Joey Huertas

Joey Huertas (also known as Jane Public) is an American experimental film and sound artist working in a form he calls "docufessional," combining personal cinema, live performance, spoken word, and short stories. He also works for New York State as a forensic social worker.

Biography

Early life and music

In his late teens, Huertas played drums in Killing Cycle, a high school thrash metal band with guitarist Mark Morton, later of Lamb of God, and singer Chris Marrow, a childhood friend of Morton's. The band performed at local venues and recorded demos in the late 1980s, including four original songs at a studio Morton found. In his memoir Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir, Morton describes Huertas as a prolific lyricist who kept notebooks of stories and offbeat lyrics marked by a dark sense of humor, and recalls that their song "Landslide Suicide" was an anti-drug song loosely inspired by a family friend of Huertas's who had died of an overdose. The band dissolved when Marrow enlisted in the Marines, and Morton and Huertas left for college.

Education

Huertas holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the State University of New York at Purchase's Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film, and a master's degree from the Hunter College School of Social Work.

Film and performance work

Huertas's work includes shorts, installations, soundscapes, and film-related performances. His docufessional approach combines direct and observational documentary techniques with narrative storytelling.

His film Homewrecka, an experimental documentary about domestic violence, screened at the Syracuse International Film Festival in October 2010, where it was among the festival's award winners, and where festival director Owen Shapiro called Huertas a "genius".