So excited to announce the Kickstarter Campaign for the short film Bumming Cigarettes in celebration of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. I will be scoring the film and I’m honored to be working with filmmaker/artist Tiona M. on her first narrative short featuring an amazing cast and screenplay.
Kickstarter Campaign Page
Please help us to raise funds for Tiona to finish this very important film by doing one or all of the following over the next week/30days:
Tell your friends/family to “LIKE”
Bumming Cigarettes Kickstarter Campaign.
Follow the film’s TUMBLR
bummingcigarettesfilm.tumblr.com/
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Bumming Cigarettes-A Short Film
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ABOUT THE FILM
Bumming Cigarettes is a short film about a brief and intimate meeting between a young Black lesbian woman who is in the process of taking an HIV test and a middle aged Black Gay HIV Positive man. Coming off of the devastation of a bad breakup with a girlfriend, Vee musters up the courage to go and take an HIV test to put her worst fears to rest. What she experiences during her trip to a local clinic is much more than she expects while sharing a cigarette with a stranger, Jimmy during the 10 minutes that she awaits her test results. This film explores tough issues that persons living with HIV/AIDS may encounter such as the loss of intimacy with loved ones while also encouraging awareness around HIV/AIDs testing and the way we treat persons living with the disease.
![Still from Watch What You Are Interactivos at Eyebeam installation [2008]. Photo by Jeff Howard
Watch What You Are is an immersive computer vision system that links the 2-D virtual world of movies and TV to the 3-D reality of the user. The game starts when the vision tracking system looks for pattern matches between the body position of a movie character and a real time video feed of the participant. When the participant enters into the camera’s field of focus, the beginning of the film (i.e. “Superninjas”, a 70’s kung fu movie) is triggered. The main movie sequence continues to play until a break point occurs where the participant is challenged to mimic the movie character’s position.
By Justin Downs and Rucyl Mills and collaborators Eric Mika, Dan Ribaudo, Subalekha Udayasankar & Jessica Banks](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kuz7rwUTIg1qztpq5o1_250.jpg)
![Photo of a live image processing performance using generative visuals projected onto the brickscreen metaform I constructed with Ana Gutierrez and Maria Mendez. Though originally constructed for an installation, I found the screen to add particular texture to live performance by projecting visuals onto it that were effected in size, color, and rhythm by the parameters of my voice and music.
Brick Screen [2007] is a three dimensional projection screen of 120 mini-screens, 2′ x 8′, meant to add depth and form to any projected image. The software, developed in Max/Jitter, maps projected visuals to each one of the bricks. This project was developed for the Jose Gilbert Ramirez Community Park in Bushwick, Brooklyn and was installed for one night in November 2007.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/EktJPJneQjlhuua7TCDOB8mCo1_250.jpg)
