Film
Baked Alaska
(feature film screenplay, dir. Kimmo Moykky & Kathleen Bryson, The Spindle & The Loom Productions, UK – 90 min, 2019. Starring Kathleen Bryson, Emma Thimbleby, Liam Clarke).
STOCKHOLM CITY FILM FESTIVAL (Stockholm, Sweden, 2023)
BODEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Boden, Sweden, 2023)
lULEA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Lulea, Sweden, 2023)
LIFT-OFF GLOBAL SESSIONS (2023)
REDUX FILM FESTIVAL (New York, USA, 2021)
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE: MAGIKAL CHARM EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL (New York, USA, 2O21)
WORLD PREMIERE: I AM MADNESS/MUSEELAB
(Sablé-sur-Sarthe, France, 2020)
IN THE SPIRIT OF HARRY SMITH AWARD, 2021
HONORABLE MENTION EXPERIMENTAL FORUM 2019
HONORABLE MENTION L.A. UNDERGROUND FILM FORUM 2019
WINNER BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM STOCKHOLM CITY 2023
WINNER BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM LULEA FILM FESTIVAL 2023
SEMIFINALIST BEST HORROR FILM BODEN FILM FESTIVAL 2023
NEWS
29 OCTOBER 2021: Baked Alaska is screening at the Redux Festival on 29 October 2021 in New York City, as an offshoot of the Magikal Charm Experimental Film and Video Festival @magikalcharm where it screened earlier this year live and online. This special online event is a curation via invitation by the programmers and includes taped interviews with the directors preceding each film.
24 APRIL 2021: We had the wonderful experience of having our feature Baked Alaska screen live in New York on 11 April 2021 at the Magikal Charm Experimental Film Festival, which was jam-packed with moving, curious, spooky and gloriously plain weird films. We also had the great honour of being awarded the "In the Spirit of Harry Smith Award", which as an anthropologist I was particularly happy to receive. The Festival Director Paul Ricciardelli called our film "The Thinking Person's Blair Witch Project... A Tour de Force", which was another honour too. Here are some screengrabs of the screening.
23 MARCH 2021: It is with huge excitement that I announce that my and Kimmo Moykky's feature film Baked Alaska will have its North American premiere at the Magikal Charm Experimental Film & Video Festival in New York on April 11th, 2021. I was lucky enough to have a short film previously screen at Magikal Charm in 2016. Other details can be seen on the Magikal Charm Festival website.
24 December 2020: World Premiere for Baked Alaska — the French/Belgian hosts powered through with an "I AM Madness 2020" Exhibition and my feature film Baked Alaska had its vernissage this week Friday 18 December at Museelab in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, France. I had no idea it was still going ahead in a real-time sense due to my own obliviousness but was very happy! It is still due to screen in Paris in real-time at some point as well. Directed by Kimmo Moykky & Kathleen Bryson, cinematography by Jessica Cheeseman. As noted below, Baked Alaska won Honorable Mention at both the LA Underground Film Festival and the Experimental Film Forum. Thank you to Seeta @museelab and Iffy! Read more about the project on the Baked Alaska Instagram.
23 October 2020: Our World Premiere was delayed by the pandemic, but Baked Alaska and the curators are resilient and the premiere now will be taking place in Paris 9-15 November 2020 at the Gallery as part of the “I Am” exhibition curated by Seeta Muller and Iffy Lemand.
22 JULY 2019: Our just-finished experimental folkhorror film Baked Alaska (@bakedalaskafilm on Twitter) received two nice honorable mention awards this week, first from the LA Underground Film Forum and then from the Experimental Forum (also Los Angeles-based).
21 JULY 2020: On a bit of a whim, last month I submitted my feature screenplay Spaceships Over Corvallis — @spaceshipsovercorvallis on Instagram, the one that was previously optioned etc. and that I am currently turning into a graphic novel — to Pinewood Studios’ Lift-Off Science Fiction screenplay competition. And it has been selected! In better times that would mean an intense workshop and marketing strategy (part of the prize) at Pinewood Studios itself but it’s “interesting times” (may you live, but not live through such again), so the workshop will be held online in early August. I am greatly looking forward to it. Spaceships Over Corvallis lives again! .
