Chronicles of a Professional Eulogist

Synopsis

Chronicles of A Professional Eulogist uses hand-drawn (India ink, gouache and wax) animation to explore the role of those who minister to the soul and manage the inflections of individual and communal sentimentality within the process of creating and sustaining social memory. Our protagonist-protege Milder matriculates to and graduates from the University of Eulogy. The film chronicles his field research as he explores the difficult dialectic of spiritual gratitude and the reality of mortality.

Director

Sarah Jane Lapp

Sarah Jane Lapp makes paintings, drawings, and films. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Artist Trust, Artslink, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, Alpert Award in the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ucross Foundation, the City of Seattle and the Washington State Arts Commission.

Past exhibition venues include: Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, British Film Institute, Kino Arsenal, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, MadCat, Pacific Film Archive, PBS, SXSW, Tacoma Art Museum, the Smithsonian, the Museum of Fine Art/Boston, The Jewish Museum, Walker Art Center.

Film awards: Black Maria Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Humboldt Film Festival, Judah Magnes Museum, Student Emmy. The Stranger's Genius Award (short list).

She holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA in Filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was a Fulbright scholar at FAMU and apprenticed at the Studio Bratri v Triku in Prague. She just finished a new animation, "Chronicles of a Professional Eulogist," scored by virtuoso contrabassist Mark Dresser (of "Chronicles of an Asthmatic Stripper).
Her most recent solo shows were at Galerie Nauman and Galerie Altes Rathaus Musberg.

Sarah Jane is currently a visiting Lecturer at Harvard University.

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