Black Box: This Is Not My Father reflects upon the incomprehensible links between chance and fate. The majority of the footage used in the video was taken when I accompanied my father on a boat trip to the island of Culebra to document the aftereffects of Hurricane Hugo. During this trip my father and a friend decided to make a future visit to another sea-faring friend in Venezuela. This decisive moment ultimately ended in a tragic plane crash that took my father's life 2 years later.
Cynthia Greig lives and works in metropolitan Detroit. Her photographs, installations and videos have been exhibited at The International Center for Photography, San Francisco Camerawork, Houston Center for Photography, The Alternative Museum in New York City, The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, MI, Museum of New Art in Detroit, MI, SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, OH, Focal Point Gallery in England and Gallery 44, Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto and Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and studied Art History and Filmmaking at the University of Iowa. Greig has been awarded grants for filmmaking from The Michigan Council for the Arts and Center for New Television (Chicago). She met her collaborator and mate, Richard H. Smith, while serving on the screening committee and board of directors of the Ann Arbor Film Festival from 1990 through 1995.
Richard H. Smith works as a film editor at Madriver Post-Detroit. He received his BA from Michigan State University in 1985 where he studied film and video and has edited several independent documentaries exhibited at film festivals including Ann Arbor Film Festival and Sundance and broadcast on PBS and Cinemax. In 2000 he received an Emmy award for editing "Come Unto Me: The Faces of Tyree Guyton," a film documentary about an internationally recognized and controversial Detroit artist who transforms abandoned homes and crack houses into art to raise awareness and incite action against urban neglect. Smith served on the selection committee for the Ann Arbor Film Festival from 1990 to 1995 and has curated film and video programs for the Ann Arbor Film Festival exhibitions program as well as other contemporary art venues. He lives in metro Detroit with collaborator and artist Cynthia Greig.
csgreig@umich.edu
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Black Box: This Is Not My Father
4:00 loop, DV, USA, 2004
Program: Inheritance
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