Info: A subversive film about xenophobia, a B-movie where evil flying saucers are attacking a small Oregon town, and also a CIA thriller where U.S. residents are abducted for extraordinary rendition overseas. I attended the Berlinale Talent Campus based on the script and on my previous feature The Viva Voce Virus (UK, 2008). SOC had most crew attached in 2009 but divorce understandably meant I dropped the ball. Here are some of the original 90-minute film’s details:
SETTING Corvallis, Oregon 1962; Portland, Oregon 2008; New York, NY, 2008; Hampshire, Massachusetts, 2008; Ukraine, 2008.
TAGLINE The Cold War Meets the War on Terror
9 MAY 2020: Yes, by this time we were all living in "interesting times". Exploding Cinema accepted my first rough little short film from way back in 2005 (!) True Advertising that screened remotely.
Synopsis: True Advertising 2005. 4 min 25 sec. A reflection on true advertising and false advertising, set to the dulcet tones of Mag/Lev and making use of the ever-popular public domain nature of the Prelinger Archives, here in the context of war footage, atomic bomb tests and sex-education films: all equally susceptible to advertising paradigms.
SYNOPSIS
Narcissistic failing playwright Sullivan Foster, former Alaskan, is recovering from a brutal break-up with her boyfriend in a haunted London apartment, not the best of retreats. Creepy soft-tissue body parts are appearing all over town; time-travelling unsavoury characters of Gold-Rush-era Alaska converge on London in search of fresh meat. As sled-dogs and their mushers wind their way down the evil Seven Sisters Road, can fragile Sullivan piece together the meaning behind the fleshy jigsaw clues in time to save her own skin? A hallucinogenic film that just like life itself is sometimes-naturalistic, sometimes-comic, sometimes-horrific, Baked Alaska delicately/crudely explores the events that break us, form us, cannibalize us or redeem us.
A recent acting gig can be seen/heard here in this January 2020 short entitled 2020 Vision by director Sarah Wood, made as a trailer to advertise the 2020 London Short Film Festival.
I play the lead role of "Sullivan" in the feature film Baked Alaska, directed by Kimmo Moykky and myself. I studied a postgraduate year of Classical Acting at the London Academy of Performing Arts conservatory, and previously studied improvisational and method acting at Seattle’s Northwest Actor’s Studio. I have performed in multiple feature and short films, including bride “Leila” in Campbell X’s Independent Spirit Award-winning feature Stud Life (2012), “Diana Dors” in Ali Smith’s I Am Diana Dors (2005), and as the lead in many of experimental film director Sarah Wood’s films, including I Want to Be a Secretary, which won Best Film at the London Short Film Festival.
In addition to performing in most of my own shorts, including at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Arts Festival in a highly experimental film/live action piece about global warming involving violinists in polar bear masks, I also have over 25 film, TV, stage and radio acting credits in pieces directed by other people, which have screened or been performed at festivals and venues such as the Institute for Contemporary Arts; National Film Theatre; Cambridge International Film Festival; London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival; OutFest; Edinburgh International Film Festival; Channel Four Television; BBC Radio Four; BBC Live; the Rosemary Branch Theatre and the Camden People’s Theatre, among others. I was photographed by Rankin for his SNOG exhibition at Brick Lane and in his 2000 photography book, and also by Parminder Sekhon for a book cover for Ice Queen (Virgin Publishing, 2000), and again by Sekhon for "Dietrich & Monroe”, a modelling shoot included in her Stonewall Award Finalist photography book Red Threads (Diva Books, 2003). Following this, I was featured in a series of subscription advertisements for Diva magazine in 2004, all photographs taken by Venetia Elphick.
In a different performative context, I have been a Mistress of Ceremonies at events ranging from the Primate Sexualities Research and Reading Group Celebration at University College London to the SPIT-LIT Women’s Literature Festival at Spitalfields, London, and have read from my own fiction and poetry in venues as diverse as Ladyfest Olympia, to Waterstones Piccadilly, to Foyles, to the Kairos Tuesday Poems Featured Poet series, to the YLAF Literary Festival (reading with Rebecca Brown, Naomi Alderman, Ali Smith, Abha Dawesar), to the Brighton & Hove Mobile Library. I enjoyed every get-together.
