Untitled Document

VIDEOTAPES BY DIANE SPODAREK AND JAY YAGER

NO PAIN NO GAIN 1984 black & white, 14 min. 05 sec.

Description:
Diane Spodarek returns to her childhood Summer home where, surrounded by family and friends, she talks about body building and life. Through twelve intimate "journal entries" she reflects on discipline, confidence, loneliness, sex, art, competition, men, motherhood, marriage, health, rape, and fishing.

First Prize winner: A Road Show, (sponsored by Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, 1985

AUTOMATIC SHUT OFF 1984 black & white, 8 min. 40 sec.

Description:
A sardonically humorous view of the intimate relationships in the life of a lonely, single, working mother. Distinctions between biography and fictional narrative are deliberately blurred.

THE CARDS DON'T LIE 1985 color, 15 min. 21 sec.

Description:
A not so conventional Tarot card reading is the collision point for three transient personalities. Enlisting the aid of Madam Di's psychic powers, Dangerous Diane and Vito Vito Vito attempt to control the future and each other.

CORPORATE VISE 1985 black & white, 3 min. 52 sec.

Description:
This split screen metaphor is a glimpse at the pressures that exist at the bottom of the corporate pyramid.

SIX VOLT FORTUNE 1985 black & white, 5 min. 32 sec.

Description:
As she approaches an important decision, a woman consults her plastic, electronic tarot card reader with predictable results.

NO FAULT 1986 black & white, 3 min. 0 sec.

Description:

In the aftermath of a lovers quarrel that leaves both parties physically and emotionally injured, a couple struggles with the question of blame, each trying to see the situation from the other's viewpoint.

TOOLS AND LINGERIE 1987 color, 13 min. 47 sec.

Description:
A video collage spinning off tools and lingerie, those icons of male and female sexuality, to take a humorous look at the dreams and desires, dreads and disappointments accompanying some relatively mundane events common to us all but usually cloaked in taboo. (Produced with support from the Michigan Council for the Arts.)

Winner of The Lawrence Kasdan award: 18th Ann Arbor 8mm Film/Video Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, 1989

THE HABIT 1988 color, 2 min. 47 sec.

Description:

A jump-cut, tongue in cheek double monologue about artists' compulsive behavior.

CROSSTALK 1990 black & white, 11 min. 20 sec.

Description:
Each sex contains the other. This tape raises questions of gender identity by criss-crossing the expected cultural clichés of male and female behavior, language, and dress.

Second Prize winner: 19th Ann Arbor 8mm Film and Video Festival, Ann Arbor, MI., 1990

THE SECRETARY AND THE CARPENTER 1991 color, 24 min. 30 sec.

Description:
The secretary and the carpenter are in love. After being evicted from their separate residences, they decide to live in their separate vehicles on the streets of Manhattan. Among the homeless middle class, their lives are plagued by domestic bickering, thefts, lack of toilet facilities, bad T.V. reception, and most of all, parking problems.

A deconstructed movie with a discontinuity plot.

NOTHING PERSONAL 1991 color, 10 min. 05 sec.

Description:
Tabloid personal ads project the loneliness, desperation and perversion of an impersonal urban society onto the screen of public declaration. This tape is a tongue-in-cheek personal letter about the personal ads whose rambling monologue threads its way through layers of memory, fantasy, conjecture, and reality to an open ended conclusion tinged with violence.

Merit Award winner: National Fine Arts Video Competition, University of Missouri, Kansas City, MO, 1991
Competition Finalist: Athens International Film and Video Festival, Athens Center for Film and Video, Athens, OH, 1992

HOUSEHOLD GODS 1994 NTSC color stereo 6 min. 27 sec.

Description:
Using standard television devices, talking heads and rapid fire commercial advertising footage, this tape fights back against the great American disease of T.V. driven consumerism and its particularly invidious manipulation of women.

HAIR CUT 2003 NTSC color 20 min. 47 sec.

Description:
Using a single extended shot, this witty, semi-autobiographical monologue touching on self-image, social conventions, and personal relationships, unfolds as the narrator embarks on a radical solution to hair care.

BOY BLUE

Description:
A video poem born of a mother's grief for her lost son. Reality and illusion, hope and despair appear and dissolve as her monologue progresses.

DREAMING NEW ZEALAND 2003 NTSC color 3 min. 03 sec.

Description:
In a dreamy realm suspended somewhere between her childhood Ontario residence and
her new found dwelling in New Zealand, Diane ponders her connections to time, marriage,
mother-daughter bonds, the sea, and home.