What if you could morph your car into a mobile work of art, and drive it down the road for all to see? What would it look like? In his wild wheeled new film Automorphosis, Harrod Blank wows us with some of the most amazing cars—and most amazing art—you’ve ever seen. Blank will pull into town and display his Camera Van at MIFF. An interactive Art Car that was inspired by an actual dream, the Camera Van has the ability to capture the amazed reactions of people who see it for the first time. While Blank had previously sought to document onlookers’ honest responses to Art Cars, he was unable to record their candid reactions since he could not get close enough without revealing his camera. The solution that appeared in his dream was to affix a large enough quantity of cameras to his car that no one would know which ones, if any, worked. Of the 2,500 cameras mounted to the van, six are functional Canons that shoot print film, and two are operational video cameras that transmit live images to the giant “filmstrip” composed of four TV monitors on the passenger side of the vehicle. Other cars and their creators in the jaw-dropping Automorphosis include world renowned spoon bender Uri Geller and his fork-and-spoon-covered “Peace Car”; Howard Davis’s “Telephone Car” an obsession-driven telephone collection; and Leonard Knight, a religious folk artist who’s painted his vehicles as well as most of an entire mountain in the desert as a testament to his faith. Weaving his own tale amidst the others, Blank, as narrator, is the glue that binds these vibrant portraits. The personalization of the car into wild mobile art may be the ultimate personification of uniquely American creativity.

Sponsored by RE-BOOKS and Children’s Book Cellar

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