmmaker 2009” by the SF Weekly as well as the 2010 “Investing in Artists” grant from the Center of Cultural Innovation and the 2011 Individual Artist Commission Award by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

“Denning’s measured direction, which aims to paint each frame as a freestanding work of art, combined with the wildly creative set design, classic minimalist effects, and brilliant original scores recalls the innovative, unbridled imagination of silent-era French auteur, Georges Méliès,… Denning artfully protests the prevailing attitudes of the tech-driven, meretriciousness of modern commercial filmmaking, and demonstrates, like Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece, “Raging Bull,” that the entirety of a film’s mise-en-scène, regardless of existing technologies or techniques, should be determined largely as an element of artistic discretion.  Denning wields that discretion..."

 -Eric M. Armstrong, The Moving Arts Film Journal 

Aritst Statement:

I liken terrestrial consciousness with being an audience member in a moving theater — our bodies being the dark box in which our souls sit and observe our lives, taking notes in eternity. Though the soul is not safe or complacent. If we are hurt and scarred the soul is scarred, only the scar takes on another form. It becomes symbol and is recorded forever. The soul sees in symbol and speaks in poetry. Life from the perspective of the inner "dark room" and its discovered truth is what I seek to portray in my work. The medium of digital video allows me to create layers of consciousness. One of my major goals in this next work is to unite reality and the ether realm of the subconscious into a single dimension in order to create a heightened reality for the audience. My major influences are German Expressionism and the experimental films of the early Surrealists. They are my strongest points of reference in form, leading me far from classic dialogue and contemporary realism.

APPLICATION

I regard film in the same way as painting and can expect to spend a great deal of time on a single shot — as that shot is a fully realized, moving painting. I use a lot of blue-screen, black-screen "double exposure" technique, and am now very excited about rear projection. I treat scenes like a collage. I once lived in a 10'x12' room down on South Van Ness and 16th Street (which is a terrible part of town — but I had more reserves of tolerance and youth!). There was an old room divider that had been closed off, it made a 7'x5' frame on the wall, where I put up some blue cloth. This is where I had my actors come and perform their bits before the "blue screen." Afterwards, I could composite them in any environment that I chose. Without these accessible techniques (and a bit of obsessive compulsion) I don't think I could have come so far with an independent vision.  

UNDER THE PAVEMENT 2011

Five experimental dreamscapes born of crisis and a search for atonement.

Featuring:  Christine Bonansea, Christopher Comarini, Daniel Roberts, Emi Stanley, Julia Zeffiro, Margaret Belton, Momos Cheeskos, Nirmala Nataraj, Will Franken, Willy the Mailman, & Wylie Huey