Snippet from Triumph Of The Wild

Martha Colburn's work utilizes the language and materials of filmmaking to
comment on popular culture, consumerism, politics and sexuality.  Through
a collage of live action (paint-on-glass) animations, found footage, and
documentary filmmaking techniques, she addresses contemporary topics
to express her personal anxieties and passions.  Martha’s films are a
disturbing and at times humorous take on popular and political culture.
She creates elaborately layered collages,paintings, and installations that
incorporate transparencies,recordings, and live performances. As her
conceptual process grows, so follows advances in an already detailed
and labor-intensive animating process.  Martha is expanding her
technique into working with multi-plane glass animation, which
represents a physical manifestation of her conceptually layered
ideas. Currently, Martha is working on films that combine art
historical representations and current depictions of politics to
challenge our notions of truth and fantasy. As a descendent of
some of America’s earliest settlers (ministers, farmers and
wagon train members), her work demonstrates an awareness
of the repository of the guilt haunted twisted history of the
American soul. Martha’s current work draws from this
perspective and personal experience to address issues
such as Methamphetamine use, environmental
catastrophes, and man’s relationship to nature.

With Martha Colburn

Past performances include:
Philadelphia Museum of Art
San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art
New York Museum of Art and Design
Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco
SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico
New Museum in New York
Rotterdam Film Festival
Eye Film Instituut in Amsterdam
Museum Of The Moving Image Astoria, NY
Seco Pearl Arroyo Seco, New Mexico
High Mayhem Santa Fe, New Mexico
The Guild Theater Albuquerque, New Mexico
Anthology Film Archive NY, NY
Maxxi Museum Roma, Italia
'Triumph of the Wild' has won best short film at the l'Alternativa Film Fest in Barcelona
Center Pompidou screening of 'Triumph of the Wild' Paris, France
Sundance Film Festival screening of 'Triumph of the Wild' Park City, Utah

A snippet of an interview from Tubelight, 2009 (The Netherlands)
EP: Triumph of the Wild has a great and intense soundtrack to it.

MC: It is done by Thollem McDonas, an amazing pianist. I found this pianist -
and now friend - right when I finished the film and it perfectly worked with it.
He is an accomplice of 99 Hooker, a 'chaos poet' I worked with on films in the
1990s. And now I am working with him on the second part of this film, but
this time round I am timing the animation frame by frame to the soundtrack.
So I am breaking down an improvisation into seconds/beats to study them
and think of the piano as the heartbeat of the film and accordingly time the
action of my scenes. I think of the notes as molecules sometimes, or the
soundtrack for the build up or breaking down of forms, and peoples
and narratives.

(Stills from Triumph Of The Wild)