exceptional happenings

Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped here.
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

exceptional happenings is a seventeen minute three-channel video installation bridging text and image, movie and novel, and the American zeitgeist of the 20th and 21st century. Utilizing eight films and the eight literary works they are based on, the installation brings together 20th century ruminations on class, race, gender, violence and poverty. These categories are still with us in the beginning of the 21st century, though perhaps we talk, write and film them differently now (if at all) than we once did.

Including texts and moving images from the books/films: In Cold Blood, A Member of the Wedding, Ship of Fools, The Godfather, Goodbye Columbus, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Swimmer, Strangers on a Train.

(from www.shellysilver.com)