Andrew Gingerich

Filmmaker/Educator

About

Andrew Gin­gerich is a film­mak­er whose work explores notions of fam­i­ly, dis­so­ci­at­ed iden­ti­ties, region­al alle­giances, and the bound­aries of fic­tion. He lives and teach­es in Michi­gan’s Upper Peninsula.

Ghost to Ghost

  • 16 min­utes
  • HD video/​16mm/​Super 8
  • Color/B&W
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor
"Ghost to Ghost" poster

An exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary about death, grief, and humor.

It seems that Trasie’s response to loss was to split in two: on Sun­days, she stood in the ceme­tery and wept uncon­trol­lably. The rest of the week, she was the pur­vey­or of a caus­tic wit, and seemed to take gen­uine joy in relent­less­ly jok­ing about death. These loss­es, and the ways in which Trasie did her best to cope with them, still trou­ble Trasie’s daugh­ter, Gladys, near­ly a cen­tu­ry later.

Director’s Statement

The only record­ing of my great-grand­moth­er’s voice is a five-minute long skit about coffins record­ed some­time around 1940, only a few years after the deaths of her moth­er, father, broth­er, hus­band, and son. The record­ing is remark­ably jubi­lant, and notable in its stub­born com­mit­ment to jok­ing about death.

My grand­moth­er Gladys recalls the deaths of her father and broth­er dis­tort­ed by the per­spec­tive of child­hood, and remem­bers her moth­er as a lone­ly, seri­ous woman wracked by wor­ry and grief.

This piece was my attempt to col­lab­o­rate with these two women—one liv­ing, one dead—to pro­vide con­text to this remark­able piece of audio and the grim humor at its source.

Screenings

  • WIFI Film Fes­ti­val – Tope­ka, Kansas
  • UWM Depart­ment of Film, Video, Ani­ma­tion and New Gen­res M.F.A. Screen­ing – Mil­wau­kee, Wisconsin
  • Moz­i­Mo­tion – Hil­ver­sum, Netherlands
  • Young gladys and grass
  • "Welcome to Sugarcreek - the little Switzerland of Ohio"
  • Gladys listens to the tape
  • Gladys with a photograph of Trasie (inset)

Screen­er avail­able — request a pri­vate link!

FALLCASTER

  • 7 min­utes – HD Video – Color
  • My role: Writer/​Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

A young woman is trou­bled by dreams of a life that isn’t hers.

If I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and sum­ma­rize it, it is noth­ing but water slip­ping through my fin­gers. This very heart which is mine will for­ev­er remain inde­fin­able to me. For ever shall I be a stranger to myself.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Director’s statement

I made this film as a sort of study for some Big Ideas I’ve been chew­ing over in my work recent­ly: dis­so­ci­at­ed iden­ti­ties, the insta­bil­i­ty of our con­cept of self, and the ways in which we might inhab­it (and be inhab­it­ed by) oth­er peo­ple. I think the piece func­tions on its own, but it’s also my first attempt at work­ing with some of these themes in oth­er contexts.

The film fea­tures Isabelle Rashkin as the unnamed pro­tag­o­nist, and is heav­i­ly influ­enced by the den­si­ty, excess, and obscu­ri­ty of ear­ly Peter Green­away films.

Jesse

  • 4 min­utes
  • 16mm
  • B&W
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

A con­ver­sa­tion about resent­ment, based on a dream I had in 2014.

Director’s statement

Recent­ly, my dreams have begun to lack sym­bol­ism. A dream of aban­don­ment is about aban­don­ment, only the ideas are a lit­tle slippery.

Jesse is drawn from footage I shot and hand-processed with my stu­dents at West­ern Iowa Tech Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege. The film ques­tions the nature of betray­al: while Jesse feels wronged, he also ques­tions whether resent­ment actu­al­ly exists, and won­ders if his desire to recon­nect with his father is a form of objectification.

"Jesse" poster
  • Still from "Jesse"
  • Still from "Jesse"

Getaway

  • 2 min­utes – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor
"Getaway" poster

A cou­ple sip cof­fee while pon­der­ing their future. A poem by Bri­an­na Kratz, after Louise Glück­’s The Bal­cony.

Director’s statement

This is the fourth film in the Lens + Ink series, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the poet Bri­an­na Kratz. This poem lifts the first line from Louise Glück­’s The Bal­cony and ren­ders an atmos­pher­ic por­trait of a cou­ple at an inflec­tion point in their relationship.

With this adap­ta­tion, we strove to retain the mys­tery of Bri­an­na’s orig­i­nal poem, while com­pli­cat­ing the char­ac­ters and nar­ra­tive the text presents.

Getaway

By Bri­an­na Kratz
After Louise Glück’s “The Balcony” 

  • It was a night like this, at the end of summer.
  • We had sat in your uncle’s apartment 
  • for three days? Or maybe just hours.
  • Even when we talked about traffic
  • or lemon­ade, we were thinking
  • of the green that set­tled on the street
  • and the tor­na­do watch.
  • Soon we would be storm chasers
  • soaked and adven­tur­ing to points
  • on our own compasses.
  • And the dish­es piled up in the sink
  • because you couldn’t work the dishwasher
  • and I said, “Why bother?”
  • From upstairs, a tele­vised concert.
  • Some­one singing about heartbreak
  • we would nev­er know.