EDUCATION & TRAINING
University College London, London, UK, PhD Evolutionary Anthropology (February 2017)
London College of Printing/University of the Arts, London, MA Independent Film & Video
University of Washington, Seattle, USA – BA Anthropology, BA Swedish
PGCE Biology for Secondary School with Qualified Teacher Status programme, Brunel University, UK (current)
Teaching in Higher Education, Associate Fellow, Higher Education Academy, UK
Postgraduate Certificate in Classical Acting, London Academy of Performing Arts, UK
The Northwest Actor’s Studio, Seattle, Method Acting I & II, Improvisational Acting
Swedish National Exam (Rikstestet), Sweden
FILM CREDITS
Leader of the Perception Demonstration Centre (lead, short, 2020), 2020 Vision, dir. Sarah Wood, Woo Hoo Productions. Screened at Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) Opening Night: Memos for the Next Millennium, 2020, and at London-based Curzon cinemas throughout December 2019 and January 2020.
Sullivan (lead, feature, 2018), Baked Alaska, dir. Kimmo Moykky & Kathleen Bryson, The Spindle & the Loom
Leila (feature, 2012), Stud Life, dir. Campbell X, producers Stella Nwimo, Nadya Kassam, Lulu Belliveau
Young Gloria (feature, 2008), The Viva Voce Virus, dir. Kathleen Bryson & Kimmo Moykky, Survive-The-Kavoti-Cave Productions
Miss Purcell (lead, 12-minute short, 2007), I Want to Be a Secretary, dir. Sarah Wood / Woo Hoo Productions
Screened at Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) Opening Night: Memos for the Next Millennium, 2020; GRAND PRIZE – BEST FILM – London Short Film Festival a.k.a. Halloween Society Film Festival at the Institute for the Contemporary Arts, London January 2007; nominated for THE DAUGHTERS OF KAOS AWARD at the Halloween Short Film Festival, 2007, ICA; London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival at the National Film Theatre; Institute for the Contemporary Arts with Žižek!, 26 separate screenings May-June 2007 ICA: “A witty, haunting tale of professional and social aspiration, told entirely through voice-over and archive footage”; Bang Films Brasilia (Brazil),2007; Cambridge Film Festival, 2007; Copenhagen Lesbian and Gay Festival (Denmark), 2007; The Darklight Film Festival (Ireland), 2007
Molly (short, 2007), The Brittle Mermaid, dir. Tony LeTigre / Prince Pisces Productions
Untitled Lead (lead, short, 2006), Surrender, dir. Sarah Wood, Woo Hoo Productions
Screened at National Film Theatre, 2005 ; Halloween Society Independent Film Festival at Curzon Theatre, Soho, London 2006; QueerUpNorth Film Festival in Manchester at Filmworks, 2005(“the shoppers of Exchange Square are encouraged to release their inhibitions in an upbeat city stroll set to make you smile”); Milwaukee LGBT Film & Video Festival at the Union Theater, 2005; Winnipeg International Film Festival, 2006; Fifth Annual Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film: Choral Interventions – New Films; Presented to Live Music (Tony Massett: “The ubiquitous love song, driving the reactionary imagery of Sarah Wood’s Surrender”, Durham, Toronto, 2006]; Sugar & Splice Feminist Film Festival Film Festival [2006]
Diana Dors (lead, short film, 2005), I Am Diana Dors, dir. Ali Smith, Woo Hoo Productions
Screened @ Cambridge International Film Festival.
Blonde (visuals for techno festivals, pan-Europe, 2000), Marc Kushin a.k.a. DJ Ely Muff / Hedfuk Records
Eve (lead, 25-minute film, 2001), Chapter One, John Tordoff / Ragged Trousers
Newscaster (short, 2000), Dis Burnin’ Now, dir. Marc Kushin, Made in Tottenham Prods.
Screened at the Institute for the Contemporary Arts, and The National Film Theatre, London.
Myra (20-minute film), Clinic, dir. Fiona O'Donnell, Decoupage
Screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Videotheque) 2004; Metropolis Halloween 2004; Candid Projection Room 2004.
