Projects
Short Descriptions // Click for further information
A Crooked Line
An intimate and emotional family story spanning two continents and three years in the life of a young drug addicted man.
Chasing Dreams: The Leah Chase Story
The story of Mrs. Leah Chase’s inspiring and blessed life, and a meditation upon her legacy, told by her and those who know and love her best.
Ultraviolet
Having discovered the technology to save a dying world, two brothers must confront their values and their relationship.
Love Hurts: The Ricco Rodriguez Story
A tender, honest, and exciting look at the unique life of Ricco Rodriguez, a talented mixed martial artist and former UFC heavyweight champion fighting his way back to the top.
For Spacious Skies
A journey from the Dirty South to the West Coast for a glimpse at the outrageous and innovative funding model of the Life Is Art Foundation: establishing a medical marijuana farm.
Art In Public Places
A series of profiles of artists and their projects as developed and comissioned by the Arts Council of New Orleans and the Joan Mitchell Foundation
Up From The Depths: A Prose Poem For Education
A short meditation upon New Orleans’ relationship with water; where we have been, and where we are going.
The TungstenMonkey Monkey Race
An interactive project created for TEDxNOLA which pitted six racing monkeys and their jockies against one another in a user-driven showdown.
Grassroots Mapping
In response to the Gulf Oil spill, the Grassroots Mapping project lifts cameras into the sky using kites and balloons to create high-resolution maps of endangered coastline.
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A Crooked Line
Feature Length Documentary
Post Production
Have you ever hurt someone you love?
A Crooked Line documents 20 year old Riley Chapman’s journey to the ends of the earth to combat his drug addiction, and takes an intimate look inside the workings of his loving but troubled family unit. TungstenMonkey travelled alongside Riley, capturing his journey deep into the Amazon rainforest among the native Shipibo people, to the gritty streets of Lima and Pucallpa, San Francisco and Taos, and to his home in New Orleans. A labor of love and an intimate storytelling challenge, A Crooked Line is our flagship project and greatest undertaking to date.
Click here to visit the website and view the trailer.
Chasing Dreams: The Leah Chase Story
Feature Length Documentary
In Production
At Eighty-Eight Years old, Leah Chase, known as “The Queen of Creole Cuisine,“ is one of the most beloved and respected women in New Orleans. Having entered what Creoles call “the third age,” she can look back with scope and wisdom upon her powerful impacts in her community and her contributions to food culture, civil rights, and the arts. TungstenMonkey has been working closely with Mrs. Chase and her friends and family to caputre these incredible stories and to convey the inspiring humanity of Mrs. Chase’s outlook, grounded in the emotional challenges of legacy and family tradition as she ventures through the late stages of her life.
Ultraviolet
Short Film
Pre Production
Two brothers awaken on the roof of a towering skyscraper over a blighted and dying city. In a damaged world where exposure to the sun is fatal to human and plant life, they have discovered an invaluable serum to counter these deadly effects. Should this technology be given to the world in a frantic effort to save all, or should it be administered through a controlled system that will concentrate power and create a new world order? In a fleeting moment, they must decide. A collaboration with our friends at Deltree, Ultraviolet will be TungstenMonkey’s first foray as a team into fiction filmmaking.
Love Hurts: The Ricco Rodriguez Story
Feature Length Documentary
In Production
Ricco Rodriguez in 2010 is a host of interesting contrasts – a loving and committed father – a dominant fighter – a laid back guy who cherishes good times with his friends – an intense and highly trained mixed martial artist – an established celebrity – and a hungry brawler with something to prove. A young rising star and Heavyweight Champion of the UFC in 2002, Ricco has since struggled with weight, drugs, and personal relationships, but has vowed to make a comeback. TungstenMonkey has been tracking Ricco’s story for the past year, as he attempts to rebuild himself in the increasingly challenging and commercial world of Mixed Martial Arts.
For Spacious Skies
Short Form Documentary
Post Production
New Orleans’ innovative and controversial Life Is Art foundation has experienced a turbulent ride from beauty and success to financial calamity and decay and back again a number of times in its short history. In the summer of 2010, they travelled west to establish a medical marijuana collective under the laws of the state of California. American Medicinals exists as a nonprofit entity in support of the art projects of the foundation, but also as its own political and conceptual statement and is organized and marketed by the same artists who run the Life Is Art Foundation. For Spacious Skies is a short meditation upon this cutting edge and risky venture set in the context of the foundation’s preparation for its inagural art show and the autumn marijuana harvest.
Click here to read the New York Times coverage on the project.
Art In Public Places
Short Form Documentary
Spring 2009
In the spring of 2009 TungstenMonkey produced Art in Public Places documenting the project that recently placed 19 public artworks throughout New Orleans’ neighborhoods. Commissioned by the Arts Council of New Orleans and the Joan Mitchell Foundation to support the unique work of our local artists, the opportunity allowed local artists to create large-scale artworks which benefit both the artists’ careers and the city’s blossoming recovery. Art in Public Placesconsists of a 20 min. documentary piece, 19 vignettes with onsite interviews of the artists and 3 min. public service announcement.
Click here to visit the Arts Council of New Orleans website.
Up From The Depths: A Prose Poem For Education
Short Form Presentation
Fall 2010
Albert Ruesga, president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, accepted the challenge to deliver a three-minute Pecha Kucha presentation for the Grantmakers for Education conference in New Orleans. Albert wrote a prose poem drawing a parallel between New Orleans’s recovery from the devastation of the waters of Katrina and the renewal of the city’s education system. TungstenMonkey filmed and edited images of water, Katrina flooding, and the adorable schoolchildren at Kingsley House, to create a visual poem in synch with Albert’s presentation. Voiceover for a web variation was recorded by Janet Daley.
Click here to view on the GNOF Blog.
The TungstenMonkey Monkey Race
Interactive Film Project
Summer 2010
An interactive project created for TEDxNOLA. TungstenMonkey created six unique racing monkeys, then designed and filmed six tongue-in-cheek monkey race sequences, each with a different monkey victorious. On the day of the event, users could vote for their favorite monkey, with the voting driving a backend database which automatically played the winning race film at post time. From concept to final execution, we pulled this project off in less than a week.
Click here to view the TungstenMonkeyMonkeyRace.
Grassroots Mapping
Short Form Interactive
Spring 2010
Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers use helium balloons and kites to loft their own “community satellites” made with inexpensive digital cameras. The resulting images are georeferenced and stitched into maps which are 100x higher resolution than those offered by Google, at extremely low cost. TungstenMonkey worked with the organization to produce two short form pieces, one an instructional piece and the other a pitch for a successful Kickstarter campaign.
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