Credits

  • Writ­ten by Bri­an­na Kratz 
  • Direct­ed by Andrew Gin­gerich 
  • Per­formed by Nor­ma Gin­gerich, with David Gin­gerich and Gladys Nel­son
  • Pro­duc­tion assis­tance from Evan Riffe

Music:

All music is licensed under the Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion 4.0 license.

Sound effects by Freesound​.org users all­re­al­sound, lwdick­ens, aldenroth2, strathamer, PhilllCh­abbb, gyzhor, and Splice­Sound licensed under the Cre­ative Com­mons 0 License. 

Screenings

  • ZEBRA Poet­ry Film Fes­ti­val – Munich, Ger­many
  • Art Visu­als & Poet­ry Film Fes­ti­val – Vien­na, Austria

It Was All Too Easy

  • 1 minute – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

She finds it eas­i­er to escape alone than to remain togeth­er. A film based on a poem by Bri­an­na Kratz.

Director’s statement

This is the third film in the Lens + Ink series, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the poet Bri­an­na Kratz. As has been the case with all the Lens + Ink films, we want­ed to make sure that our trans­la­tion from text to screen offered some­thing beyond a lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the poem. In this case, that added lay­er involves a col­li­sion between night and day.

Credits

  • Writ­ten and Per­formed by Bri­an­na Kratz 
  • Direct­ed by Andrew Gin­gerich 

Music:

All music is licensed under the Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion 4.0 license.

It was all too easy

By Bri­an­na Kratz 

  • “It was all too easy,”
  • pre­tend­ing I did­n’t love you.
  • It was just a mat­ter of rolling
  • up my car window
  • and smirk­ing at your slack jaw
  • leav­ing marks on the glass.
  • It was all too easy,
  • shut­ting you out
  • and lock­ing my diary
  • because you nev­er earned my heart
  • or its key.
  • The hard­est part is explaining
  • to myself why the fog is better
  • than let­ting your sun­shine burn through it.
  • It’s warm here. Soft. Quiet.
  • Not qui­et, muffled.
  • Mois­ture creep­ing into my eardrums
  • and warp­ing the tones.
  • It is all too easy to say no
  • when the risk is yes.

Beets

  • 7 min­utes – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

Retired emer­gency room nurse Gladys teach­es her grand­son how to make pick­led beets.

Director’s Statement

It’s often been said that the best cam­era is the one that’s with you. When, one after­noon, my grand­moth­er offered to teach me her recipe for pick­led beets, I reached for the iPod Touch in my pock­et to make this short por­trait of her.

  • Gladys
  • Washing beets
  • Gladys and David

Attachment

  • 1 minute – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

Attach­ment is a use­ful but some­times dan­ger­ous trait. Based on a poem by Bri­an­na Kratz.

Director’s statement

This is the sec­ond film in the Lens + Ink series, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the poet Bri­an­na Kratz. The chal­lenge of this adap­ta­tion was that the source text was very abstract. Intro­duc­ing just the hint of a frame nar­ra­tive helped to give the piece its shape and just a hint of sin­is­ter energy.

Credits

  • Writ­ten by Bri­an­na Kratz 
  • Per­formed & Direct­ed by Andrew Gin­gerich 

Attachment

By Bri­an­na Kratz 

  • Attach­ment is
  • sta­t­ic cling
  • tying socks to sweaters
  • invis­i­bly.
  • It’s a dig­i­tized file
  • paper­clipped to an e‑mail.
  • Attach­ment is
  • check­ing in
  • even if it’s against the rules
  • because you lost the rulebook
  • and you were always
  • a rebel.
  • Glue. And duct tape,
  • sand­wiched between
  • two big­ger things
  • that need to stick together.
  • Attach­ment is
  • hand­cuff­ing your own happiness
  • to some­one else’s.

Walking Away From Your Car

  • 1 minute – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

The speak­er reflects on being a shrink­ing dot—an image in a mir­ror, pon­der­ing what the future holds. Based on a poem by Bri­an­na Kratz.

Director’s statement

The first film in the Lens + Ink series, this was the result of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the poet Bri­an­na Kratz. In trans­lat­ing the poem to film, we embraced mon­tage as a way to extend the nar­ra­tive and com­pli­cate the source text.

Credits

  • Writ­ten and Per­formed by Bri­an­na Kratz 
  • Direct­ed by Andrew Gin­gerich

Walking away from your car

By Bri­an­na Kratz 

  • feels famil­iar.  Feels right.
  • As if see­ing you off
  • on your travels
  • makes sense in the cos­mic book
  • of some sort of fate.
  • I turn around in spirals,
  • glimps­ing home,
    • glimps­ing you,
  • build­ings,
    • your car,
  • until you dri­ve off and away.
  • I’m a shrink­ing dot
  • in your rearview mirror,
  • giv­ing you some reminder
  • of what was worth the drive.

