Filmmaker and poet will host a night of shorts
Justin Possenti’s cozy rooms in a Beacon house are a paean to the past. The informal museum of technological antiquities includes a metal fan, a folding Murphy bed, 10 typewriters and a rotary wall phone.
Most of it belonged to his family, which collected artifacts and handed him a heap of mental baggage that “I’ll still be dealing with when I’m on my deathbed,” he says.
So it’s no surprise that he made The Bridge, a 13-minute film that pays homage to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Screened at the 2011 Cannes Short Film Corner, it will be shown with other TV, film and video works on Oct. 19 at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon.
“The night is about honoring old things and old people, which are discarded in our society,” he says. “We’re exploring the tension between the latest technology and humanity.”
The show, Memorex Lane, will also feature analog video art by Possenti’s roommate, Rooster. It is named for the audio and videotape company best known for the “Is it live or is it Memorex?” ads. One spot featured Ella Fitzgerald shattering a wine glass with her voice, another showed a man listening to a stereo as the lampshade tilts.
Besides making short films, Possenti, 51, camps with a typewriter outside the cultural center and at other events, offering to write poetry on demand. He once made $600 over three days upstate at Hudson Bascilica.
The writer calls himself the Hudson Valley Haikuist, but many of his poems are in the Senryu vein, dealing with human nature rather than the physical world. “I talk with you for 10 to 15 minutes, write something up, if you like it, you can pay me anything you want,” he says. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay.”
The prose began to pour out “when I learned [at age 9] that my stepmom was not my real mom,” he says. She had died eight years earlier of cancer after a four-month hospital stay.
In a spleen-venting piece called “My Mother’s Name is Millie,” Possenti writes about a parade of caregivers staring into his crib. His father, whom he says was abusive, remarried and blended seven children in a family that resembled a “dysfunctional Brady Bunch,” he says.
A native of Hopewell Junction, Possenti lived in Rome and Los Angeles before returning to the Hudson Valley. His house, across the street from a cemetery, contains a “haunted” old radio in the attic.
He learned filmmaking in part by working as a stand-in for actors while the crew sets the lighting and cinematography. “I observe and absorb,” he says. An early stand-in gig in the 1999 film Office Space gave him a coveted speaking line, enough to get into the union.
Possenti learned to work the lenses filming a documentary about eating disorders. His videos for the bands Fuzzy Crystals and Human Barbie will air at the Memorex event.
After winning some money on the game show Deal or No Deal, Possenti bought lights, cameras and other gear. He spends much time in the editing room and learned to be creative with limited budgets.
A flip phone user who bemoans TikTok’s toll on attention spans, he tries to read a book for a half-hour each morning after waking up.
The past is there to learn from, not fetishize. “Old cigarette commercials from the 1940s [which will air in silence on Oct. 19] told people, ‘Smoking is good for you,’ ” he says. “What is the bullshit they’re pushing on us now?”
Memorex Lane will begin at 8 p.m. on Oct. 19 at the Howland Cultural Center, 477 Main St., in Beacon. Tickets are $20 at bit.ly/memorex-lane or at the door.
