Dannyboy

Make no mistake about it, the kid’s on fire. The other junkies call him Dannyboy. The kid has major learning disabilities. I doubt that he has written a sentence in his life. His video is short, but it’s all the attention span he has. I don’t treat junkies. My job is to facilitate kids at-risk in expressing themselves. I met Dannyboy when I was visiting Los Angeles and staying at the Alta Cienega Motel in West Hollywood, where Danny was living with other night creatures of his kind. No parents. No school. Danny deals drugs, and he’s a thief. The only difference between the Danny then and the Danny now is the cough. I suspect tuberculosis. There has to be something redeeming about this kid. Even if you have to turn over boulders the size of mountains to find it. Danny’s into sports. Even if he does attend most sports events either high on meth or zombied out on heroin. I do not know Danny’s world. I did not know that Danny could focus his head around images that are mainly of the spectators at any given game. He’s curious. But there is something off about the speeds at which the neurological connections here are made. You can put any kind of moral on this story that you want. It’s still Dannyboy who is living it.

Timothée Bârrus/ Cinémathèque: trahisons dans la salle

J’aide à prendre des décisions créatives. Je fournis les outils et parfois les images. Je suis seulement un guide. Je suis l’ombre dans le fond. Mais l’histoire appartient à la personne qui a fait adapter tout. Je pourrais vous aider à photographier l’histoire. Mais ce n’est pas ma vie. La vie appartient à la personne qui la vivent.

At one level of the exposure, you are being you. At another level of the transparency where light can only bounce, you are watching you. With eyes as dark as space and all the burning of the suns. Light just curves depending on the gravitas. You with those strong arms telling me to come home. Against my breast, the stories of a million lives.

Poésie par Logan

Je suis accro à la violence. Je suis accro à l’Internet.

Je suis accro à l’obscurité. Je suis accro à la folie.

Je suis accro à la drogue. Les trahisons et les crimes contre l’auto.

J’ai aimé un garçon qui m’a trahi. Je suis accro à l’idée de me tuer.

Je suis accro au sang et à la beauté. Je suis accro à l’agonie. Les monstres vivent dans mon cerveau.

Je vais les gratter. Je suis accro à ce poème. Je suis accro à la danse doucement à travers la musique. 

Je suis accro à mes rêves.

Erik

“My Teacher Says I Have No Brain”

Anthony

“Bikes”

I need some one to listen to me. No one does. You said show me your life. But I do not have no life. What I have is a disease. I never have no life. I never had one. Now I am tired of it. It is not a life to be on all these pills. I am tired of the pills. I am tired of the doctors. They are mean. They do not listen to me because I am a kid. I am tired of my mother. It is her fault she married him. It is not my fault I have HIV. All I have left is to ride my bike. That is my life is to ride my bike to fall off the world. I do not want to be here no more. Tim you know I mean it. I want her to let me go. Let me die. I have had enough. 

La Toya

I was raped now I have HIV. My mom does not let me go outside our apartment anymore. I am like a prisoner. I go to school but the other kids know and they will not be friends with me. I am making images and music on the computer. It is art. I put the ocean in this one. I made it red like blood. I have bad blood in me. I have never seen the ocean. I would like to see it some day.

Kip

Kip lives in a nursing home. He wishes he wasn’t here. his life sucks. I hate that nursing home as much as Kip does. I will tell you why. It’s the smell of human shit. The minute you walk into those double doors into the building, it’s the smell of human shit that will knock you on your ass. I do not know how the people who work there can work there. The first time I went into the building, I had to make a quick pit stop into the rest room to vomit. After that, I always went with an empty stomach. The rotting stench cannot be described. I am an atheist. Now, I am really an atheist. 