Mother (lead, short, 2001), Duck & Cover, dir. Helene Johannessen, LCP
Annette (23-minute film), Feeling Lucky, dir. John Tordoff, Ragged Trousers
TELEVISION CREDITS
Doris Day (-esque), Mad About the Boy, dir. Littleboy / Piranha Productions
[screened on Channel Four Television, UK]
Distressed Damsel, CHANNEL 4: TRAILER ADVERTISEMENT, Littleboy/Piranha Productions
[screened on Channel Four Television, UK]
RADIO CREDITS
"Movin', Groovin', Evolution", WAX ON WAX (with DJ Claire Waxler), OCD Radio
[broadcast on OCD Radio, 2021]
Open Book, BBC OPEN BOOK PROGRAMME (with Mariella Frostrup), BBC, Radio Four
[broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 2003]
Carrie, BBC LIVE: THE DAY I ATE MY PASSPORT, G.L.R./BBC LIVE
[broadcast on BBC Radio Live, 2001]
STAGE CREDITS
Yukon, HE’S LUCID, BUMBERSHOOT, Seattle Arts Festival 2005 [performance piece with staged reading, live fiddle and film], Starbucks Literary Stage
Ivy, 5 OR 6 THINGS I COULD TELL YOU ABOUT DR. BARBARA LOWENTHAL, PH.D. (rehearsed reading), Rosemary Branch Theatre
L.S.D., THE INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR LAUNCH, Silver Moon Books, London, Foyles Books [performed alongside Sebastian Horsely the Crucified Man and Miss Kimberley.
Mercy Croft, THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE, Camden People’s Theatre
The Countess, ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL; The Duchess, THE DUCHESS OF MALFI; Mme Quickly, HENRY V; Dorinne, TARTUFFE; Emilie, LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES – All roles performed at the London Academy of Performing Arts.
Joan/Witch, 70 SCENES OF HALLOWEEN; Mother/Whore, STEAK AND EGGS; Olga, SCAPES: THE 3 SISTERS DECONSTRUCTION – All roles performed at Cornish College of Fine Arts.
Medea, MEDEA; Vee Talbott, ORPHEUS DESCENDING – All roles performed at Northwest Actor’s Studio.
MISTRESS OF CEREMONIES & PRESENTER
Primate Sexualities Research and Reading Group Celebration, University College London, 2016
Va-Va-Voom Book Launch @ The Candy Bar, London
10 Years of Literature, SPIT-LIT Women’s Literature Festival, Upstairs at the Spitz, London
As You Desire Me by Fiona Cooper Book Launch at Gay’s the Word, London
As You Desire Me by Fiona Cooper Book Launch at The Sh! Shop, London
The Island of Mending Hearts Book Signing, Borders, London
The Gay Men’s Press Autumn Season Book Launch at Prowler Kings Cross, London
Zipper Four-of-a-Kind Book Launch at Prowler Kings Cross, London
The Escort and Peculiar Passions Book Launch at Prowler Kings Cross, London
The Red Hot Literature Panel (Presenter) at Libertas Festival, York
The Red Hot Diva Series Book Launch at The Candy Bar, London
BOOK & POETRY READINGS
The Stagtress BOOK LAUNCH / Atlantis Bookshop, London, UK, 2019.
Various readings for Haque magazine, 2012-2018.
Girl on a Stick BOOK READING / In Other Words Bookshop, Portland, Oregon, 2008
Girl on a Stick BOOK LAUNCH / 23rd Avenue Books, Portland, Oregon, 2008
The “Tuesday Poems” Poet, sponsored by KAIROS, 2001, Glass Bar, London (45-minute solo poetry reading)
Magma poetry Magazine Launch 1996
Shrike poetry Magazine Launch 1996
PARTICIPANT PANELIST
‘What Separates Humans from Animals?’ 3-person panel debate hosted by UCLU Atheist, Secularist & Humanist Society, UCLU Buddhist Society and UCLU Catholic Society, with Kathleen Bryson, the Venerable Upananda and Fr Hugh MacKenzie. UCL, London, UK – ‘The Human Animal’, oral presentation (27 October 2015)
YLAF Literary Festival, York 2006 (reading with Rebecca Brown, Naomi Alderman, Ali Smith, Abha Dawesar)
LADYFEST OLYMPIA Literature Selection 2005, Olympia, Washington (reading from He’s Lucid)
SPIT-LIT Women’s Literature Festival 2004, Upstairs at the Spitz, London (as editor and publisher)
Brighton & Hove Mobile Library, Summer 2004 (reading as author of “Worms” and “The Land of Mullets”)
Libertas Books Festival, York 2002 (reading as author of “The Day I Ate My Passport”)
Libertas Books Festival, York 2001 (reading as author of Mush)
Mush BOOK LAUNCH / Lesbian Literature Night with Ali Smith, Stella Duffy, Emma Donoghue & Kathleen Bryson at Waterstones Piccadilly, 2001
Diva Books Festival, York 2000 (reading as author of Mush)
MODELING
Photographer: RANKIN 2000 – Snog exhibition and book. Art Exhibition in Brick Lane, London 2000. Photography book published 2000.
