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An eclectic and interesting film show was available Tuesday night in the Carbondale Public Library's Meeting Room, showcasing the unique talent of SIU professor and cinematographer Mike Covell.
Made possible by the Friends of the Carbondale Public Library, the screening featured about 20 percent of Covell's work, including clips of his documentaries, personal "diary" work, sponsored works he did in collaboration with others, political films and more.
Covell works in the Cinema and Photography Department at SIU, teaching beginning, intermediate and advanced Film and Digital Media Production as well as Optical Printing. He began teaching here in 1975.
"I came here to teach for four weeks one summer, and I've been here ever since," Covell said with a laugh.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Covell said he was originally interested in painting and sculpture, then developed an interest in photography before delving into film.
"I was working construction in the Florida Keys," he said, "and saved up money to buy a camera."
That was in 1969 when Covell was 26 years old. After discovering his passion for film, Covell enrolled in Ohio University, where he received a master's degree in Film Production.
His first film subject was his 6-year-old daughter, whose youth is preserved in several of his films.
Now 37, she too has found an interest in the arts, teaching photography and ceramics in Columbus.
Covell showed part of his first film, which cost $200 to make and was titled "The Daughter Series." Shot in 1970, it is a black and white combination of still photo and moving image of his daughter running down a road, farther and farther from a man standing still in the road.
Covell also showed part of his film titled "Blue Trail," made in upstate New York in 1971. In this film, his daughter is on an uphill journey with the camera shooting from behind her. For this he needed background sound, but on his album of sound effects the closest sound to what he wanted sounded like a hurricane. To reach the desired effect, Covell hand-turned the wind track to slow the pace down, creating the sound of wind.
In another film, "Kim's Film," shot in 1972, he filmed his daughter and a friend in black and white playing with a camera outside of a pony pen. The end of the clip is in color through the child's camera view, filming the other girl petting the pony.
Also filmed in 1972 was "Champaign County Waltz," a film of his mother, grandmother and daughter seated outside of an old farmhouse on a windy day. Covell found an old cracked record in a second-hand shop featuring a song he deemed appropriate for background music, which was no longer copyrighted. This film's purpose was to, in a sense, eternalize his daughter's memory of her grandmother and great-grandmother.
In 1974, Covell visited a halfway house for people who had been incarcerated; some people stayed there for life, while others turned themselves around and were able to leave. Covell stayed for six weeks and shot the film half in color and half in black and white after running out of color film and not having money for more. Some of the halfway house residents did the acting in the film.
In the next piece shown, titled "Herinneringen," Covell incorporated a bit of prose into his work for the first time, combining still images with text and repeating subtly rhythmic spoken words.
Another work, titled "Sanctuary," filmed in 1984, was shot in a church in St. Louis where a man and woman from El Salvador sat on the floor with handkerchiefs covering their faces, telling the story of their escape from being condemned to death.
From 1984 to1985, Covell experimented with still photos that he shot in Nicaragua and Cuba, and he also shared a film made from 1994 to the present about the opening of the super-max prison located in Tamms.
In 2000, he shot "A History of Herrin, Illinois," which he worked on for Herrin's 100th anniversary celebration, featuring clips of the town's earliest days to the time of the film production, showing Herrin's evolution.
In 2003, Covell created "We the People," a documentation of the Peace March in Washington D.C., in which about 50 Carbondale people attended. From banners reading "Whom Should We Fear?" and "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" to footage of police officers literally dragging protesters who refused to move from their places, this film captured every aspect of the pride and devotion displayed.
Last shown was another film from 2003, entitled "To Gail," a touching collection of outdoor scenes and words Covell had written appearing as text, in memory of a close friend of his who was killed in a car accident.
Covell's work has received recognition in the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the San Francisco Institute of the Arts Festival, the Sinking Creek Film Festival and the Great Lakes Film Festival. His films have also been shown in other countries such as Japan and Holland.
