Let Me Feel Your Finger First's Ontologically Anxious Organism, narrates the experience of an animated character, who nervous about the very concept of character itself, disquises himself as a boulder. The three episodes follow the boulders progress through a series of reconstituted cartoon scenes whilst he grapples with existence, meets his maker and finally slips outside of the space of the picture plane to seek the ultimate reference.

Using 16mm cameras, artist Ben Rivers documents the solitary existence of Jake, a man who lives in isolation in the middle of the forest in a remote part of Scotland. The film follows his unconventional life, capturing moments of profound beauty. Jake is seen in all seasons, surviving frugally, passing the time with strange projects, living the radical dream he had as a younger man, a dream he spent two years working at sea to realise.

Gracefully constructed, Two Years at Sea creates an intimate connection with an individual who would otherwise be a complete outsider to us.

Chronic is an experimental narrative about a young woman who began mutilating herself as a girl to cope with a traumatic mid-western childhood. The lush optically-printed scenes take Gretchen’s point of view from her punk youth, a stay in a mental hospital, and her release into the big city. Scripted scenes are inter-spliced with documentary and found footage, illustrating the culture Gretchen lives in, her inner world and relationships from her birth to her final day.

I wrote my Master's thesis on the teaching of film as an art form. From 1969 to 1980 I was able to put these ideas into practice while teaching filmmaking in the Art Department at Sonoma State University in northern California. Some of my students , whose