ABIGAIL SEVERANCE
WAKE
experimental | 4 min | 2001 | digital video
Claiming the city as a collective organism, Wake hurtles through New York, into the belly of the beast and out the mouth of sorrow.
Included in Underground Zero, curated by Jay Rosenblatt & Caveh Zehedi in the weeks immediately after Sept 11, 2001.
San Francisco Film Critics Circle, Special Citation 2002
San Francisco Chronicle, Best Ten Films of 2002
Wake was created as part of Underground Zero, a collective art action conceived as a challenge to the mainstream media’s narrow view of public response in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. Wake toured widely in a national program of 25 Underground Zero films in festivals, museums and schools and with eight others broadcast on the Sundance Channel on 9/11/02, the first anniversary of the attacks. The producers of Underground Zero, independent filmmakers Jay Rosenblatt and Caveh Zahedi, call the project “a historical document which we believe embodies the ideals upon which America was founded: pluralism, tolerance, and self-rule.”
SELECTED SCREENINGS
Wexner Center for the Arts
Sundance Channel
HBO Frame by Frame
Pesaro Film Festival, Italy
European Media Arts Film Festival (Osnabruck, Germany)
San Francisco Cinematheque
Ann Arbor Film Festival
Nashville Film Festival
Cincinnati Film Society, Cincinnati
Rhode Island Film Festival
Artists Television Access
Fine Arts Cinema, Berkeley
Cornell Cinema, Ithaca, New York
Olympia Film Society, Washington
Downtown Community TV, Memorial Screening, New York
Webster University, St. Louis
Facets Theatre, Chicago
Channel Island Indie Film Festival, Ventura, California
Sidewalk Film Festival, Birmingham, Alabama
Red Eye Cinema, Minneapolis
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Austin
COLLABORATORS
concept, direction, cinematography + editing >
Abigail Severance + Julia Gandelsonas Storm
bodies > Amy Baxt, Jon Dillon, Justine Franko,
Elizabeth Harper, Alex Heilner, Eric Iversen,
Lee Krist, Max Miller, Shana Ward
stock footage > Microphotography + Other Cinema
support > Jenny Overman, Diana Agrest + Mario
Gandelsonas, Amy Baxt, Alex Heilner, Susan + Ben
Baxt, Bill Basquin, James Yuan
PRESS/AWARDS
SF Film Critics Circle, 2002 Special Citation, Underground Zero
LA Times, 5/17/2002, Personal Films Dig Deeper at Ground Zero
SF Chronicle, 12/31/2002, Underground Zero named in best 10 films of 2002
Filmmaker Magazine, Spring 2002, Disaster Relief
Vertigo Magazine, Summer 2002, Crisis Response: Views from Underground Zero
PR Newswire, 8/28/2002, Sundance Channel Presents Short Films in Remembrance of Sept 11
Austin Chronicle, 9/3/2002, Underground Zero
SF Gate, 5/8/2002, Underground Zero a needed catharsis
Berkeley Daily Planet, 5/10/2002, Underground Zero expands American’s consciousness of 9/11 tragedy