Photographer: PARMINDER SEKHON 2000 – “Gangsta Molls”. Book Cover, for Ice Queen, Virgin Publishing 2000.
Photographer: JOHN STODDART 2001 – Feature article, for the Observer’s LIFE Magazine.
Photographer: PARMINDER SEKHON 2003 – “Dietrich & Monroe” – Photograph included in the Stonewall Award Finalist photography book Red Threads, Diva Books 2003.
Photographer: VENETIA ELPHICK 2004 – Subscriptions Ad / “Face of Diva Magazine 2004”.
OKAY, BACK TO THE FILMS.
ACTING
[NB. REMAINDER OF DIRECTORIAL FILMOGRAPHY FOLLOWS ACTING SECTION]
DIRECTORIAL FILMOGRAPHY, CONTINUED.
The Viva Voce Virus
(feature film screenplay, dir. Kathleen Bryson & Kimmo Moykky, Survive-the-Kavoti-Cave Productions, UK, 118 min, 2008. Starring Deni Francis, Luke Bishop, Adam Blake)
London actress Ronnie investigates a mysterious disease from Hollywood's yesteryear: a disease that makes actors keep mum about their same-sex love affairs, a disease spread by cocktails, perfume atomizers and the heterosexual screen kiss. Holding the key to the mystery is ex-starlet Gloria, inventor of a very special cocktail…
The feature screenplay for The Viva Voce Virus (Kathleen Bryson, screenwriter & co-director) was produced under STKC Productions (London, UK) and released in 2008. Its world premiere was at the Siren Nation Film Festival in Portland, Oregon in 2008, and its UK premiere was as the centrepiece screening for the Cine25 Women’s Film Festival in 2009.
AWARDED: Attendance at Berlinale Talent Campus 2009 at the Berlin International Film Festival as an "up-and-coming" director/screenwriter based on this work.
SELECTION: North American premiere at Siren Nation Film Festival in Portland, OR 2008,
SELECTION: UK premiere at Cine25 as the showcased Centrepiece Screening in York 2008.
"A campy new classic... The crowning jewel of the Siren Nation Film Festival... Critically engaging satire that oh-so-eloquently skewers not just the Hollywood of yesteryear, but the continual doublespeak of Hollywood's present” – The Oregonian
"Worlds collide in this surreal tale of two best friends forced to pose as a couple after getting stranded at a gay resort... a time-twisting mystery" – Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
“This sexy, sc-fi flick finds a London actress trying to uncover the mysterious ailment that’s keeping all the Hollywood queers silent about their same-sex liaisons” – Curve magazine
"A wild, vivid, surreal sci film... a Kenneth Angerish adventure through the history of the closet" – Campbell X, Friction magazine
"I love this script and its mad, anarchic fairy-tale logic!" – Clive Bradley, BAFTA-winning screenwriter
"Already being hailed as a camp classic of queer cinema" - Feminist Review Trust
Magic 8-Ball
(UK, written and directed by Kathleen Bryson, pop promo, 4.24 min, 2014)
Who wasn't in love with Samantha? A little girl growing up in the early 1980s uses her magic 8-ball to predict her chances of success with the Bewitched star. The Reagan-era setting seeps into former hippie idealism, but fears of impending adolescence can't stop the electroclash-with-warts music. This Cold-War-set paeon to a little girl's infatuation is concocted from the Prelinger Archives, a Collection of Public Domain Films.
