Bambi The Mermaid looks across the hudson to the shores of Jersey city.
Tomorrow, Thursday July, 21, will be an amazing evening of film and discussion for anyone already obsessed with mermaids or just mer-curious. Sirens & Society: Postmodern Mermaidia is a screening and panel discussion to investigate the new wave of mermaid imagery and lifestyle being created by individual artists and the culture industry at large. We will begin with a preview screening of our new documentary Mermaids of New York, followed by a panel discussion featuring professor Amy Herzog.
We are thrilled to have Amy joining us, she is a very knowledgeable mermaid and an associate professor of film studies at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Image of Time in Musical Film, which includes an extended study of Esther Williams and “water-based” musical cinema.
The event is $5 and begins at 8pm at Observatory, in Brooklyn.
Thanks to everyone who joined us at R Bar for a very fun evening!
We screened 10 minutes of our Mermaids of New York documentary, raffled off fabulous mermaid prizes (generously donated by our friends Carolyn Turgeon, La Sirena (Mexican Arts & Crafts) and Sourpuss Clothing) and of course, drinking Coney Island Memaid Lager!
But the best part of all was meeting new new mermaid friends and catching up with some that have been riding the waves with us since we first embarked on this journey.
Thankfully, Jason Falchook was on hand to capture some of the highlights…
What can I say, we get excited about raffles!
Mermaid Kai Altair lent a hand
The Brooklyn Babydoll fancy in fins!
The Lady Aye, about to take a stab at it
If you are curious about that last photo, well, you’ll just have to come to one of our screenings to find out what happens next!
What a week for Mermaids of New York! We had our first non-Coney Island screening, last week. Thanks to the lovely folks at Northside Fest and Union Docs for making that happen, it was truly an awesome night! Photos to come.
And Mermaids ruled the city at Coney Island Mermaid fest on Saturday, we even got a shout out from Gothamist!
But wait.. there’s more, the opportunities to get in on the Mermania continue….
We invite you join us for a special siren happy hour/screening/fundraiser to help us continue our documentary project, Mermaids of New York.
It’s free (but donations are appreciated) and there will be drink specials, mermaid appearances, performances and raffles for fabulous prizes throughout the evening and all proceeds will help us bring Mermaids of NY to MerCon in Las Vegas!
If you’re interested in volunteering, performing or donating raffle items, please contact The Lady Aye at theladyaye@gmail.com for more information.
We are thrilled to be presenting Mermaids of New York in a DIY filmmaking competition, next week. It is part of the Northside Festival, a huge arts and culture event in Williamsburg, Brooklyn!
The DIY Film Festival Competition will be at UnionDocs, 322 Union Ave at Maujer St
Our screening is on Thursday, June 16th 8pm and will screen with a bunch of other cool short films! Tickets are available now!
Shorts Block #1:
Unstrung (Meerkat Media, 5:30)
You Have the Right to an Attorney (Matt Bockelman, 12:49)
Kitty Kitty (Michael Medaglia, 10 min)
Lullaby for Ray (Marina Shron, 18 min)
For the Children (Roxanne Kraft, 24 min)
Jeannie (Olivia Jampot, 14 min)
Not Too Thin (Brian Paul Butnick, 2:17)
Hello I Like You (Mixtape Club, 2 min)
Mermaids of New York (Mica Scalin and Ilise Carter, 15 min)
Filmmakers in attendance for Q&A. [tickets]
Carol Memmott at USAToday calls Mermaids The Next Big Thing in this mornings edition and lists a number of new books coming out this year on the subject. Even the queen of supernatural trashy novels, herself Stephanie Meyer, is said to have caught the Mermania! None of this comes as any surprise to Mermaids of New York, we know that Mermaids have been here all along, most folks just didn’t notice before.
Take for example, the very fabulous Bambi The Mermaid, in this clip from Mermaids of New York she shows that she is a woman of many tales and tails!
Wanted to share with you an incredible performance that Dame Darcy gave for us on a rooftop in Chinatown, NYC. In this clip she sings the traditional sea chanty, Greenland Whale Fisheries and plays the saw, accompanied by her sailor/rocker friend Peter Mavrogeorgis.
Darcy is a historian of many fantastic things and she brings this knowledge to her work in comics and music. She recorded an entire album of traditional sea shanties and murder ballads Cabin Fever, with her band Death By Doll.
We LOVE love love the mermaid-y illustration on the cover!
Being a Mermaid is not just fun and games, many we have encountered use their mermaid powers to raise awareness about the crucial environmental issue of protecting the earth’s water and its lifeforms. Makes sense, right?!
In this clip from Mermaids of New York, Mara Haseltine, environmental activist and sculptor talks passionately about why she does what she does.
Mermaids convene all the time, often in small groups, sometimes to conspire, but mostly to make merry!
We recently had the pleasure of spending time with writer and fellow mermaid documenter, Carolyn Turgeon. A real, Mermaid of New York, she recently published a brand new re-telling of the classic Hans Christian Anderson story The Little Mermaid, and has been traveling all over, interviewing, everyone about mermaids on her blog, I Am A Mermaid.
As the photo below demonstrates, we had a lot in common!
Just cut a little promo video for the film so we can start spreading the word about the big screening event we are having this summer… more news to come…
