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Mark LaPore

Mark LaPore

Birth : , Tacoma, Washington, U.S

Death : 2005-01-01

History

Mark LaPore was an experimental ethnographic filmmaker who made several films in the Sudan, India and Sri Lanka, as well as various parts of the U.S. over a period of nearly thirty years. A dedicated iconoclast and personal artist, LaPore strove to document and portray the cultures with which he connected in ways that were true to his experiences as a traveler as well as being honest reflections of people and scenes that he was witnessing. LaPore worked against conventions of ethnographic narrative, using cinema at its most fundamental level as an objective tool that could also be harnessed for personal response and expression. He was also an influential teacher at the Massachusetts College of Art, and many of his students have gone on to become significant filmmakers in their own right. LaPore's tragic and premature death on September 11, 2005, robbed American independent cinema of one of its most original and dedicated talents. - Steve Anker

Profile

Mark LaPore

Movies

Untitled (for David Gatten)

Untitled (for David Gatten)

Director

Phil Solomon: 'Mark and I made this for our friend David Gatten, as a prayer, an offering, a get well soon card... for all three of us. It was made on the last night that I saw Mark, my best friend of 32 years.'

Director

A portrait of North Kolkata (Calcutta), this film searches the streets for the ebb and flow of humanity and reflects the changing landscape of a city at once medieval and modern. -Mark Toscano

Lunatic Princess

Lunatic Princess

Director

Portrait by Mark LaPore.

Director

In 2005, Phil Solomon collaborated with his best friend, the highly respected filmmaker Mark LaPore, on a short digital video entitled Crossroad, which they made as a get-well offering for a mutual friend [David Gatten].

Director

Shared intimacy mingles with unabashed voyeurism in a distilled, complex rumination on the pleasures and problems of gazing. Mark LaPore had intended to create a soundtrack for this film, but never did. However, it was initially shown and circulated as a silent work, so it was decided to release MEKONG into regular distribution as-is. – Mark Toscano

The Glass System

The Glass System

Director

“The Glass System, made from images shot in New York and Calcutta, looks at life as it is played out in the streets. Every corner turned reveals activities both simple and unfamiliar: a knife sharpener on a bicycle; a tiny tightrope walker; a man selling watches in front of a department store on Fifth Avenue; a hauntingly slow portrait of the darting eyes of schoolgirls on their way home; the uncompleted activities of a young contortionist. The sound in the film (which is from a Bengali primer written by British missionaries) is a meditation on how the English language teaches ideas about culture which are often incongruous. The disjunction between what you hear and what you see evokes reflections about the impact of globalization and the hegemony of Western-style capitalism.” - ML

The Five Bad Elements

The Five Bad Elements

Director

A filmic Pandora's Box full of my version of "trouble" (death, loss, cultural imperialism) as well as the trouble with representation as incomplete understanding. - Mark LaPore

A Depression in the Bay of Bengal

A Depression in the Bay of Bengal

Director

Shot while LaPore was on a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship to Sri Lanka in 1993-1994. “I have made a film about travelling and living in a distant place which looks at aspects of daily life and where the war shadows the quotidian with a dark and rumbling step.”--LaPore

Director

Sudan Rolls originally were filmed as part of an ethnographic project. Only later did he realize that the complexity inherent in these simple shots was an area he wished to purposefully explore.

Camera Operator

A confrontational rant addressed to the judges of the films entered in a Super 8 competition at No Exit. Both Mark and I were surprised when not only was it shown at the festival but it generated much laughter and angry conversation. -Saul Levine

Director

“Memory, as well as the residue of information in text and film from Sudan, led me to make The Sleepers in order to resolve the impression that the third world is present in the first world as an idea and a condition.” --LaPore

Director

“Memory, as well as the residue of information in text and film from Sudan, led me to make The Sleepers in order to resolve the impression that the third world is present in the first world as an idea and a condition.” --LaPore

Director

Medina, shot on Super 8, belongs to a loose trilogy of films set in Sudan. “The shifting camera movements in Medina pursue a shallow tactile space of the hand rather than a deep perspective of the eye, as their lateral motions caress surface patterns and textures.”--Tom Gunning

Director

Shot also on Super 8 in Sudan, LaPore’s use of a fixed camera and unedited camera rolls, generates a certain “modesty of technique which allows for a deeper participation in the enframed action.”--Gunning

Director

First film by Mark LaPore.