About the project: Created collaboratively for film and sound-score, Bay area filmmaker Ian Winters and composer Evelyn Ficarra (UK/US) present Short films about water / Submarine.

Short films is an evolving group of site-specific time-lapse films / animations about water, ice, and worlds above/below our flooding shorelines by Winters and a sonic world based in Ficarra's longstanding fascination with the submarine world.
Inspired by a fascination of things above and below water, and the passage of time the films merge site-based animation/interventions with physical sites around the globe where sea meets land meets history, and which may submerge in coming years. The project is embedded in the age-old (and present) fascination with sea – visually and sonically mapping place-specific worlds of water, shipwreck, geography, listening and loss.

At each iteration and site the project evolves - and presents as both a cinematic film, and as a multi-channel live video / sonic installation environment that slowly transforms on a day to day and year to year basis using a live “score” of human and environmental inputs including tidal flow from weather buoys, shipping traffic arriving/departing for ports known and unknown, and Greenland's rate of glacial melt.

This research phase is supported in part by funds from Meet the Composer and The Zellerbach Family Fund for the Milkbar Film Festival, and a residency at I-Park. Ficarra's album, submarine revisted is released by UK label, critical notice.

Short films / submarine is currently in the research stages with preview/research screenings that happened in fall 2008 at the Moscow Composers Union, I-Park Artist's Center in Conneticut, the Moving Baltic Sea Festival in St. Petersburg, RU, the Journées de l'électroacoustique in Paris, FR, the MilkBar Film Festival in Oakland, the Theatre Noise festival in London and upcoming site specific installations in 2009 at Oakland, CA's Middle Harbor State Park for the Illuminated Corridor , and at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco for the the Music by the Eyeful series.

About the artists:

Evelyn Ficarra  studied with Jonathan Harvey and has written music for dance, theatre, film, radio and the concert hall. Her solo CD 'Frantic Mid-Atlantic' is available on the Sargasso label www.sargasso.com and Submarine Revisted is available on the Critical Notice label. She has recently taken up a fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is working towards a PhD.  www.evelynficarra.com

Ian Winters is a San Francisco Bay Area based photographer, video-maker and performer. His recent work focuses on the intersections of photography, video and performance, often as collaborations and site-specific works with musicians, composers and choreographers. He trained in photography, film and performance at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston and Tufts University. www.ianwinters.com