tova mozard

LEONA BABETTE, WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES

Dur 7 min

Format. Mini DV & DVD, 16:4

2002 Tova Mozard

Leona is a nightclub singer in Los Angeles. In the video she sits in her living room and sings short demonstrations of songs and also comments upon each of them. She performs and speaks alternately and states her role both as a private and a public person. She addresses the person behind the camera, the audience watching the video almost “becomes” this person and it creates an intimate space between the viewer and the subject.

COWBOY RUSS

Dur 8 min.

Format. Mini DV & DVD, 16:4

2003 Tova Mozard

A man is re-telling a duel scene from the movie The Magnificent Seven from 1960. He narrates the story in such great detail that through imagination the audience is transported to the setting of the scene in the movie. The storyteller ends by saying ‘cut’, as he freezes in a pose. The illusion is gone and the set for his story is back being a plain apartment. The shift from his self-confident way of entertaining to realities vulnerability becomes extremely present and calls attention to the audience’s involvement in the piece.

METHOD ACTING

Dur 5 min.

Format. Mini DV & DVD, 16:4

2003 Tova Mozard

Method Acting is an individual sort of acting, used to achieve a natural and spontaneous presence on stage. With help from a drama teacher the actor trains the five senses, concentration, will, fantasy and relaxation. The exercise aims to make the actor simulate and evoke spontaneous reactions and feelings on stage by using his/hers ability to imagine. Method Actings fundamental drama pedagogy is based on Lee Strasbergs method, inspired by Konstantin Stanislavikijs theories on actors training where the evoking of genuine feelings is central. The method is controversial and it can be hard to convince both actors and audience about its efficiency. The border between imitation and authenticity is thus diffuse.

NO ONE LIVED MY LIFE, NOT EVEN ME

Dur 17 min.

Format. Mini DV & DVD, 16:4

2003 Tova Mozard

Eddie sits in his couch and talks about his life in Los Angeles as a clown and a street performer.

He also speaks about other things relating and leading up to this career. He brings up issues dealing with the need for attention and recognition, but also about Hollywood as a manipulative and ungrateful industry. Eddie’s way of talking about himself is performed with a sense of humor: by being both skeptical and ironic, he transforms the cliché of the sad clown.

CHRISTER & KRAPP

Dur 7 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2004 Tova Mozard

This video is a staged portrait of the actor Christer Strandberg with Samuel Beckett’s character Krapp from Krapp’s Last Tape as a constant present accompaniment. Christer is performing parts of the play in parallel with autobiographical material, Christer and Krapp’s reflections and personalities becomes interwoven. The dialogue compares the ways theatre and reality both deal with existential questions of the everyday life. In Beckett’s play, Krapp is reviewing old tape recordings of himself speaking about his life. Having to confront yourself as a reproduction in different forms is something Krapp and Christer have in common.

EXTRA STORY

Dur 6 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2004 Tova Mozard

The title refers to a text in the video that originates from e-mails written by a man working as an extra (or background actor) in movies and television in Los Angeles. The text is about his thoughts concerning his job and how this affects his view on life. Inside a restaurant the same man is walking around, performing or rehearsing what could be “extra exercises”. These images are mirrored and create the effect of him walking in and out of himself, viewing and confronting “another self”. Another image shows him standing in a narrow aisle in the restaurant, with staff constantly passing him by. The video makes you wonder who the real “extras” are.

JUST VISITING THIS PLANET

Dur 19 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2005 Tova Mozard

This video is based on parts from interviews made with the older generation Science Fiction fans in Los Angeles during 2004. Several of these voices belong to famous sci-fi writers and other experts within the genre. You get an insight in these fans unique relationship to different subject areas. Everything in-between, FBI interfering with comic book stories to pollution problems to whether god exist or not, is being talked about. Image effects resembling screensavers react to the sound of their voices and the illusionary images create an imaginative effect.

