Short Attention Span Cinema: Mysteries of Vernacular

Friday, July 20 - Thursday, August 30, 2012

Jessica Oreck’s “Mysteries of Vernacular” is a bite-sized animated video series about the history of language. Each installment of presents an enticing nugget of etymological intrigue, one for each letter of the alphabet, at just 90 seconds a pop. Every episode is ‘narrated’ by a stop-motion animated book that has been customized and hand-painted to bring the history of words to life. In its final form, the series will exist as a library of 26 episodic volumes. Now playing before our regular features are the first six episodes of the series: “A for Assassin,” “B for Bewilder,” “C for Clue,” “H for Hearse,” “M for Miniature,” and “P for Pants.”

Jessica Oreck works as an animal keeper and docent at the American Museum of Natural History. Her first feature documentary, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, was released theatrically in the US and UK and aired on PBS’s Independent Lens series in May 2011. She is currently in production on two new feature documentaries as well as several other short animated series.

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