Tonight is our Studio 504 warming party at 67 West St. in Brooklyn, NY! Come out, celebrate, and have a drink with Reuben Hernandez Studios, Sky Pie Studio, Black Magic Studio, and Matthew Kroening
Studio 504 Warming Party /
Wanderlust
Storm King Art Center /
Storm King Art Center, a picturesque 500 acre outdoor sculpture park, is one of my favorites places to visit and is only a short drive north of NYC. I highly recommend stopping by The Shops at Jones Farm for some goodies either before or after!
Geometric Shapes /
While Interviewing Cherie Blair last week, I looked out the window and saw this
Matera, Italy /
Matera is a town built into caves using negative architecture and one of the oldest and continuously inhabited human settlements in the world. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its underground cistern and water collection system. The main cistern has a water capacity of five million liters and took over 200 years to dig/carve out of the rock!
Puglia, Italy /
First light at 6:30 AM
Grotta del Soffio
A fried egg jellyfish at Grotta del Soffio. The water was so clear!
Grotta della Poesia Grande
Some highlights from Puglia, Italy included endless underwater caves and swimming holes
Meteora, Greece /
Meteora, Greece is one of the most fascinating and spectacular places I have ever visited. It's a four hour drive north of Athens and has an incredibly rich history. Meteora translates as "suspended in the air".
Caves in Meteora were inhabited continuously between 50,000 and 5,000 years ago and the monks settled here in the 11th century. The monasteries were built in the 14th - 16th centuries and the monks found the inaccessible rock pillars an ideal refuge from the expanding Turkish occupation, and the area was also attacked by the Nazis during WWII.
Today all of the monasteries pictured above are still functioning monasteries. I recommend ditching your car and exploring the region by foot.
Elafónisos, Greece /
NYC Independent Film Festival - Films - Antarctica /
Check out this interview I did for my Antarctica film premiere next week. Below are some excerpts and the full interview is here: https://www.nycindieff.com/film/antarctica
Interview by Kerby Pierre.
KP: Thank you Reuben for taking the time to answer some questions for us. Your film is very unique. What inspired you to film this exotic short?
RH: I had a strong feeling that visiting Antarctica, my final continent, would be a significant life experience. I wanted to memorialize the journey in a special, meaningful way. I was inspired by Ron Fricke’s time-lapse work in Samsara, and the one second a day sequence in the movie, Chef.
KP: The film shows NYC, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Antarctica. Why did you choose those five locations?
RH: The film begins and ends in NYC, which is where I live now. Argentina is where we embark on the Antarctic expedition ship, and I also wanted to visit the Salar de Uyuni (salt flats) in Bolivia, and photograph the Milky Way rise above the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the driest places on earth.
KP: Of all the vast landscapes of these five diverse countries how did you narrow it down to two minutes?
RH: It was incredibly challenging to film every single day, especially on the boring days where not much was happening, such as travel days or days at sea. I really had to reach and try and find beauty in the mundane, and editing it down to just one second a day was extremely difficult. There are a lot of beautiful shots that didn’t make the final cut.
KP: What do you want the audience to get from this beautifully shot short?
RH: There is beauty everywhere, even in the mundane. Antarctica, the largest wilderness area in the world, transformed and forever changed me. Never in my entire life have I been in such close proximity to so much wildlife and such raw, untouched beauty. It humbled me because it is like no other place on earth. I hope these images will have a lasting impact and inspire others to protect and safeguard the future of our planet.
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BEAUTY, BALANCE, AND GRACE | World Premiere in Paris, France
My film Beauty, Balance, and Grace featuring JR and NYC Ballet principal dancer Lauren Lovette, will premiere at the Paris Short Film Festival in Paris, France on 5.5.16 at 10 PM. I’m very excited to take this film out into the world and hope you can join me at the Paris screening in a few weeks!
Tickets and info here: http://www.psff.eu
Trailer coming soon…
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Join me next week for the world premiere of my film, ANTARCTICA, screening at the NYC Independent Film Festival on Wednesday, April 27th at 4:15 pm.
Trailer: http://reubenhernandez.com/antarctica-trailer
Tickets and info: https://www.nycindieff.com/session/art-experimental-films-sessions-1
I look forward to seeing you there!
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ANTARCTICA Trailer
I’m excited to announce my short film, ANTARCTICA, will premiere at the NYC Independent Film Festival on Wednesday, April 27th at 4:15 pm, and will screen along with 8 other shorts.
Trailer: http://reubenhernandez.com/antarctica-trailer
Info and tickets: https://www.nycindieff.com/session/art-experimental-films-sessions-1
I would be so honored if you came out and/or invited anyone that would be interested. I look forward to seeing you there!
Warmly,
Reuben
Exploring South Africa and Tanzania with Reuben Hernandez /
My guest post and Africa images on the We Keep Exploring blog:
My dear friend Andrew and I decided to do a 6 week adventure in South Africa, Tanzania, and Zanzibar because he quit his job this year and launched his own company. We wanted to do some things we have never done before, such as summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, one of the seven summits and the highest mountain in Africa. I was on a personal long time mission to see Great White sharks breach in South Africa, which I missed on my previous two trips to Cape Town. Just over five years ago, I also quit my full time job, hit the reset button, and hopped on a plane bound for South Africa.
For the past five years, traveling and exploration has been much of an independent pursuit, as I am often sent out on assignments on my own or other people just don’t have the flexibility to join me. A huge challenge with being away on the road so much is that I can sometimes feel disconnected from my community and friends. Building community, exploring, and creating are some of my core values, and to be able to share all of those things together at the same time with a good friend is quite meaningful and memorable. And at times it was beautiful and transcendent, especially at the top of Africa at nearly 20,000 ft above sea level, and when we took a boat out to surf the outer reefs of Zanzibar.
Lately, I’ve had this grand vision of building community through travel, exploration, and creating art, and I’m reminded of the following quote by Christopher McCandless, “Happiness only real when shared.”
There is beauty everywhere worth pursuing and exploring, even in the places that we least expect it. Get out there and find it. Be fearless. Be wild. Be free.
All My Best,
Reuben