Motorcycle/​Power Sports program video

  • 5 min­utes – HD video – Color
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

Instruc­tors Shane Con­ley and Dirk Bak dis­cuss the West­ern Iowa Tech Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege Motor­cy­cle and Pow­er Sports program.

Building Connections With Students

  • 5 min­utes
  • HD video
  • Col­or
  • My role: Director/​Cinematographer/​Editor

Steve Aron­son of Teach Authen­tic dis­cuss­es his phi­los­o­phy of class­room man­age­ment and gen­uine inter­ac­tion with students.

When Steve decid­ed to leave his teach­ing posi­tion to start a speak­ing and class­room con­sult­ing busi­ness, he came to me for help mak­ing a film that would doc­u­ment his teach­ing philoso­phies and class­room man­age­ment style and could be fea­tured on his web­site. The result­ing film is a cin­e­mat­ic call­ing card for Teach Authen­tic, high­light­ing Steve’s per­son­al jour­ney as a teacher, giv­ing view­ers a glimpse into one of his class­es, and show­cas­ing a few tes­ti­mo­ni­als that give us a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how trans­for­ma­tive a teacher’s empa­thy and under­stand­ing can be to his students.

Call to Forehead

  • 1 minute
  • 16mm
  • Col­or
  • My role: Co-Direc­tor/Cin­e­matog­ra­pher/Ed­i­tor
"Call to Forehead" poster

A short film in the style of a ’70s thriller trailer.

A mys­te­ri­ous, malev­o­lent fore­head from the sev­enth dimen­sion is wreak­ing hav­oc on the lives of inno­cents. It can make phone calls, and move lamps with its mind. Even if you escape, you will NEVER! be the same.

Director’s statement

I have a great fond­ness for the sorts of trashy thrillers I used to see adver­tised at the begin­nings of heav­i­ly-worn Block­buster video­cas­settes. Call to Fore­head, made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Vin­cent Gag­ne­pain, was our homage to these cheap­ly-made, over­wrought genre movies.

In order to best emu­late the par­tic­u­lar tex­ture of such trail­ers, we shot on 16mm film. Our graph­ics were designed using only tech­niques that would have been cheap­ly avail­able at the time, and incor­po­rat­ed the dis­tinc­tive jit­ter of a low-qual­i­ty opti­cal print­er. The final edit was rout­ed through a peri­od VCR to intro­duce a soupçon of ana­log smearing.

Coffee With John

John Kefalas is a life­long pub­lic ser­vant who has worked tire­less­ly for the peo­ple of North­ern Col­orado. I helped plan and pro­duce this series of videos for his 2010 reelec­tion cam­paign for Col­orado State House Representative.

In plan­ning this series of videos with the Kefalas com­mu­ni­ca­tion staff, we set our­selves the goal of pro­duc­ing the most sub­stan­tial cam­paign ads pos­si­ble. So much cam­paign mes­sag­ing is based on exag­ger­a­tion and per­son­al­i­ty, but John’s strength has always been his abil­i­ty to talk specifics. To that end, we planned to make a series of short videos address­ing spe­cif­ic issues:

  • Clean ener­gy
  • Edu­ca­tion
  • Job cre­ation & small business
  • Trans­porta­tion

I shot a lot of video for this project. I fol­lowed John around as he spoke to com­mu­ni­ty groups, can­vassed neigh­bor­hoods, met vot­ers, and vis­it­ed local busi­ness­es. John’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor wrote scripts on each of the four cho­sen issues for John to deliv­er to cam­era. In the end, though, we real­ized that less real­ly was more, and that the typ­i­cal “can­di­date address­es the cam­era inter­cut with B‑roll” piece evoked the type of sub­stance­less mes­sag­ing we were try­ing to avoid.

One of the things I find most com­pelling about John as a leader is his lack of slick­ness. He has a ten­den­cy to come across a lit­tle stiff when address­ing a cam­era direct­ly, but he’s deeply knowl­edge­able on the rel­e­vant issues and com­mu­ni­cates very well one-on-one with his constituents.

That’s how we came to the con­clu­sion that the most ele­gant solu­tion was to let John talk to some­one about the issues that mat­tered most to him. So we arranged to stop by a local cof­fee shop (Star­ry Night in Old Town), and had him sit down with my grand­moth­er Gladys for about an hour—no scripts, no fan­cy pro­duc­tion, only an occa­sion­al prompt from me to talk about a spe­cif­ic issue we want­ed to cover.

That con­ver­sa­tion pro­vid­ed ample footage to cut togeth­er minute-long videos on each of the four top­ics, and a longer flag­ship video that cov­ered John’s can­di­da­cy more generally.

John hand­i­ly won re-elec­tion. It had noth­ing to do with these videos, but I think the qual­i­ties that made him so pop­u­lar with his con­stituents are on full dis­play here.