Contact:
Melissa Ragona
412-268-5097

For immediate release:
March 18, 2003

Carnegie Mellon presents splice: cutting edge film festival

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's fifth annual film festival, splice: cutting edge film festival, will take place April 22-27. The festival will explore the past, present and future of film and video, bringing together the best of experimental, independent and avant-garde movies.

Kicking off the festival on April 22 is groundbreaking feminist filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. She will speak on her career as one of the most influential avant-garde filmmakers of the last 30 years and showing her films, including "Film About A Woman Who...," "MURDER and murder" and "After Many A Summer Dies The Swan: Hybrid."

Other guests set to appear at the festival include:

• Pat O'Neill, legendary Los Angeles experimental filmmaker. O'Neill will join us April 24 to speak about his visually layered, surrealist-influenced work and to screen his new film "The Decay Of Fiction," which the Village Voice called "the most complex piece ever produced by Los Angeles-based special-effects whiz Pat O'Neill-and the fullest expression of his career on the periphery of the dream-factory assembly line."
• Benton Bainbridge, co-founder of groundbreaking artistic collectives The Poool, 77 Hz, Nneng and Stackable Thumb. Bainbridge pays us a visit on April 26 to perform a special mix of live feed video and improvisational sound design.
• Astria Suparak, a New York-based curator who will help close out the festival on April 27. Suparak is fast becoming one of the most original curators in the underground film and video scene, with her unique style of combining experimental film, videos, live performances and guest artists.