Filmography

Filmography

FRANCE (1982-1987)

  • When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
  • Close Shave
  • Perry in his Garden (co-distributed and produced with the French Foreign Ministry and the CNRS, Center for French Scientific Research)
  • Egg Yolk
  • The Four Seasons

UNITED STATES (1988-present)

  • Maid of the Mist
  • The Cookie Queen
  • Thanatos
  • How does your Garden Grow?
  • Home Sweet Home
  • The Road Home
  • The Waiting Game
  • In My Mother’s House
  • Attached
  • Can’t Sleep

CURRENT PRODUCTIONS:

  • Preproduction: Moving Day, Dwelling in Displacement
  • Client based video work: UNDP, Bristol-Myers Squibb, WTN and BCAM (see resume)
  • DVD training videos: Qigong with Wendy
  • Artist book productions: Lost (4 versions), Attached (2 versions)

AWARDS AND FESTIVALS:

DOCUMENTARIES

  • How Does Your Garden Grow?
    • AWARDS: Highly Commended – The Guernsey Lily Film and Video Festival
    • FESTIVALS/SCREENINGS: 2003 – The Guernsey Lily Film and Video Festival, England 1998 – Buffalo Movie Video Makers, Buffalo, N.Y. 1993 – Visible Women (Squeaky Wheel),Buffalo, N.Y. 1991 – Regional Rewind, Rochester, N.Y.
  • Home Sweet Home
    • AWARDS: Honorable Mention, Documentary Category – Natahala Media Festival Highly Commended, Documentary Category – Lily Guernsey International Film and Video Festival
    • FESTIVALS/SCREENINGS: 2000 – Lily Guernsey International Film and Video Festival 1999 – DUTV cable 54 Jan/Feb, Community cultural educational television,Philadelphia 1998 – Smoky Mountain/Nantahala Media Festival, N.C. 1997 – Lockport Community Television “New Directions in Video” Lockport public access cable channel 20 1997 – Buffalo Movie Video Makers, Buffalo, N.Y. 1996 – NAMAC (National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture), Oakland, CA. 1993 – Upstate Media Regrant, Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, N.Y.
  • Perry in His Garden
    • AWARDS: Official Selection – Cannes Film Market Official Selection – Festival des Femme
    • FESTIVALS/SCREENINGS: 2001 – Visual Studies Workshop, “No-TV” Series, Rochester, N.Y. 1988 – Crandall Library, Glens Falls, N.Y. 1988 – Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, N.Y. 1988 – Little Theatre, Documentary Festival, Rochester, N.Y. 1986 – Marche International du Film, Cannes, France 1986 – Festival des Femmes, Paris, France 1986 – Cinema du Reel, Paris, France

EXPERIMENTAL

  • Attached
    • FESTIVALS/SCREENINGS: 2012 – San Gio’ Video Festival
  • The Road Home
    • AWARDS: Honorable Mention, Experimental Category – Smoky Mountain/Nantahala Media Festival
    • FESTIVALS/SCREENINGS: 1998 – Brooklyn Film Festival, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1997 – Visual Studies Workshop, guest speaker and screening 1997 – Smoky Mountain/Nantahala Media Festival, N.C. 1997 – Society for Photographic Education-National Conference (Women’s Caucus), Rochester, N.Y.

NARRATIVE

Quick Links to Movies

Attached

Attached is an experimental video poem based on haiku. Haiku is a short poem, written in less than 17 syllables, usually in three lines and often with a seasonal reference. This twelve minute video uses the visual element as a complement, juxtaposition or addition rather than illustration of the haiku.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Perry Nichols, an 84-year-old retired engineer, now spends most of his time cultivating his garden. He gives away two-thirds of his crop to neighbors and family. To his family, he is a frugal, reclusive, conservative old man, whereas to his neighbors, he stands out as a Vermonter—active, independent, and willing to help. To himself, he is a man for whom work is a vital necessity. He is a busy man living in what he sees as the best of all possible worlds.

The three-minute clip presented here is drawn from the middle of the film and features interviews with family, neighbors, and friends, each offering a different perspective on Perry. The complete film runs 52 minutes.

The Road Home

This experimental, mixed-form documentary explores my personal reckoning with the American “home” I returned to after living abroad for fourteen years. Part of a series on memory, identity, and home, The Road Home investigates how technology can translate the mobility and fluctuation of identity. One of the questions the film raises is how we reconstruct our most fundamental values in order to again create a sense of home in a world where so many people have been uprooted.

The four-minute clip presented here comprises two excerpts from different sections of the film: the first explores home in relation to family and my relationship with my father; the second, drawn from later in the film, returns to the larger question of what it means to create a sense of home. The complete film runs 52 minutes.

Can’t Sleep

Can’t Sleep is a four minute silent narrative group project in which Wendy Smith worked primarily on lighting and camera. This was scripted, shot and edited in two days at Maine Media Workshops using a RED EPIC camera.