Biography: Jon Behrens began to make films as a teenager in the late seventies. Since the age of 16 Behrens has made well over 100 films of various lengths and subject matters and approaches, from documents of the early punk rock scene to poetic film experiments in which the celluloid film stock itself has been manipulated. Behrens has screened his films in cities throughout the World and has been called the Northwest's most prolific filmmaker. in addition to filmmaking Jon Behrens has experimented with photography and has taught workshops and classes on experimental film at Northwest Film Forum and at AFLN. Jon Behrens lives and works in Seattle.
BLOOD OF THE EARTHWORM (Brittany Gravely, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Description: Blood of the Earthworm is an anti-climactic barrage of original footage and unoriginal extractions from horror, science fiction, and educational films, all of which feature contemporary maladies of civilization, such as ecological devastation, bio-terrorism, consumerism, and government conspiracy in their story or subtext. The top of the industrial/corporate food chain saps blood from Earth to feed its network of machines. In turn, these machines give birth to machine-like people who are alienated, destructive, dissatisfied, lifeless. Feeding off of the exploitation of humanity and nature, this violent system creates a new, unsustainable "web-of-life" based on power and economics. The only way to maintain this fragile system is to fully domesticate, pacify, and overwhelm through a system of contradictory messages provided by a nervous system of news, education, advertisements, movies, and television. The manic "heroine" of the film is a product of this techno-mediated existence. Her conscience and emotions run counter to her actions; like a zombie, she is imprisioned within the motions of her routines, she speaks in words not her own. Occasionally interrupting her narrative is the educational/scientific host of this world, this film, and her life who attempts to intellectually distance himself from the horrors of this unnatural, unsettling world. Civilization's intervention in the natural course of evolution has created a helpless new race. Their day-to-day activity is subsumed by its own resemblance to common horror film settings and events; all are victims and accomplices in the doom which has insidiously enveloped all of existence. No one is safe... and it is never over...