Biography
Sharon A. Mooney is a filmmaker originally from Richmond, Virginia and currently based in Los Angeles. She works in experimental, narrative and documentary portraiture, all focused on investigating desire and the human condition. Her short videos and installations have screened internationally in festivals and other venues. She is a professor at a film school where she teaches filmmaking, post production, and punk rock cinema.
During graduate school, someone called her sense of humor childish and that's true at least 2/3rds of the time.
News
4/2024 I'm sorry I'm late will screen at West Virginia Mountaineers FF in April, and Moviate Underground, Montreal Underground Film Festival, and Art + Film + Vienna in May.
2/2024 I'm sorry I'm late will screen at Oxford Film Festival in March and Fisura International Festival of Experimental Film & Video in August in Mexico City.
1/2024 I'm sorry I'm late will screen at VastLab Experimental VLX5 at Chicago Filmmakers on 2/9, at Alternative Cinema: RPM Retrospective Program #1: Passages on 2/13, and more screening announcements coming soon.
Unkind Cut screens at Chambal Int't FF, Pan African FF, and Oklahoma Black FF in Jan & Feb.
12/2023 Revivification (Mutoscope hologram piece) will be in a group exhibit Animation as Art: A Multi-sensory Experience Exhibition at the Museum of Texas Tech in 2024.
10/2023 I'm sorry I'm late will screen at the Denver Underground Film Festival in November. and at in Bideodromo 2023 in October.
Unkind Cut screenings upcoming at Black Harvest FF, FANtastic Horror FF, Fargo Fantastic FF, Black Bottom FF, Vancouver Horror Show FF, San Pedro FF
9/2023 Unkind Cut (short horror/comedy I edited) screenings upcoming at FilmQuest, Montevideo Fantastico FF, Wreak Havoc Horror FF, El Paso Film Festival, DC Shorts, Silicon Beach FF, Louisville FF, and Quibdó África Film Festival.
7/2023 Music video I edited for Young Eyes premiered on New Noise
Unkind Cut (short horror/comedy I edited) will premiere at LA Shorts Fest on July 27
2/2023 Watch The Sleeping Negro on MUBI starting February 2nd!
Films I've Made
2023
I'm sorry I'm late, Experimental Short, 7.5 min
2022
you have just been murdered, Installation (projection mapping)
Revivification, Mutoscope Hologram Installation
2021
Helping Amy, Narrative Short
2019
MemoryDistrust, Holographic short stories
2018
The Story of Everything, NarrativeShort, 16 min.
Yellow Persona, 3-channel Video Installation, 13 min.
2014
Reunion, Narrative Short, 18 min.
2013
The Popcorn Kid, Documentary Short, 13min.
2012
Scarlet, Experimental Short, 5 min.
2011
Horns. Bells. Whistles. Documentary Short, 27 min.
2010
There’s No Reason to go back to Cincinnati, Experimental Short, 2 min.
The Promise Land, Documentary Short, 6:30 min.
2009
Stone Blind, Music Video, 2:34 min
No One Wants to Eat the Parsley, Documentary Short, 6 min.
2008
Automatic,Experimental Narrative, 30 min.
2007
13W, Documentary Short, 6min.
2006
Room 323, Experimental Short, 8 min.
2003
Car Wash, Experimental Short, 3 min.
Sacred Heart, Stop Motion, 4:30 min.
2001
Where the Road Turns Dark, Stop Motion Animation. 5 min.
Artist Statement
There is a constant battle between my desire to make beautiful images, and with expressing the darker themes lying underneath. If life is filled with contrast, I exploit it. Self- destruction is a sub-plot; making moving images is my way to subvert my own memory- tainted narratives.
I make work investigating desire and the human condition, weaving between documentary portrait, narrative and experimental modes. My own creative process always creates more questions than answers for me, resulting in rarely being satisfied with a single approach or result. One film leads to the next in an organic, but not particularly linear way. I am influenced by the idea of the “death-drive,” the explorations of the human experience, dark humor and the self-destructive search for the value in life.
Although I consider post-production my niche, the processes through which I work apply to all of the layers of filmmaking. If stratum is a layer within a structure, the structure is filmmaking, and the strata become the modes in which I work. My personal discontent stems my inability to limit the multimodal layers applied to my work.
Deconstructing and reconstructing images within a screen-space is related to the idea of the memory trace, or bits of memories engrained somewhere in our brains that won't let go. These fragments unconsciously resurface to change the way we perceive our realities. This process exists throughout out all of my pieces, as evidenced by framing, projections and/or lens transformations. Images create new and trigger old bits of memories. They not only inform each other, but they blend to reshape the meaning applied to visual stimuli and the traces themselves.
My goal is to find some sort of bridge to connect us to a larger oceanic/feeling of connection as people, connecting collective memories that may not have been destroyed. These are palliative narratives – my work explores the surface measures used to treat our conditions, but not the underlying causes. What is being said is rarely what is meant. Sound works against image, and in that struggle forms a deeper meaning. Strata and its Discontents.