WALL OF LOVE

Dur 5 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2005 Tova Mozard

A video in which we meet a Swedish woman, Mrs. Berliner-Mauer, who has entered into a marriage with the Berlin Wall. Her unusual disposition is objectum-sexual, indicating an emotional and sexual attraction to things. The woman’s personal and sexual relation to the wall is contrasted with its historical political significance. She describes the day the wall fell as the worst day of her life. Her very clear description of herself makes the remarkable story approachable and raises questions about reality perception, differences, desires and morals.

POVERTY AND HARDSHIP

Dur 5:30 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2006 Tova Mozard

A man is showing off himself and his clothes in front of the camera in a small room, his own, the movements and gestures are natural but very exaggerated, the man is a Swenka.

Swenkas is a small group of Zulu workingmen, which formed in South Africa following the abolishment of Apartheid. On Saturday nights they perform at different venues to impress a judge, the prize for the most stylish suit is cash, but sometimes a goat or a cow. The men follow certain set values such as physical cleanliness, sobriety and above all self-respect.

The videos voice over is taken from an interview with photographer and journalist TJ Lemon, famous for photographing Swenkas in Jeppe Hostel and making them known to the public. He talks about his interest in this cultural phenomenon and why his work is important.

SONG ABOUT THE FUTILITY OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR

Dur 6:30 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2006 Tova Mozard

The woman is performing the text “Song about the futility of human endeavor” from the Threepenny opera (1928) by Berthold Brecht with music by Kurt Weill. She performs the text with much empathy and adds her own interpretations during the reading. The original text is about vulnerable people in the society used by unscrupulous people with only their own best in mind.

The piece was produced when Tova Mozard was invited to do a workshop at a daycare center for disabled and homeless people, victims of rape and addicts. The participants were allotted texts which they analysed and interpreted together with the artist.

MARTINE, SARAH KANE AND SUICIDE

Dur 12 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2006 Tova Mozard

Martine is a women who had a rough life and who wanted to kill herself on several occasions. In the video she sits on a stage and talks about a passage from Sarah Kane’s play 4:48 Psychosis with a younger man. Sarah Kane committed suicide in 1999 at age 28. 4:48 Psychosis was her last play and completed shortly before she died and written at a time when Kane was suffering from severe depression. Martine is relating to her and her text when talking about her own depressions and suicide thoughts. The video is about the need for writing, reading and relating in order to overcome life’s adversity.

USHAKA

Dur 7:30 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2007 Tova Mozard

Inside the aquarium Ushaka, which means Shark in Zulu, in South Africa, two young women walk around and one is telling the other a tale. The story is If men were sharks taken from Brecht’s Stories of Mr. Keuner. While walking around in the space looking at the fishes and sharks behind big glass windows the women is telling us about a world society taking place in the ocean were men is shark and the ordinary people are categorized into smaller and bigger fishes. In this world order the bigger fish would be allowed to eat some of the smaller ones and that would be ok for the sharks since they would more often get bigger bites in the end. A comparison that is slowly taking a frightening clear shape throughout the video.

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

Dur 13 min.

Format. Mini DV &DVD, 16:4

2007 Tova Mozard

The video consists of four documentary portraits presented as interviews, where the subjects speak about dead people who in one way or another have a big influence on their lives.

These people are the following; A medium who is speaking about his contact with the other side, my grandmother who is talking about the grief she feels relating to her first husbands suicide, a friend who is talking about what Elvis has meant to him, and an artist colleague talking about Christer Pettersson who was convicted of the murder of the Swedish Priminister, Olof Palme, but then released.

The observer is presented with very personal memories of the deceased. It is private, open and dreamy, and what emerges is that the truth of the individual and the truth of reality are not always reconciled. The video serves as a clue for finding humanity a victim of itself.

I samverkan med Memfis Film som producenter har jag gjort filmen "Föreställningar" som är i slutproduktion just nu.