Iowa Arts Council Grant

story © Michael Betancourt | published October 29, 2005 | permalink |  |  

I just received my letter from the Iowa Arts Council. They will be funding an installation of my video/microwatt broadcast piece Reception/Transmission in the spring of 2006.

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story © Michael Betancourt | published September 5, 2005 | permalink |  |  

From the review by David Finkelstein:

"Telemetry" is exhilarating and gorgeous. This video reminds me that abstract film and video, when it is made at this kind of high artistic level, is dramatically gripping and keeps me on the edge of my seat. The shortness of each section left me always wanting more, which in itself is an effective dramatic strategy. Betancourt has a subtle eye and ear for balancing simplicity and complexity into a satisfying composition. Just as the eye begins to feel the need for a fresh challenge, one appears: stationary rectangles begin to drift, or established spatial relationships are disrupted. He also uses the black background space effectively to highlight and frame the action. "Telemetry" is a thrilling vision of cosmic dynamism and balance.

story © Michael Betancourt | published October 28, 2004 | permalink |  |  

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story © Michael Betancourt | published July 30, 2004 | permalink |  |  

$14.95, 140 pages. ISBN 0-8095-1117-7 WildsidePress.com

Michael Betancourt, an avant-garde movie maker, is one of the artists working in the experiment film movement in South Florida. He has been making movies for the past 15 years and has exhibited in places such as Tampa's Ybor Film Festival; Plugged-In: New & Electronic Media at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood; Miami Beach Cinematheque's Views from the Underground.

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story © Michael Betancourt | published October 16, 2003 | permalink |  |  

Michael Mills reviewed the Plugged-In show: "Art Light. In Hollywood, art in the dark is only the beginning" in The New Times Palm Beach. I guess he doesn't get it:

"A pair of short movies by Michael Betancourt, shown on two adjacent television screens with their own sets of headphones, strikes me as more annoying than anything else. One, She, My Memory, features loud vaguely ethnic-sounding music and jittery camerawork, while Telemetry (Excerpt) includes something like a color equivalent of white noise as a visual, paired with some music that starts at a low volume and gradually builds to a near-deafening crescendo. It's sort of like a scrambled TV channel you've stumbled upon while channel-surfing."