looping pre-pandemic public service announcement
soundscape by Goon des Garcons and Idle Kid
animations by Henry Moonrod
"Less a confessional documentary than a mixtape that samples a copious personal archive, "This is Yates" pan-n-scans a wide track of time, running from the near-present back beyond pre-pubescence to home movies of time before birth. The journey there and back is contoured by catastrophes large and small: loss of balance, loss of consciousness, loss of family and the sense of home. Principally an account of self is marked by the untimely deaths of his parents - first of his father when he was still a child, and later his mother who overdosed on antidepressant drugs. As Yates warps, paints and de-muxes tangible material, grief exerts a destructive pull on the content of memory, like a magnet on a videocassette."
[Jon Kieran, New Orleans Film Society]
“In this hand-processed assemblage of previously unearthed home-movie footage and ad hoc audio recordings, Joshua Yates resurrects an American family from the South, to haunting effect. What we hear are snippets of childhood and family life, circa 1971…just enough to disturb us as we attempt to stitch the pieces into a narrative that just won't completely render. What we see, meanwhile, is a stream of heavily eroded, orphaned small-gauge footage. Every so often from this molten play of surfaces, a human figure or legible sign manages to emerge, for just long enough to stoke our desire for more, before receding again into the decay. In 'The Bags, Probably 1971', Yates devises a gothic rumination on memory, loss, childhood innocence, the darker side of human nature…and the inadequacy of hindsight to reconstruct it all.”
[Jaimie Baron, Festival of (In)appropriation]
In this whimsical study of ambition gone awry, a disgraced South Carolina congressman surveys the wreckage of a once promising political career from his palatial seaside home in Myrtle Beach.
Directed by Luke Hodges
Cinematography by Yates
"Today at last we know: John Brown was right." W.E.B. Du Bois
This film is an experimental essay in three movements that explores the importance of being more than an "ally" in struggle, by sharing histories of committed accomplices John Brown, Marilyn Buck, and others. The film also delves into the history of the landscape and former prairie that was the earth on which Brown's militants trained. In the face of exploitation of people and destruction of land, radical struggle cultivates new life.
Directed by Kelly Gallagher
Live Action Cinematography by Yates
A visual chronicle of the Vodou religion as practiced in the rural mountains of Haiti. Loa presents Koszulinski’s expressive account of rural Vodou via a portrait of the houngan Extanta Aoleé, who has served the Loa, the sacred spirits of Haiti, for over a half century.
Directed by Georg Koszulinski
Cinematography by Yates
For millennia, the Haida People have lived on the remote islands of Haida Gwaii. In the wake of the forced assimilation brought about by the Indian Residential Schools, the Haida Nation continues to face great challenges in retaining their cultural and economic sovereignty. From the perspective of a young Haida poet (Towustasin Stocker), White Ravens bears witness to the transgenerational trauma of colonization as survivors, their children, and grandchildren struggle with the effects of substance abuse, suicide, and interfamily trauma.
White Ravens focuses on patterns of resistance, from Towustasin’s family history of blockading corporate logging operations, to the Haida Nation’s resurgence of the potlatch—the gift-giving ceremony that remains central to the self-governance of all Coastal First Nations People. On the eve of a historic chieftanship potlatch, the film meditates on the Haida legacy of resistance and resurgence, presenting a portrait of a First Nation community in healing.
Directed by Georg Koszulinski
Cinematography by Yates
The Woods is a dialogue-free horror short that follows a lone woman in a desolate snowscape on a quest to take care of an ailing relative. Shot in -30 degree weather using only natural light and no digital trickery, The Woods is a horror-meets-arthouse narrative about the lengths we will go to take care of family.
watch on YouTube
watch on Vimeo
Directed by Remington Smith
Cinematography by Yates
A Louisville, KY resident fights to move her entire house to another county to escape the environmental hazards of living near a coal burning power plant, a toxic landfill site and industrial chemical plants that have a history of leaks, spills and occasional explosions.
Director: Remington Smith
Associate Producer: Joshua Yates
