BURIED LAND: A film by Steven Eastwood & Geoffrey Alan Rhodes

Location: The Burchfield Penney Arts Center in Buffalo
Thursday, October 14, 2010 at  7pm
As part of Beyond/In Western New York Events
Cost: Free

Buried Land (2010)
A film by Steven Eastwood & Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
Narrative feature, 86mins, 16.9 HDCAM
Shot on location in the Valley of the Pyramids in Visoko, Bosnia

The feature film, Buried Land, released this year at the Tribeca Film Festival will screen at the Burchfield Penney Arts Center this Thursday at 7pm as part of the Beyond/In Western New York biennale.

Buried Land was co-produced and co-directed by Steven Eastwood and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, Assistant Professor in the School of Film and Animation at R.I.T. This is the film’s first screening so close to home, and is free and open to the public.  A Q&A by co-Director Alan Rhodes will be held at the end of the screening.

Co-directors Steven Eastwood and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes incorporate real people and events into their fiction, including an accusation made against them of being “Borat in Bosnia”.  This mix of fact and fantastical has as many sides as the story of the pyramids the Visokons claim to have.

In 2006, CNN announced the discovery of ancient pyramids in the tiny village of Visoko, Bosnia.  A fictional film in a real community, Buried Land is the story of one man’s return to his homeland to find the truth behind the pyramidal claims. But how do you make a film about a pyramid that can’t be seen and will he come to believe? This is a story of the power of faith, imagination and community, and of the futility of looking for absolute truths, in life, and in movies…

Synopsis
Emir, a Bosnian émigré removed during the war, returns to his homeland to assist an American filmmaker in the making of a film. Caught between states of patriotism and cynicism, he sets out to discover the truth behind the pyramidal claims. Harnessing the passionate hopes and imagination of the town, the pair begin casting for their proposed film; but Semir Osmanagic, the man at the centre of the audacious pyramidal claims, remains an elusive figure. When Emir begins a relationship with a beautiful tour guide, Avdija, it is soon clear that he is out of his depth and his ego attracts attention. Accused of making fun of the community, Emir’s outlandish behavior grows more and more confused and a grandiose shoot at the summit of the Moon Pyramid descends into chaos.

Rejected by Avdija, Emir stumbles, desolate, to the Pyramid of the Sun.
Here, at last, he finds Osmanagic and he is forced to confront both his expatriate identity and his skeptical beliefs towards the town. Using factual encounters, real interviews, staged situations and scripted scenes, Buried Land is a fictional film set in a real community.

Official Selection Tribeca International Film Festival 2010
Official Selection Moscow International Film Festival 2010
Bosnian Programme Sarajevo International Film Festival 2010

For more information on G. Alan Rhodes, please visit: http://www.garhodes.com/
View trailer here: http://buriedland.com/

BEYOND/IN WESTERN NY 2010 starts TONIGHT!

A curatorial collaboration of twelve regional museums and galleries, Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents is a contemporary, multi-venue arts exhibition. It will present the work of outstanding artists from Western New York and Southern Ontario, Northeastern Ohio and Northwestern Pennsylvania and for the first time, feature the work of artists from outside the region, blurring the local with the global and challenging the assumptions of what these distinctions mean today, when all artists are both.

Beyond/In kicks off this evening, Thursday, September 23, 2010 with a high-wire walk at the Liberty Building by reknown French tight-rope walker, Didier Pasquette.

Featuring the participation of many artists affiliated with the Department of Media Study including: Josephine Anstey, Jordan Dalton, Elyse Harzynski, Barbara Lattanzi, Carl Lee, Luke Noonan, Dave Pape, Cayden Mak, Brian Milbrand, Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, Anna Scime, Mark Shepard, Jessica Thompson, members of virocode and more.

http://beyondinwny.org/

"BURIED LAND" directed by STEVEN EASTWOOD & GEOFFREY ALAN RHODES premieres @ Tribeca Int'l Film Festival

BURIED LAND (2010, 89min., feature narrative film, HD color), produced and directed by Alan Geoffrey Rhodes (MFA ’05) and former DMS faculty Steven Eastwood will premiere at the Tribeca International Film Festival in New York City on April 22, 2010. Crew members also include: Cinematographer Christopher Ernst (MFA ’08); Sound Recordist Vincenzo Mistretta (MFA ’06); and Associate Producer Dalibor Stare (BA ’08).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqVUzYCjuGI]

Find out more on Facebook and at www.buriedland.com.

SYNOPSIS:
Part documentary, part drama, Buried Land tells the story of ordinary people attempting to realize a dream. Two actors cut a path through the real community and strange reality of Visoko, the small town at the heart of a remarkable claim: the discovery of ancient pyramids, not in Egypt, but central Bosnia…

Emir is a Bosnian émigré, removed during the war and now struggling to rediscover his homeland. He has returned to assist an American director in the making of a film about Visoko’s… read more