tender archive / melika bass / news
New
"American filmmaker Melika Bass. . . an amazing talent yet to be discovered in Europe, author of a unique cinema of atmosphere and historical reminiscences. . .one of the possible revelations of [the Torino Film Festival]." (Roberto Manassero)
"Waking Things [creates] cyclical time dilated to the maximum... loaded with details of Nature as memento mori, reminding us of the transience of this and of life itself." (Sentieri Selvaggi)
"Filmmaker Melika Bass . . . one of the most promising emergent practitioners in Chicago right now." (Chicago Tribune)
2011-12 Artist-in-Residence for in the first inaugural Bolt Residency with 11 fellow Chicago artists. A new film and installation are in the works for an upcoming Solo Exhibition in September 2012.
Press for Shoals
WATCH the Shoals preview here.
"[A] strangely compelling—almost mesmerizing—work. . . like Malick meets David Lynch, if you want a comparison, but in a deeper sense, Shoals is pretty much its own beast. . ." (Mountain Xpress)
"A lulling, singular peculiarity. . ." (Chicago Tribune)
"Moving from shorts to longer works, Chicago filmmaker Melika Bass is establishing a distinctive style: shooting on 16mm color film, she casts arresting figures who do opaque errands in lyrical landscapes. . . Bass mystifies the work of these plain folk with her own filmic magic. "
(Chicago Sun-Times)
A filmmaker interview about Shoals on the White City Cinema blog.
A filmmaker interview on the Shoals MCA exhibition by SAIC's FNewsmagazine.