The monthly series for local and independent work features shorts by three filmmakers, including two from the Hillman Photography Initiative's documentary series "The Invisible Photograph." Part I (16 min.) documents the little-known but astounding Corbis-Bettman Archive, a repository for thousands of historically important images in an underground limestone mine in Butler County. Bill Gates is cited (he owns Corbis), and the archive prompts discussion of the digital-photography explosion. Part III of this Carnegie Museum of Art project is an engaging 22-minute procedural about the team of "techno-archaeologists" who painstakingly recovered, from analog tape, the very first photographic images of the moon's surface (pre-dating Apollo 11). "Invisible Photograph" producer and cameraman David D'Agostino will present the films.
The program also includes Julie Sokolow's short "Fear, Loathing, and Comics, at the Basement Sale," which lovingly captures top local comics artists — including Ed Piskor, Jim Rugg and Tom Scioli — geeking out in New Dimension Comics' retail vault. Sokolow also screens the trailer for her forthcoming feature documentary "Aspie Seeks Love," about local writer, artist and character Dave Matthews.
Finally, curator Matthew Day's program features "The Showdown," Franklin Carpio's amusing action-movie-spoof trilogy in which little kids (in amazing hairpieces) portray hardened cops and gangsters out for revenge.