POWER/PLAY: Liane Brandon & Holly Fisher

POWER/PLAY is an installation of film and photographic images that matches two veteran artists with widely differing sensibilities. From Liane Brandon’s documentation of women powerlifters to Holly Fisher’s improvisatory visual essays, we enter the world of artists with tremendous vision and an impressive range of experiences.

Liane Brandon, having recently joined a gym, became interested in the women powerlifters who were training. Ranging in age from 27 to 60 years old, they seemed to defy all assumptions.  Brandon has created astounding images that convey both the physical nature of the sport while evoking the spirit of these women.

Holly Fisher’s t h i n k t a n k is a 16 minute video, looped for installation with audio headsets for the viewer.  A visual discourse on language and surveillance, a goldfish filmed in a Chinese restaurant in Berlin is transformed within 24 layers of video into an encounter between Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu and the 21st century darkarts of spy-craft. It all takes shape via multiple layering of a string quartet by composer Lois V Vierk. Fisher will also exhibit still images from her various film projects.
 

Liane Brandon’s diverse careers include political activist, stunt woman, ski instructor and educator.  She is an award-winning independent filmmaker, photographer and University of Massachusetts/Amherst Professor Emeritus.  As a photographer, Brandon has documented wildlife, jazz musicians, artists, writers, Cape Verdean longshoremen, political events, powerlifters and film and television productions.  Her still photography credits include Murder at Harvard (PBS American Experience), Typhoid Mary: The Most Dangerous Woman In America (PBS Nova), Unsolved Mysteries, The Powder & the Glory, and Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (PBS American Masters).   Her photos have been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, New York Daily News and many other publications, as well as featured in gallery exhibits.

Her classic films Anything You Want To Be (1971) and Betty Tells Her Story (1972) were among the earliest and most frequently used consciousness-raising tools of the Women's Movement.  Her films have won numerous national and international awards, and have been featured on HBO, USA Cable, TLC and Cinemax.  They have twice received Blue Ribbons at the American Film Festival, and have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Chicago Art Institute and the Tribeca Film Festival. As Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Brandon taught film and education courses, was the head of the Educational Technology Program at the College of Education and was the Director of UMass Educational Television which produced award winning, original educational programming for cable/home audiences throughout New England.


Holly Fisher has been active since the mid-sixties as an independent filmmaker, teacher, and editor of documentaries, including the 1989 Academy Award Nominee Who Killed Vincent Chin?  Her work as director, filmmaker, and editor have been screened in museums and film festivals worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, two Whitney Museum Biennials, Tribeca Film Festival, and Centre Pompidou. 

Fisher’s films are open-ended essays, fusing linear narrative with non-linear and increasingly layered and cyclic structures. Her first feature Bullets for Breakfast received “Best Experimental Film” at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1992. With an on-going interest in human rights, perception, and media, Fisher followed with three more long-form essay films: first is Everywhere at Once with Jeanne Morau, and in collaboration with photographer Peter Lindbergh.  Next was Deafening Silence, in which Fisher travels to Burma's eastern frontier, on foot and under-cover with guerrilla soldiers, to document life in a village of internally displaced ethnic Karen people.  A Question of Sunlight concerns the formation of memory, and links 9/11 with the holocaust via 'the telling of memories' by NYC artist José Urbach, who was witness to both. 


Liane Brandon's website
Holly Fisher's website