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Year of the Rooster
2005
"Year of the Rooster (2005), the first feature by Hart Ginsburg and Dave Schmüdde, is a compelling mixture of documentary, essay, and fiction. Shot in Chicago and the countryside of Japan, the film is a portrait of the people and places encountered by Donald Stevenson on his travels. But just who is Donald Stevenson and what is his relation to the director. Along the way there are interviews with homeless men and rural Japanese villagers, random violence, opinions by foreign visitors on the "Bean" and everyday people reading the "Poetry" of Donald Rumsfeld. The disparate elements combine to form a complex, mysterious, disturbing, and encouraging portrait of the post 9-11 world."

-- Patrick Friel, Programming Director, Chicago Filmmakers -- Fall 2005

"Filmmakers Hart and Schmüdde have put together a lot of interesting pieces and the net effect is to represent people who are suffering and the difficulty of the struggle in life in the post 9-11 phase... The expressive qualities of the film and the human compassion qualities of this film are striking to me."

-- NPR's Jonathan Miller appearing on Chicago Public Radio's 848 -- November 18, 2005

"Ginsburg and Schmüdde's rambling video consists mostly of awkwardly shot person-in-the-street interviews in Chicago and Japan on subjects ranging from racial injustice to gay marriage and the Iraq war. But it has the virtue of oddness. Though we hear about police chasing a black kid on his bike and a war veteran's suicide, the framing story implies that we're seeing videos made by a recently deceased gay man on a delusional mission to save the world - their loose organization and offhand nature hint at some impending collapse, perhaps his, perhaps all of ours."

-- Fred Camper, Chicago Reader -- November 18, 2005

Aijo
2006

 

"Aijo is an interesting documentary that uses the camera as confessional. The documentarian simply asks questions about love and life and allows people to have their own personal cartharisis right on camera. It seems very simplisitic by design but it gets deeper and deeper as you go."

-- Michael Eschenbach, Chairman of Somewhat North of Boston Film Festival -- November 10, 2006

"Aijo was wonderful it should have been in an earlier time block, but it certainly made people think and become very quiet. Very nice and thanks so much for submitting it."

-- Eric Sommer, Chairman of Georgetown Film and Music Festival -- November 18, 2006


"Shot in Japan and Chicago, Aijo is an exploration of love and regret through conversations with strangers on the street. Ginsburg said the film was inspired by a suicide note found a the Golden Gate Bridge in 2003 that read 'I am going to walk to the bridge, if one person smiles at me on the way I will not jump.'"

-- Ed M. Koziarski Reel Chicago, director of Homesick Blues -- Summer 2006