Certain Women

Certain Women

2004 · 75 min · ★ 9.0

Caldwell's pulp storytelling, proto-feminist stance and unabashed social dramatization of his characters are a distinct vision of the condition of women -- specifically working class women. His broadly drawn themes of small town hypocrisy and restrictive moral values contextualize the titular characters' struggle for sexual expression, stability and independence. Certain Women is a disconcerting parable that pays tribute to but also defies the 50s period style of Caldwell, opting for contemporary small town situations and cinematic style. This cautionary tale of four heroic yet ordinary women is fashioned out of the past but relies on observations of the present historical moment and its political reality.

Directed by Bobby Abate

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Love Rose

Love Rose · 2010

A séance is performed by three cloned versions of the filmmaker in order to make a connection to another plane. The rules of the séance, written in 1920 by parapsychologist Hereward Carrington, are invoked on camera by novelist Lynne Tillman. According the text, roses which are seen as lights by spirits on the other plane, are placed on the séance table as a beacon. The spiritual dimension of the séance is captured with black and white video cameras dating back to the early 1970's that create visually stunning artifacts of light trails, black halos, and scan lines that swirl endlessly into the unknown.

Gossip

Rebecca gazes into the crystal ball. It is afternoon in a Brooklyn neighborhood of industrial buildings. Rebecca has a way with words just as words have a way of seeking her out. The crystal ball intensifies this. The A train rumbles over the Manhattan Bridge. Rebecca gazes into the crystal ball. Nighttime in a suburban neighborhood of burnt out buildings. Words have a way with Rebecca just as Rebecca has a way of seeking them out. The crystal ball intensifies this. Shot using analog video equipment from the early Seventies, Gossip is the second in a series of works stepping into the mystic beyond which encircles us on every side.

Self-Portraits

Self-Portraits · 1993

In 1993-1994, when I was in art school, I felt like an outsider amongst outsiders. I was queer, but there were so few out queer people around me. I felt like I had no identity, so I started to obsessively do a numbered series of self portrait sketches in black pen to explore different personalities and aspects of myself. They range from fantastical to completely absurd. At some point, I started to dress up at these characters film myself using my family's old Sears VHS camera that I rescued from the garbage.

Chisholm

Chisholm · 1999

Abate’s 16mm films The Tanti Man, The Zero Order and Chisholm invoke Kenneth Anger-esque horny montage fantasies of personal psychodrama and popular culture syncopated to nostalgic tunes.

Dirty Code

Dirty Code · 2013

SECRETS AND LIES become an aggressive virus when injected into the binary code of several video clips -- degrading them into a visual corpse.

Sylvania

Sylvania · 2005

The set of Bewitched is a spiritual battleground of overlapping zones — human, alien and cyborg — in Bobby Abate's latest ontological mystery film.

Soothsayer

Soothsayer · 2004

Prophecies of doom, disaster and political catastrophe envisioned by some of the world’s most famous psychics between the 1960’s the year 2001 are conjured up through 3D-animation, industrial films, text and historical footage — the sum of which combine to form a visually stunning meditation on the forces that guide us into a dark, paranoid and uncertain future.

The Ghost at Skeleton Rock

The Ghost at Skeleton Rock · 2026

The Ghost at Skeleton Rock

In the summer of 1992, at the height of the AIDS crisis, 18-year-old VINNY is reeling after being with another boy for the first time. In the tiny enclave of Callicoon, New York, his only confidant is CHRIS, a ghost he’s been secretly communicating with through a handmade Ouija board. Consumed by fear over his first sexual encounter, Vinny brings Gabe beneath the ruins of a crumbling bridge to summon Chris. Gabe quickly discovers Chris isn’t just a figment of Vinny’s imagination, he’s a jealous ghost with the power to twist reality into nightmares.

Zenith

A solid state cyborg tale on the set of a 1960's evening newscast. A mysterious unearthly being has claimed a test subject and is making use of the station's control room in attempt to communicate and perhaps reunite with its counterpart. Zenith is a celestial space, high above the clouds, where lonely frequencies and frantic spirographs pulse the dimension that separates the real from the rendered, the now from nostalgia–and ultimately divides these two beings (alter egos or lovers?)

Lucky

Crafted from softly pixilated QuickTime, NetMeeting sessions, emotive vintage pop, airplane disaster footage, online porn, streaming Hollywood trailers, and the curious hypnotic qualities of taping off computer monitors, Bobby Abate's internet-sex-n-death thrillogy explores new anxieties made possible by technology, and the profoundly intimate places that tiny images and lonely piano chords burrow deep within the soul.

Yool Is Bloo

Yool Is Bloo · 1997

ONCE UPON A TIME, a jealous little elf named Yool felt neglected, lonely, and positively enraged. It was Christmas Eve and he knew Santa was away cavorting in other people's living rooms. The thought of Santa engorging himself on countless helpings of fatty milk and gooey cookies sent him into a rage, plus Yool knew all about Santa's secret kisses. Yool began smashing everything in sight, including his little elf friends with their upturned noses. A trusty hammer goes a long way on a lonely Christmas night.

Meet Me at the Pavilion

Meet Me at the Pavilion · 1997

Meet Me at the Pavilion

A series of vignettes, inspired by vintage 8mm home movies from the 1960's, that show a woman isolated and waiting inside of a nostalgic beachside landscape. The footage was shot on super-8 black and white reversal stock then optically printed to 16mm. This is the first of two films I made on location at Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts – a small run-down beach town frozen in the past.

The Tanti Man

The Tanti Man · 1999

This is a summer memoir of two personal intertwined love affairs; one with Salisbury Beach and the other with a strange and charming drifter the filmmaker met randomly through a friend. It is highlighted by melodramatic journal entries from his teenage years lamenting the difficulties of a homosexual life and ultimately exposing a deeply rooted internalized homophobia that kept him fumbling though uncertain places and relationships.

The Zero Order

The Zero Order · 2000

An update on avant-garde psychodrama (its 21st-century sensibility signaled by low-end video effects) in which a gay man’s sexual identity crisis is reflected in a kind of karaoke version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

One Mile Per Minute

One Mile Per Minute · 2002

One Mile Per Minute

I consider this video to be a rough journal entry of what I experienced directly after the attacks on September 11th 2001. I felt like my concept of reality was shattered, that our sense of security and what it meant to be living in America was all a Matrix-like illusion, suddenly gone. In the days that followed I was dumbfounded and pretty pissed off at the overwhelming effort on the part of the government, mainstream media and corporations to reboot this broken reality.

A Few Extra Copies

A Few Extra Copies · 2012

A Few Extra Copies

An analog recreation and reclamation of the January 22, 1987 news conference in which Pennsylvania's State Treasurer Budd Dwyer grasped onto the pages of his final speech before shooting himself on live television.

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