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Love Rose

Bobby Abate

2010 00:13:52 United StatesEnglishB&W16:9HD video

Description

A surreal vision of one man's endeavor to contact the spirit world and come to terms with nightmares of a mysterious death.  A séance is orchestrated according to instructions written in 1920 by revered parapsychologist Hereward Carrington, voiced here by novelist Lynne Tillman.  Roses, seen as light by spirits, are placed in the room but these flowers are plastic; a requisite round table is surrounded by wooden chairs that remain empty despite stern warnings to never sit alone.

Altering the invocation with rules he has broken, the undaunted romantic finds himself entering another dimension rendered in the distinct textures of black and white analog video.  Through the delicate tubes of cameras nearly 40 years old, darkness is carved by trails of light, plastic roses are crowned by black halos, and scan lines swirl upwards and beyond towards a fateful realization.  On a path illuminated by lifeless flowers and surveilled by forgotten cameras, this self-styled mystic will ultimately come to see the only escape from a colorless world is to cross over to the other side.

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

About Bobby Abate

Bobby Abate (Brooklyn, NY) makes films and videos that fuse nostalgia, psychodrama, and spectacle with a distinctly modern resonance. His recent work, the occult themed Love Rose (2010) and Gossip (2011) premiered at the New York Film Festival, and his 1960’s era supernatural drama The Evil Eyes (2011) won \aut\FILM Award for Best LGBT Film at the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Other exhibitions and screenings include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Moscow International Film Festival, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the ICA in London and Palm Beach. Critics celebrated his underground feature Certain Women, co-directed with Peggy Ahwesh; and MoMA called the film “as sustained and as successful as Todd Haynes’ acclaimed Far From Heaven,” with an “almost opposite approach."

Film Comment Magazine named Bobby one of the top 25 emerging Filmmakers for the 21st Century  Among other accolades, he is also the recipient of the Princess Grace Award. He is currently working on his first mainstream feature Dressed in Black with Damsels in Distress co-producer Charlie Dibe