Mixed Signals - 2005 / DV 4:3 / 8min / color / sound

A scrambled satellite signal sets the tone for the mixed messages of fundamentalism and politics. The digitally pixelated broadcast blurs televised images into a kaleidoscope of sound and color, starkly portraying the co-option of religious dogma for profit and political gain.

MIXED SIGNALS had its world premiere at the 55th Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin and appeared as official selection for the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and the Toronto International Film Festival.

Selected Screenings:

2014 - International House Philadelphia / Oct4 /  Solo Screening - 4 films by Richard Martin

2010 - The Journal of Short Film DVD Compilation / Volume 17 / Ohio State University/Film Studies Program

2009 - Push Festival/Theatre Conspiracy "Live from a Bush of Ghosts" Mixed Signals imagery incorporated into live performance

2008 - UBC Centenary Screening Series / VIFF Theatre / May20

2007 - PAVED Arts Media Gallery / Saskatoon Canada / DOCUMENTARY REFRAMED - Process, Politics and Aesthetics / Curated by Maureen Latta / March22

2006 - PULSAR / Caracas Venezuela / Oct21

18. Fano International Film Festival / Italy / Oct24

Rencontres Traverse Video / Toulouse / March14

Transmediale.06 / Berlin

2005 - Rencontres Internationals Paris/Berlin Nov21

Media Art Festival Friesland / Netherlands / Sept23

8th Antimatter Underground Film Festival / Victoria Canada / Sept21

12th Chicago Underground Film Festival / Aug23 / “Cultural Diversity”

Toronto International Film Festival / Short Cuts Canada / Sept12/14/17

The Mediterranean Video Festival / Paestum Italy / Sept15-18

Brisbane International Film Festival / Australia / August6

7TH ArtsFest Film Festival / Moviate / Harrisburg PA / May28

YBOR Festival of the Moving Image / Tampa Florida / April25

Brooklyn Underground Film Festival / Closing Night Program Selection / April24

13. Internationale Filmtage Tuebingen / International Competition / May12/13

3. Festival Signes de Nuit / En Voyage:

Dusseldorf / Black Box Filmmuseum

Beirut / Festival International de Film et Video de Creation

Rome / Cineclub Rome et le Goethe

Urbino / Neusis Festival

Paris / Nuit Blanche

3. Festival Signes de Nuit / Paris / Le Cinema de Pantheon / April29/30

51. Internationale kurzfilmtage Oberhausen / International Competition / May6

20. Panorama & Talent Campus Selection / Berlin Film Festival

55. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin / Official Selection / World Premiere

February 13/14/15/16/19 2005

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MIXED SIGNALS - Press Quotes

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 "Mixed Signals overflows with ingenious pixel piquancy."

Margaret Von Schiller / 55. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin

"A pixelated sea of televised images blends together evangelical Christian rhetoric with the gospel of George W Bush and his neoconservative compatriots to powerful effect. Mixed Signals makes a scathing case for guilt by visual association."

Ben Murray / Toronto International Film Festival

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"A mixed satellite signal blurs a televised image into a kaleidoscope of sound and color. The resulting picture, even in its confusion, becomes a clearer medium for viewing the truth behind the fundamentalist images we are bombarded with each and every day."

Jill Hannon / Brooklyn Underground Film Festival

 

"Mixed Signals is an experimental video piece that emphasizes the disturbing similarity between the rhetoric of the Bush administration and Christian fundamentalist sermons. Director Richard Martin has degraded the video signal of religious television broadcasts so severely that they are nothing but animated pixels, which gives the hate and fear-spewing forms on screen the appearance of the very demons they warn will possess the unfaithful (the flickering pixels make them seem like beasts crawling out of some sort of digital infestation). He intercuts these monstrous preachers with text fragments and clips of members of American government and horrific world events, while also cleverly juxtaposing their vicious, proselytizing into a dense, disturbing soundscape. Mixed Signals uses the most radical kind of visual disintegration and abstraction to capture the terrifying quality of the most radical kind of religious and political extremism."

Jon Davies / Festival Daily / Toronto International Film Festival

 

"Richard Martin’s media collage MIXED SIGNALS engages in dead-on Bushwhacking."

Adam Nayman / Eye Weekly

 

"Mixed Signals. Not all is as it looks. Reality and truth lie sometimes close by, sometimes far apart. Media are manipulative. Can you make the distinction between real and fake? And how genuine can you be?"

Media Art Friesland Festival / Netherlands