We dined virtually tonight with artist Liz Goldberg and filmmaker Warren Bass, who talked about their artistic collaborations, including Cuban Queens (https://vimeo.com/279495510​).

Cuban Queens is an experimental animated collaboration by Warren Bass (direction, animation, music), Liz Goldberg (original graphics), and Lowell Boston (animation). The film deconstructs and explores ninety-nine evolving images of Havana’s street divas. Cuban Queens is a rhythmic study of subliminal hand-drawn portraits that evolve through s
hifting, transient relationships of image-to-image and image-to-sound.

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Warren Bass is an independent filmmaker and former Chair of Film & Media Arts at Temple University where he teaches directing, cinematography, and advanced workshops in documentary, fiction and animation as a full professor. He was trained at the Yale School of Drama in directing (with Honors) and at Columbia University in film as their School of the Arts Scholar. He has taught at Yale, NYU, the State University of California, and the American Film Institute, has chaired university departments in Film, Television, and Theater in New England, served as trustee of the University Film Study Center housed at Harvard/MIT, Vice President of the University Film and Video Association, guest editor of The Journal of Film and Video, and for extended periods as Director of Temple University’s graduate program in Film. His essays on visual style have been published in English, Polish, Chinese and Turkish. His textbook on camcorders is published in seven countries. His art work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian, the National Academy of Design and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He has directed theater at Lincoln Center, off-Broadway and in regional professional theater in six cities. His film and video productions have been aired on PBS, syndicated television and cable in the U.S. and on European, Asian and Australian Television. His work has received over 100 regional, national and international awards. Professor Bass is a recipient of both the Great Teacher Award and the Creative Achievement Award from Temple University.

Liz Goldberg has taught Fashion Illustration at Pratt and Drexel University for the past 11 years. Her work is an exploration of the theme of the “diva” – the flamboyantly uninhibited female and the personal and political empowerment she represents.

As a painter, graphic artist, and animator, Liz has been inspired by puppets and absurdist theatre, influenced by puppet–like characters reminiscent of Alfred Jarry’s forerunner of absurdist theater, Ubu-Roi, the buffoons of modernist playwright Michel de Ghelderode, the existentialist mime plays of Samuel Beckett, and the symbolist and political figures of European puppet theater.

Liz has developed these “diva” and puppet-inspired works into experimental animated films in collaboration with filmmaker Warren Bass, broadcast on American Public Television and cable, receiving awards and juried recognition in over 20 countries. The works use animation as an analog to painting, dance and poetry, and are intended to re-define the paradigm of what an animation can be. The process of animation has, in turn, influenced her full-scale paintings and works-on-paper producing diptychs, triptychs, and serial prints with progressive deviations.

In 2018, Liz and Warren produced “Vogueing and Other Pleasures” shown at the Film Festival at the Barnes in conjunction with the Musee de Paris. In 2018, the film was also shown as part of “Contextualizing Fashion” at Pratt. A full room installation was created at Joan Shepp where Liz was a resident artist for 3 years 2017- 2020, installing the entire space with 1,750 hand-drawn cells from the animation, as well as paintings and prints.