Selected Artist Information

JOHN KOCH
is a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was awarded a BFA in Photography in 1999 at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. He also studied a post-baccalaureate semester at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy in 2000. After returning home to Minneapolis he opened Cinema Revolution, a DVD rental store that focused solely on foreign, independent, documentary, classic and cult films, which has now evolved into the Cinema Revolution Society – a non-profit dedicated to the proliferation of film arts in the Twin Cities.  Koch has made seven short films and finished his first feature film "Je Ne Sais Quoi" in early 2008, which screened at the Ritz Theater for a two week run in June 2008 and at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival in August 2008. He also recently collaborated with Live Action Set as video designer for their portion of the Ballet of the Dolls production "Rite of Spring" in May/June 2008. He is currently in production on his next feature film "The Seducer", an adaptation of Dostoevsky's "White Nights".


MARK WOJAHN
is a media artist living and working in Minneapolis and Saint Paul who utilizes a wide variety of media, including film, video installation, photography, and sculpture. He began his art education at the Minneapolis School of Art and Design and finished with a degree in Art History and Film Studies at the University of Minnesota. His work has been shown widely in the Twin Cities as well as toured nationally. Mark sees "art and activism as means for building and connecting with community, for raising personal collective awareness, and for exploring the realms of consciousness and humanity.

Mark has been published in periodicals such as Mother Jones, City Pages, Star Tribune, and New Art Examiner. Some awards he has received include 2004 Best Film of the Twin Cities, City Pages, 2003 Artist of the Year, City Pages, 2002 Jerome Foundation Media Arts Grant, and much more. Some of his films include "What America Needs: from Sea to Shining Sea," 2003; "What America Needs: An Interior Expedition,"1995. His next film, "Trampoline" will be sent to festivals in the fall of 2009.

GARRETT D. TIEDEMANN
is a filmmaker, writer, painter, musician, photographer and poet.  Spending the majority of his life in the Twin Cities community he became fascinated with the impact and creation of art at a very young age.  Formally taught to write poetry and play guitar, he chose to pursue film upon entering college, however, he did not enroll in a traditional film production school choosing to earn a degree in film and media theory with intense focus on philosophy and cultural criticism at the University of Minnesota while learning the technical aspects of the trade on his own.  Since 2003 he has been professionally working in the Twin Cities and Los Angeles communities creating films that range between documentaries and fiction of many genres like comedy, thriller, drama and mystery.  

Often focusing on the development of personal identification, experiences of time and the influence of space; his films draw heavily from the era of silent cinema and an understanding that the films did in fact have a sound - it was just different from what is typical of a film’s sound today.  This understanding is applied heavily to his film’s construction often turning the sound into a character all its own.  Currently he is editing his section feature film entitled “KliKt,” which is due for release later in 2009 and preparing to direct a feature length documentary on the origins of the Dorie Miller Housing Co-operative in New York.