SELECTION: InHouse Film Festival London 2015
SELECTION: Teststrip/Collections London 2016
SELECTION: Teststrip/Collections Leipzig 2016
We Burn Daylight
(short film written, directed and performed by Kathleen Bryson & Gwynfryn Thomas, UK, 4.50 min, 2014)
Once upon a time, the red-haired Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, and this was revealed in 2010 with the decoding of the Neanderthal genome. Many of us today carry 2-7% Neanderthal DNA as a result. Made by two evolutionary anthropologists, We Burn Daylight plays with the ideas of prehistoric imagination and illusion, particularly early Neanderthal culture such as red-painted handprints and shadow-flickers of shamanistic foxes. From these flickers of the starry cosmos to cave paintings, We Burn Daylight is the original Romeo-and-Juliet scenario in poem-and-film form, questioning our species' insistence on being the only ones to truly love, mourn and imagine other worlds.
SELECTION: Screened at "That Little Sphere... Nature Films No. 1", Hundred Years Gallery, London, England 2019
SELECTION: Screened at Magickal Charm Experimental Film Festival, Maya Deren Theatre, New York, New York, USA 2018.
SELECTION: Screened at Bath Fringe Arts Festival, FAB, Bath, England 2015
SELECTION: Screened at PowFEST, Portland Women’s Film Festival in March, Portland, Oregon, USA 2015.
Underwood & Oversky
(UK, written, directed, and performed by Kathleen Bryson pop promo, 5 min, 2015)
Lady Godiva rides her steed through the forest, troubled by the bickering angel and devil on her respective shoulders. Yet between the tiny couple romance blossoms, and they ascend first to the clouds together and then to the many levels of Dantean and Boschean Hell, trying to find their paradise. When all fails, will Lady Godiva rescue the mis-matched couple? A subversive little satire on commercial imagery involving Angel Champagne and Underwood Devilled Ham.
SELECTION: Need & Error London 2015
SELECTION: Need & Error Brussels 2015
Is Love a Pyramid Scheme?
(UK, written, directed and performed by Kathleen Bryson doc, 10.58 min, 2015)
Who knows what the Sphinx thinks? This short film functions as sphinx itself and asks the audience riddles as it plays with sexual preference, historical figures and commercial subliminal imagery: Joe the Camel from Camel Cigarettes' none-too-subtle penis-nose, the torturous love affair between the medieval sadistic device the Iron Maiden and a female Egyptian sarcophagus. The drama takes place amongst multiple pyramids: Maslow's Hierarchy, the Masonic pyramid found on the American dollar bill, the food pyramid. The Egyptian cat's-eye winks at the receiving audience -- who is really being fooled?
SELECTION: Need & Error London 2015
SELECTION: Need & Error Brussels 2015
Country Matters
(short documentary screenplay & directed by Kathleen Bryson & Jessica Cheeseman, The Spindle & The Loom Productions, UK, 10 min, 2012)
The age-old question: what do lesbians do out of bed? Mainstream TV channels commission lesbian documentaries with bed-hopping and bar-hopping drunken antics, but this documentary about a lesbian country-fair event held annually in a North London back-garden reveals that lesbians are actually making subversive chutneys and prizewinning pickles from Grandmother’s secret recipes. Here we see definitive proof that lesbians (and their friends) have irony as well as ironing skills, as they exhibit a finely tuned sense of Balmoral- and Women’s Institute-apparel, and as butches and femmes alike rustle up tasty apple pies, Goddess-themed baked-bread, controversial desserts, perfectly symmetrical English apples and a spot of age-appropriate Morris-dancing.
SELECTION: Screened at Wotever World Film Festival, London in August 2013.
SELECTION: Screened at Exploding Cinema, London in April 2013.
SELECTION: Screened at London’s Tight Shorts Film Festival in March 2013.
Vox Aurora
(short film screenplay, dir. Kathleen Bryson, Blushing Maiden Productions, USA, 2009)
The dread zombie bakers of the night, a pound of flesh. I confess that I wrote this poem and then put it under the door of Percy Ingle's Bakery on Chatsworth Road in Northeast London after a bad experience involving a croissant purchase and customer service. Public domain and creative commons music and stills.
WINNER: Vox Aurora was a co-winner for the 2009 Sci-Fi London Film Festival’s 2-Minute Zombie Film Competition.
