Sincerely, Joe P. Bear
Director: Matt McCormick
16mm – 4 minutes – 1999
Polar bears, ice queens, lost love… appropriated news clips from the 1960’s combine with hand-painted film to tackle the momentous issue of how polar bears cope with heartbreak and rejection.
One of my earliest films, SJPB was made with 16mm news footage that I found in the dumpster of a Portland television station. Probably shot in the mid 60s, the silent and unlabeled footage most likely was clips from news stories. Before I had enough funds to optically print and transfer the film, I would screen the original, hand manipulated film print (which i had spliced together with tape and razor-blade) and play the soundtrack on a separate device, literally switching on the projector and pressing play on a boom-box at the same time (the soundtrack was created with a 4-track cassette recorder)
Sincerely, Joe P. Bear has screened at several festivals including the New York Underground and Rotterdam International Film Festivals, and won the “Best Experimental Film” award at the Microcine Fest in Baltimore in 2000.