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Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

2010 · 10 min · Drama, Romance

Jonathan Schwartz is a young American experimental filmmaker who has crafted a body of short, lyrical 16mm films over the past decade. Working with the legacies of anthropological and observational non-fiction cinema, and in the avant-garde tradition of filmmakers like Warren Sonbert and Mark LaPore, Schwartz makes the camera a catalyst for a transformed dynamic between the figure behind the camera and those in front. Turning his camera on the people and places around him (whether in his New England home or on his travels abroad), Schwartz captures jewel-like fragments of gesture, light and colour that he then meticulously assembles alongside sounds collected as field recordings, creating films of great beauty and feeling that seem to vibrate with a total openness to the surrounding world and its denizens.

Directed by Jonathan Schwartz

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Happy Birthday

Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind

Both from Jonathan Schwartz.

More from Jonathan SchwartzSee all →

My Favorite WeddingMy Favorite Wedding · 2017
My Favorite Wedding
★ 6.92017
MovieComedyRomance
Potential Northwestern fellow Tess Harper lasers through her best friend's wedding planning like the star doctor she hopes to soon become. In fact, Tess puzzles through any problem - provided it's not her own. When she meets divorce lawyer and groom's best friend, Michael, Tess maneuvers around him like a gurney in the emergency room until she discovers this best man has a few moves of his own.
Profit Motive and the Whispering WindProfit Motive and the Whispering Wind · 2008
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
★ 6.32008
MovieDocumentaryHistory
A visual essay about the progressive tradition of the United States as seen through grave markers and monuments.
A Leaf Is the Sea Is a TheaterA Leaf Is the Sea Is a Theater · 2017
A Leaf Is the Sea Is a Theater
★ 5.82017
Movie
When a character moves off screen, we accept the fact that he is out of sight, but he continues to exist in his own capacity at some other place in the decor which is hidden from us. There are no wings to the screen. Facts are perceptions of surfaces.
How to Beat the High Cost of LivingHow to Beat the High Cost of Living · 1980
How to Beat the High Cost of Living
★ 5.41980
MovieComedy
In order to beat inflation and subsidize their alimony checks, three suburban housewives plot to steal $1 million from a large plastic ball which is displayed in a local shopping center.
Season's GreetingsSeason's Greetings · 2016
Season's Greetings
★ 5.32016
MovieRomanceTV Movie
Darcy Blake has the perfect job – she works for Harrington House, a successful greeting card company, in the editorial department. Writing heart-felt, meaningful copy for cards is very important to Darcy, especially at Christmas, which was important to her as a young girl. She realizes that she is a bit out of step with her fellow millennials but that is fine with Darcy. Everything is about to change when Andrew Harrington arrives at the company to take over from his grandfather and he has a very different view of the holidays.
Between GoldBetween Gold · 2011
Between Gold
2011
Movie
Schwartz explores the effect of light as both mystery and revelation. Glazed water in erubescent evenings discloses the shadowed details of the streets of Istanbul.
Sunbeam HunterSunbeam Hunter · 2005
Sunbeam Hunter
2005
Movie
‘With a car from 1966-1977 and a manual for violence prevention, you drive. The distance is now your compass so follow the shadows to your resting spot. Or: I was wondering if sincerity could override irony and flood out some emotions from our past. Then - all for the extension of time, follow the echo, it might disappear into the clouds.’
Interior ApeInterior Ape · 2004
Interior Ape
2004
MovieAnimation
«Swimming or fluidly moving in pattern - like lust or love or something weird. A communication halt: cue the apes to speak or make music». - JS
90 Years90 Years · 2008
90 Years
2008
Movie
Refers to Schwartz’s grandfather-in-law’s age during the making of the film–an anniversary celebrated with the gift of piloting a U.S. army light aircraft, the kind he used to maneuver in the Second World War. While he rises and falls, watched by the impassive but attentive look of a woman who could be his wife, he is the protagonist of a flight into the past. Again, there is tension emphasized by an impending sound in crescendo, this time the one of the jet engine. This jump into the void is a recurrent creative preoccupation that might refer to distance, wounds, and risks.
Bat El Drinking Water and Other SignsBat El Drinking Water and Other Signs · 2013
Bat El Drinking Water and Other Signs
2013
Movie
(Maybe) of finding neutral signs in a non-neutral place while tension sits, increases, is shared, builds, or possibly lessens–or maybe is placed elsewhere for a while. Some birds move easily across, from above. You can hear them all over and the breeze that follows feels important. It comes when it wants, breaks up a heat, pauses something, and interrupts without being seen.
If the War ContinuesIf the War Continues · 2012
If the War Continues
2012
Movie
A film with a hypnotizing sense of diagonal light and movement. The title refers to the 1917 Hermann Hesse short story, part of his collection of fairy tales.
A Kind Of QuietA Kind Of Quiet · 2014
A Kind Of Quiet
2014
Movie
Situated amid the in between of ascending and descending. It seems hard to land and when this happens something else might disappear.
In A Year With 13 DeathsIn A Year With 13 Deaths · 2008
In A Year With 13 Deaths
2008
MovieDocumentary
Light painting and nature imagery are captured in 13 shots of different points of luminescence, on the 13th anniversary of Schwartz’s mother’s passing, and as a homage to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s personal 'In a Year with Thirteen Moons' (1978).
Animals Moving to the Sound of DrumsAnimals Moving to the Sound of Drums · 2013
Animals Moving to the Sound of Drums
2013
MovieDocumentary
That fall it was not intentional to have a Galway Kinnell book on the table near where the caterpillar in the doorway, feeding on our offerings, became the butterfly, feeding on honey water, staying in our house until we let it go. Or it was not known about the deer in Putney or that the baby birds in the raspberry bushes would cry to us in summer. A beloved, old friend once visited Vermont to do some work for Galway Kinnell and she described a stone table in the field where they ate meals in the afternoon - it sounded like a song and so I looked at the book and from Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight here is that line: “The still undanced cadence of vanishing”.
Pre-Hibernation NewsPre-Hibernation News · 2005
Pre-Hibernation News
2005
Movie
“hit the slopes with colorful exaggerations, take a long sleep, and hope to wake up without an anxious yawn.” – JS
The Wedding PresentThe Wedding Present · 2007
The Wedding Present
2007
Movie
It's an ironically dark response to its title. It pictures an oversaturated, white and blue stop motion animation of the double image of a man jumping into a river, holding his nose before the final splash. A bug appears for less than a second, making an almost subliminal connection. The act of falling becomes a figurative abstraction, while the entire image gets transformed into dark blue obscurity. -Monica Savirón

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