Kip’s first email to me read: I found you on the Internet. I am writing this with a pencil in my mouth. I arrived with technology. The kind of technology that would facilitate Kip and I to make video art together. The technology is irrelevant. This was about a boy and a man. Both of them clinging to whatever dignity they might have. We think about these warehouses we put people in as being for the elderly. We are wrong about a lot of things. We are a theatrical dance around a midnight fire signifying nothing. You suck, Kip wrote. I know that. “It’s my film.” I know that, too. 

Les Enfants Fous

Psychiatriques Lip-synch by Chevaux Mash

Au Voleur

"C’est ma vie"

Pascal

"à risque: lumière et movement"

Pascal is a sixteen year old patient suffering from HIV and schizophrenia at the Maison Blanche Hospital in Paris where he has assembled for Show Me Your Life — à risque: lumière et movement. A collage of sound, motion, dance, and metaphor that explores the perceptions he has of the world around him.

The United Nations took the firm position that genocide and slavery were world crimes, and should be eradicated and those engaged in it should be put on trial by the world court in The Hague, (Resolution 260 (111 A), UN General Assembly).

Convention on the Rights of the Child, two optional protocols, two superhighways for the transmission of HIV and human rights violations:

• Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography
• Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.

We would like to thank friends of Tristan's Moon & Show Me Your Life for their professionalism, ingenuity and courage; whether they happen to be well or ill.

Cinematheque Films / Arts Education: Students are allowed access to fair use art materials and mixed media in the teaching of iconic manipulation in photographic, video and film production. Representations and facsimiles posted here are presented as teaching tools and instruments employed to instruct students in the techniques and application of mixed media art and collage. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows art-teaching entities the fair use of such materials in classroom and teaching-research applications.

AIDS Crawling Up My Spine

Cinematheque Films: The Studio Arts Education: Students are allowed access to fair use art materials and mixed media in the teaching of iconic manipulation in photographic, video and film production. Representations and facsimiles posted here are presented as teaching tools and instruments employed to instruct students in the techniques and application of mixed media art and collage. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows art-teaching entities the fair use of such materials in classroom and teaching-research applications.

Tim Barrus (Artistic Director, Show Me Your Life; Founder, Cinematheque Films)

Cinematheque Films and Real Stories Gallery and I are involved in the creation of a Video/Art program called Show Me Your Life where kids at-risk are given video cameras and challenged to go out into the world and film their lives. Usually, it’s a journalist who does this. But we never see these lives as portrayed by the people who live them. Inevitably, we are going to have kids who do sex work in a variety of countries (Thailand, Congo, USA, France, Brazil, etc). These kids are at risk for HIV and some of them are at risk for violence as they already have HIV.

The world is not necessarily Disneyland. Many of our video cameras have been returned to us by social service agencies who have articulated: “we did not understand prostitution would be included in your program. We cannot participate.”

We have always said that children who are at-risk are often at risk for prostitution. This is called survival sex. These children are making videos of their lives. Those videos are stunning. The violence children live surrounded by is extraordinary. We have just never wanted to see it. HIV/AIDS is not an abstract idea in Show me Your Life. It is an everyday reality. Children forced into survival sex is repugnant. Yet the issue must be met head on to understand how it works.

These children at-risk are in need of voices, too. They are all too often silenced.

Silence equals death.

We will continue to arm children with video cameras and we will continue to tell them: show me your life. It isn’t always pretty and it isn’t always acceptable. Children have been killed because they were discovered with our cameras. Until we can face and understand HOW CHILDREN ON THE PLANET REALLY LIVE THEIR LIVES, we will never meet the challenge of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Minnow

"no voices in the dance"

Minnow has been dancing in the dance company he dances with. He does not hear the voices when he is dancing. The music tends to drown the voices out as well. This year, I’m thinking maybe we can totally eliminate the voices Minnow hears. We’ve already managed to kick most of them out of his head. How. No medication. A lot of: Dance. Choreography. Music. Video. Movement. And taking responsibility for accomplishing these things. One thing at a time. This year, I’m thinking we could go for broke. As I watch him dance, I can feel his heartbeat.