DVD Compilation contains:

Zero Hour(1992), 16mm/DVD, 30:00

Through optical printing footage from a 1945 US Navy sponsored film promoting victory Bonds which depicts WWII orphans and intercutting of other documentation, Zero Hour refers to characteristic of current postwar situations, alluding to the avoidance of this depiction by media networks during the Gulf War.

"The transgression and confrontation is re-enacted in this brilliant fuguelike film by Dana Plays constructed of found footage, and concerning both American involvement in oversees conflict and the resultant unseen plight of the child refugee. Subverting state-sponsored informational films on such issues as war bonds and highway safety, Plays transforms these agit-prop rhetorics into a celluloid mirror of transgression as a larger cultural pathology. In Zero Hour, the results -- the products of war return to the initial cite of production: an assumed audience of Americans, middle-class citizens of an ideal suburban dream who have somehow foregone the immediate experiences and repercussion of mass destruction and displacement. The gaze rests on us. We are the sugar-stated, hyper and unaware violator, an audience whose relationship to world events is nowhere more homogenous than in or communal incubation and guilt." - William Tester

Awards:

30th Ann Arbor Film Festival, Tom Berman Award (1992)
Black Maria Film Festival, Director's Citation (1992)
Sinking Creek Film Celebration, Cash Award (1992)

Screenings:

San Francisco Cinematheque at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Curated by Steve Anker
Millennium Personal Cinema Program, New York, NY, 1992, Curated by Howard Guttenplan
Filmforum, Los Angeles, California, Programmed by Thom Anderson
Experimental Film Conference, University of Boulder 1992, Invited by Phil Solomon & Stan Brahkage
Alternative Cinema, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, Programmed by John Knecht

Nuclear Family (2001), 16mm/DV, 21:00

"Nuclear Family uses found footage to create a dark portrait of the violence and turbulences underlying seemingly ordinary family life." - Steve Anker

"An arresting, deconstructed, yet nostalgic work that resonates with optically reprinted images from the 1950s. Vintage government films in which mannequins record the effects of nuclear blast experiments, science films depicting animal experiments, and home movies are interwoven so as to comment upon and recollect the notion of family during the era which gave birth to the nuclear age." - John Columbus, Director, Black Maria Film Festival

"A haunting, emotional exploration of human isolation drawn from observational films - scientific films, documentation of animal-behavior experiments, and early preschool footage." - Kathy Geritz, Film Curator Pacific Film Archive.

Awards:
First Prize, Jurors' Choice Award, Black Maria Film and Video Festival
Honorable Mention, Ann Arbor Film and Video Festival
First Prize Experimental Film Award, Empire State Film Festival

Screenings:
First Person Cinema, Boulder Colorado
Pacific Film Archive at the Berkeley Art Museum
Northwest Museum Arts and Culture
San Francisco Cinematheque at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Athens International Film Festival
Film Forum at The Egyptian Theater
Women in the Director's Chair Film Festival
Big Muddy Film Festival
Deep Ellum Film Festival
Savannah Film and Video Festival
Euro Underground Film Festival

River Madness (2002) color, sound, 1:47

A montage of Hollywood movies shot on location in the Los Angeles River. Dana Plays speeds up the action and uses point of view construction and match action to situate the viewer in the cement encased riverbed, its surrounding overpasses, bridges and rail yards, by cross cutting between scenes from various Hollywood movies shot on location in the Los Angeles River. We find ourselves in the company of Lee Marvin, Jack Nicholson, Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Bernadette Peters and others, traveling through time and space between genre movies from crime to disaster. The river is transformed to the ultimate urban location, a place to find refuge, retribution and revenge; a place of death, violence and danger, a place for love and for familia. The video is ultimately a tribute to the movies and is designed to shed light on the Los Angeles River.

Project made with Re-envisioning the Los Angeles River and Friends of the Los Angeles River.