If memory serves, Windows Have Eyes Productions was born in the spring of 1999 in an enclave in Sunderland, MA. I was attending the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and by junior year, had firmly established myself as a pariah/hermit. Any chance of getting laid or having any kind of ‘normal’ college experience had shoved off to sea upon my arrival. Regardless, my musical nerdery was in full bloom and I was able to find a divine sense of peace in solitude. In music. As far as studies were concerned, I entered into the BDIC program which provided me the freedom to create my own major (Film Production/Theory) and study with some pretty heavy minds like filmmaker Crystal Griffith, eyeball slicer Don Levine and some deep renaissance men like Julius Lester and Archie Shepp. At the same time, my dear friend Aaron Messelaar and I were spending our weekends at the town’s Unitarian Meeting House where we were undergoing some serious brain rewiring by the likes of Daniel Carter, William Parker, Glen Spearman, Thurston Moore, Denis Charles, John Sinclair, Hamid Drake, Peter Brotzmann, Michael Hurley, Alan Silva, Sabir Mateen, Wizz Jones, Raphe Malik and countless other visionaries. To boot, this was on the regular.
After countless eargasms, I made my first documentary entitled ‘Down To The Crux’. In brief, the film explored ‘avant-garde’ jazz and how it reflected the social and political climate in the 1960s. This would be the first Windows Have Eyes production. For me, it was an absolute blessing to speak candidly with luminaries such as Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon, Joseph Jarman, William Parker and Alan Silva about the music that had instilled me with such a sense of joy, fire and love.
Fast forward a couple years later and I’m back in New Jersey. My dreams of becoming a documentary filmmaker had kind of gone out the window due to the realities of making a living, and I had begun my lifelong love/hate relationship with the art of wedding videography. It was during that time that I met Sara Stadtmiller.
I had hooked up with a local wedding photographer by the name of Danny Sanchez. Sanchez was feeding me some pretty good wedding work at the time and always seemed to surround himself with a harem of cute photographers. One day, I randomly walked into his darkroom and ran into a girl wearing a Dirty Three t-shirt. She was deep in developing mode but I decided to introduce myself anyway. Politely, I explained to her my involvement with Sanchez and told her that I had seen the Dirty Three open for Pavement back in high school. She scoffed and left the room. That’s my Sara!
Eventually Sara and I would become friends, or maybe acquaintances is a better word for it. We’d hang out every once in awhile. We’d shoot weddings together once in awhile. Then, one day, she randomly invites me to live next door to her when an apartment opens up at the beach in Ocean Grove, NJ. I accepted and the rest is kind of history.
Anyhoo, herein this webpage lies the music photography and videography of Sara and meself. It’s for you! It’s for us! It’s for all! In short, I chose Sara to be part of this project because I know in my heart she was bit by the same musical bug that got me back in the day. You can see it in her images. They speak for themselves. She gets it and she gives a shit.
Whoot there it is. Enjoy!
-Michael Lucio Sternbach, NYC, October 2011