SELECTION: Hackney Wicked Film Festival, London 2010
SELECTION: APT Gallery: “Folklore” TESTSTRIP, London 2012
“Quirky and fun”—i.d. magazine
The Syllogism
(short film screenplay, dir. Kathleen Bryson, Blushing Maidens Productions, USA, 2 min, 2008)
Truth, Beauty, Pigeons. My Pretty Portland. Copyright-free stills and mashed-up public domain tunes.
FINALIST: The Syllogism was a finalist for the 2008 My Pretty Portland Competition.
SELECTION: Art Institute of Portland, OR, August 2008
SELECTION: Flixation Film Series at the Horse Hospital, London, September 2008
SELECTION: Hackney Wicked Film Festival, London 2010
Where Have All the Flowers Gone/ Sweet Violets
(short film screenplay, dir. Kathleen Bryson, Blushing Maidens Productions, USA, 1 minute, 33 seconds, 2007/2013)
Death. That's where all the flowers have gone.
SELECTION: APT Gallery, “Sweets” TESTSTRIP, London 2013
Spaceships Over Portland
(short documentary screenplay, dir. Kathleen Bryson, Blushing Maidens Productions, USA, 2007)
What is unbelievable about government abductions of aliens?
SELECTION: Screened at Current TV on Current.com in 2007.
Dentist of the Vagina Dentatas
(short film screenplay, dir. Kathleen Bryson, Blushing Maidens Productions, USA, 4 min, 2006)
A frustrated vagina dentata negotiates the streets of Old Europe in search of a Dr. Freud or at very least good old-fashioned dental hygiene.
SELECTION: Screened at Exploding Cinema, London in 2013.
SELECTION: Screened at Dirty Queer, Portland in 2006 as a special screening request by organIsers. Censored and removed by YouTube for “obscene” content.
Kentucky Fried World
(short documentary screenplay, dir. Kathleen Bryson, Blushing Maidens Productions, UK, 4 min, 2005)
Making use of a broken camera in a broken city, Kentucky Fried World is a grimly humorous comment on national stereotypes, cultural imperialism and the independent fast-food chicken restaurants of London, England.
SELECTION: Screened at Ladyfest Olympia Film Festival at the Capitol Theater in Olympia, WA in 2005.
True Advertising
(short documentary screenplay,written and performed by Kathleen Bryson, USA 2005)
SELECTION: Screened at Exploding Cinema in London, UK on 9 May 2020.
MUSIC
GLASS WOMEN
The name “Glass Women” comes from four sources
which coalesced into molten glass the same fortnight
in a wanton display of synchronicity:
1) a print description of a red-and-orange-glowing
human heart inside a glass woman in Angela Carter’s
novel The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman;
2) a chance street encounter with a life-size discarded
see-through plastic female torso (quickly secured by
Jessica, and now our band logo);
3) a tour of the Wellcome Museum’s exhibition of the
1920s-inspired Transparent Woman medical model
and the concept of breaking outside pre-deterministic
ideas of the body as solely a predictable machine and
4) the pondered idea of (female) people themselves
being forced into crashable paradigms such as glass
ceilings, glass-house domestication: brood mares/
sows/cows in glass menageries.
Yep, we have an ambiguous relationship with our own
band name, recognising both attraction and oppression
to it and by it in ourselves as Partially Glass Women.
Like our glass prototype, we both have multiple identities:
Kathleen is a novelist, poet, painter, actor, filmmaker,
musician and evolutionary scientist. Jessica is an
illustrator, cinematographer, animator, painter, musician
and filmmaker. We share crossover tastes in 1980s
synth music, folk songs, fairy tales, macabre medical
anthropology, DIY filmmaking, paganism, nature and
surrealist art, and our music together shows our weird
points of transfer.
Our sound: Electrofolk with warts. Dirt-fuzz through a vocoder.
Be on the lookout for more weirdness involving
homoerotic Russian soldiers torch-singing on the Kalinin
Front, a fox with commitment issues, visionary nature
lucid dream remixes, dark Finnish folksong transliterations
about Madonna/Whore complexes, and foot-stomping
Alaskan Gold Rush sing-along, and fly your freak flags high.
– Kathleen and Jessica (2014)