Past Featuresd Films

Postindustrial Symphony (EXPERIMENTAL, 16 minutes, 17 seconds)
Jason Middleton

Postindustrial Symphony is a visual essay contrasting landmarks in downtown Durham, North Carolina, with the sprawling array of corporate office parks in Research Triangle Park. The result is a two-part film representing the transition to a new type of (sub)urban geography. In part one, a band plays an elegy for the empty buildings and unused machines of Durham's former tobacco production district. In part two, a pair of tourists attempts to navigate their way through the oceanic office park developments of RTP. In the film's coda, the old industrial spaces of part one come to life again as a landscape for exploration and discovery via BMX bicycle.

Filmmaker Profile: JASON MIDDLETON

Jason Middleton is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and a lecturer in film studies and production at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His 16mm and Super 8mm films, including “Postindustrial Symphony” and “A Letter (Reflections on Memory, Movement, and Bicycles),” have screened at various festivals and other venues including Antimatter Festival of Underground Short Film and Video, Seattle Underground Film Festival, Sarah Lawrence Experimental Film and Video Festival (X-Fest), and the Florida Experimental Film and Video Festival. He has published articles on subjects including comedy in documentary film, race and class in music video, and film and postmodern theory.