FILM
Lessons In Lost Time (working title), in-progress
feature film project
Lessons in Lost Time is a highly visual and poetic feature film focusing on a woman experiencing a neurological breakdown resulting in mysterious bouts of amnesia. The film, featuring Saori Tsukada, explores the elusive nature of memory, identity and location.
Written, directed and shot by Shaun Irons
Editing: Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Bye For Now, 2020
documentary short, 35 minutes
jkmnye For Now, is an elegiac new film that offers a meditation on loss, mortality, and location, using water as a metaphor for the variable flow of time and memory. Filmed in Venice, Italy this deeply personal work is an attempt to directly communicate with the dead and to share the experience of a beloved and evocative place with a loved one who is now gone.
Written, directed and shot by Shaun Irons
Editing: Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
camera tests: yaddo summer, 2019
short, 6:38 minutes
During a creative residency at Yaddo in upstate NY I made a series of tests with a new camera right outside my studio.
After several days of shooting, I realized I had captured a kind of composite day at Yaddo - observing nature just beyond my studio door - the misty early morning light - an afternoon standoff between a hawk and a woodchuck - the wanderings of a lone deer - a sudden thunderstorm - into blue evening and a dark firefly filled forest echoing with chattering frogs..
Conceived of and shot by Shaun Irons
Editing: Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Hey Charlie, 2019
short, 12minutes
Hey Charlie is a short hallucinatory film featuring renowned screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman. Nearing the end of his stay at an artists' retreat, Charlie’s daily ritual walk in the woods turns into an ordeal of repetition and delusion. These interruptions - either real or imagined - break into his consciousness, causing anxiety and panic as he contemplates how much (or little) he has accomplished .
Conceived of and shot by Shaun Irons
Editing: Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Cassis Sketches, 2018
three shorts, 9:50 minutes
Cassis Sketches is a series of short films begun while in residence with the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation in the south of France, chronicling an obsession with the sea and a daily ritual swim.
Shot and Edited by: Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Standing By: Gatz Backstage, 2016
feature length documentary, 76 minutes
Standing By: Gatz Backstage is an atmospheric portrait of backstage life during Elevator Repair Service’s acclaimed, theatrical work Gatz, during which every word of The Great Gatsby is voiced and enacted onstage. Offering a look behind the scenes, Standing By reveals the daily routines and rhythms, the backstage choreography, and the heightened world of shadows and whispers existing in a vibrant realm just beyond the audience’s view.
Conceived of and shot by Shaun Irons
Second camera: Lauren Petty
Editing: Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
The Last Twin, 2015
documentary short, 5 minutes
The Last Twin is a short documentary focusing on Brooklyn Heights Cinema, a two-screen movie theater that was the longest running independently owned cinema in NYC. This intimate elegy captures the spirit of this aging venue, as it struggles to survive in a rapidly developing neighborhood. This beloved movie house is a relic of the past, and screened 35mm prints on antique Italian projectors exclusively until 2016. The documentary reveals daily life at the cinema, sometimes mundane, other times bustling, where celluloid as an object, passing through light with ambient noise and flicker, is a dying entity.
Conceived of and shot by Shaun Irons
Editing: Shaun Irons with assistance from Lauren Petty
Is Anyone Not Ready, 2012
feature length documentary, 90 minutes
Is Anyone Not Ready? is an experiential, feature-length documentary, which focuses on New York's legendary theater company, The Wooster Group, as they develop a new multimedia production of Hamlet. Shooting began with early, exploratory rehearsals in New York, and included the world premiere in Barcelona, a subsequent tour to Berlin, and the New York opening at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.
Conceived of and shot by Shaun Irons
Second camera: Lauren Petty
Editing: Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, 2008
Performance Film (Commission), 2008 NYC, 60 minutes
A commission from theater legend Richard Foreman to create a film document of his mind-bending performance Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland: A Richard Foreman Theater Machine, performed at the Ongological Theater, St. Mark's Church in 2008.
Shot and edited by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Keeping Things Whole, 2004-06
Poetry Society Commission; single channel video, 9 minutes
In Keeping Things Whole, a man appears and moves alone across a snow-swept field toward a line of trees, disappearing into the white void of a blizzard. Apparitions of watchful animals drift in and move away, witnesses or guides to the figure's journey. This project was commissioned by the Poetry Society of America through their Poetry in Motion Pictures program and screened on PBS' Reel NY.
Shot and edited by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Meet Pamela, 2004-06
single channel video, 7 minutes
Meet Pamela (Out-takes) was in part inspired by Truffaut's Day for Night and takes its name from the film the director and crew struggle to make within the film. The piece, combining video and super-8 film, reveals a lone woman who walks and sometimes runs along a deserted, urban street, apparently losing touch with reality.
Shot and edited by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Fresh Maine Lobster, 2005-06
documentary short, 12:45 minutes
As lobstermen, a grandfather and his grandson continue a traditional, yet arduous way of life in a small lobstering community in northern Maine. Set amidst thick fog, their repetitive toils impart the inherent struggle, diligence and poetry of their daily, dance-like ritual at sea.
Shot and edited by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
stop motion, 2003-04
single channel video with 5.1 audio, 7 minutes
stop motion combines Hamlet's first soliloquy with footage of New Jersey's Garden State Parkway, speeding past at 80mph. The incessant motion is punctuated by moments of hesitation, offering a brief respite before once again resuming speed with ever more force, careening out of control, taunting disaster.
Shot and edited by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
Sleepwalker, 1999
single channel video, 14 minutes
On a hot summer day a man walks along led by visions of a billowing red scarf, a whirling fan and a woman's lips turning seductively to offer a kiss, images that seem recollected from a dream. He comes upon other clues in the way of old photographs and postcards; mementos of a past life. They lead him onward towards something unexpected.
Shot and edited by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty
motion on the sun, 2002
single channel video, 6 minutes
In motion on the sun, formally dressed participants playing a game of croquet allude to the interaction of gods and planets. Their behavior appears completely random with little regard for the rules of the game, suggesting themes of chaos, aggression and pent up energy.
Shot and edited by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty