Chapter 1: BIOGRAPHY “I began to think that if one life, somehow made into art, were recorded - not all of it, but like the testimony on an old tombstone - wouldn’t that be worth something?” Joey Huertas (aka Jane Public) is responsible for a creating a breed of personal cinema that he calls Docu-fessional. His film works are poetic narratives that mix an "observational" and "abstract" approach to documentary filmmaking. His films portray the reminiscences of unplanned significant encounters and experiences in the artist's life using unusual storytelling aesthetics. Personal revelatory confessions are recorded by unconventional means (public library archives, surveillance, micro-film, journals, hearing aids and toys) and read much like the entries found in a hidden personal diary. One is left with the question of, “What is truth and what is fiction?” The films take many forms, including physical stories arranged by peculiar/imagined biographies of fictitious persons, collections of found/anonymous photographs, found sound recordings, drawings and compositions from text journals. |
What the press is saying "A haunting record of Jane Public's inner struggle... revealing ...harsh brilliance. Tantalizing
...Full of pain and love, growth and hope." "These films are alive with intensity and energy- and a Plath-like self doubt of his remarkable creativity." "Awesome and magnetizing... An immensely powerful and vivid document of a film poet." "AKA Joey assembles an epic and timely meditation, like Picasso's Guernica, is simultaneously thrilling and horrifying ... Exquisite and furious, it's a dark testament to film's power to resist, protest, and bear witness." "This is devotional storytelling for a secular age." |
Joey Huertas (aka Jane Public) films offer no “immunity bubble”. The films believe that nothing bad can remain safe in a person’s life without the possibility for growth, insight and healing. The creative process involves a complete study and exploitation of the inner self. The elements of fact and fiction in narrative/documentary storytelling are imprecise and distorted, making the relationship between the filmmaker and the audience difficult to manage. In the end, the viewer is left learning how to acknowledge circumstance and cope. Joey Huertas (aka Jane Public) is also a clinical social worker and integrates social work and the therapeutic process directly into his film art. His films have been screened extensively at internationally diverse venues/museums and he is often invited to present and discuss the films in person. Joey Huertas/Jane Public holds a BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase's Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film, and an MSW from Hunter College School of Social Work. He has exhibited around the world, at PS1 MoMA, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Participant, Inc, NY among others. His work has appeared in a variety of publications including Art forum, the New York Times, Cineaste, and has been featured on NPR, BBC, and PBS. He has published two books, Homewrecka (JanePublicPress, 2010) and The Colors of Spring (JanePublicPress, 2011). The artist lives and works in New York. |
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The films are approached as works of fine art and not as entertainment. Most of his forty-two films, installations and performance art pieces comprise a dramatic social chronicle of the behavior of the human animal - in all of its variously rigid and amorphous manifestions of the emotional person. Whether revealing corners of behaviour hidden from view, or the secret records of imagined lives, stories are exposed as colored expositions of the human condition.