From: programming (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Jan 02 2004 - 10:11:13 PST
CHICAGO FILMMAKERS WINTER 2004 SCREENINGS
Saturday, January 17 -- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Psychic Disturbances: New Experimental Film and Video
These three magnificently odd works raise a lot of issues and ask a lot of
questions, then, teasingly, don't necessarily provide easy answers; they are
open-ended revels in uncertainty. Rolled Eyes (2nd Version) (2002, 12
mins., 16mm, Austria), by Dietmar Brehm, is a found-footage psycho-sexual
drama which confounds traditional gender power relationships, but with
Brehm's usual creepy ambiguities still present. Learning Stalls: modular
syllabi and organic exchange (2003, 23 mins., video) by Darrin Martin and
Torsten Z. Burns: Psychic surgery meets physical therapy as matter and
anti-matter merge under the choreographed supervision of other worldly
beings. In the search for new mind/body experiences, Burns, Martin and
other workshop participants humorously enact paranormal interactions,
intersexual dynamics, pseudo-testing methods, and staged quasi-therapy
sessions. Anti-Dialectic: The Letter to Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty in Form
of Density (2001, 55 mins., video, South Korea) by Kim Gok and Kim Sun:
"Anti-Dialectic (based on a painting by Magritte?) centres on Hyo-Sik...The
world's laziest artist, he is hung up on the problem of representing an
apple. He's also hung up on a devoutly Christian MTV vee-jay called Mina,
but studiously indifferent to Kyung-Sook, the long-suffering librarian who
adores him. Through jump-cuts and patterns of variation, the film
celebrates differences and ridicules attempts to resolve them." (Tony Rayns)
Saturday, January 24 -- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Chicago's Own: Recent Work by Tom Palazzolo
Tom Palazzolo in Person!
Tonight we present an evening of work by the Chicago filmmaker, Tom
Palazzolo, featuring recent film and video, an excerpt from his new
work-in-progress, and a special slide show presentation. Down Clark Street
(1995, 25 mins., video) is a nostalgic reminiscence of the artist's early
days in 1960's Chicago. On a deeper level, it's a chronicle of a time past
and a compassionate, sometimes humorous, sometimes sad remembrance of the
invisible, forgotten people who populated the artist's world. Rita on the
Ropes (2001, 10 mins., 16mm). I Was a Zero in the City 2000 (2003, 34
mins., video) is a documentation of Palazzolo's ill-fated participation in
the City 2000 photography project, featuring photos and video he shot of
Maxwell Street (now occurring on Canal), white-trash youth at the Taste of
Chicago, street singers on the Fourth of July, and the AIDS Ride; proof that
Palazzolo's eye for finding the marginalized people who give Chicago it's
true character is sharp as ever. Bad Sports (work-in-progress excerpt,
video): It's the 2003 year in Chicago sports - the Unchampionship Season,
starring the Cubs and the Bears. Plus a slide show presentation of
Palazzolo's collage art.
Saturday, January 31 - 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Chicago's Own: Memory Pieces
Target Practice (2003, 19 mins., 16mm) by Caroline Key: Four people telling
stories (visual aids included). Untitled Affair (2003, 7 mins., video) by
Chi-Jang Yin: The video maker tells of a visit to the theater and her
suspicions about the couple seated next to her in this exploration or
narrative, video, and performance. The Invalids (2003, 9 mins., video), by
Mary Billyou, is an incisive experimental exploration of the politics and
sociology of late 19th century medicine's treatment of women patients -
hysterics, invalids, and malingerers. arrivals & departures (2002, 3 mins.,
video), by Ines Sommer, contemplates the meta/physical division between two
spaces: one for moving the living, the other for holding the dead. Ships
Out to Sea (2003, 5 mins., video) by Sara Cough: A look into the beauty and
humor behind our instincts to relate to nature where true nature no longer
exists. Dear Gary (2003, 12 mins., video) by Sara Cough: A documentary
collage of disturbing images of quickly decaying architectural spaces in
Gary, Indiana is overlaid with an experimental audio narrative about a woman
abandoned by her lover. Room (2001, 5 mins., video) by Monica Bhasin: A
quiet and stark apartment evokes a sense of dislocation, isolation, memory,
and history.
Saturday, February 7 -- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Film Studies: The Films of Guy Sherwin and Barbara Meter
Guy Sherwin and Barbara Meter in Person!
Guy Sherwin (London) and Barbara Meter (Amsterdam) have been two of Europe's
leading experimental filmmakers for the past 30 years. We are pleased to
host this rare two-person screening of their work (the only U.S. show they
are doing). Although they work separately, their films share a concern for
those delicate, ineffable moments in life; an eye for beauty and wonder; and
an intense curiosity about the world around. Guy Sherwin's Animal Studies
(1998-2003, 25 mins.) is "variable set of perceptual studies on the
inconsequential movements of animals. The films are made partly in the
camera and partly in the printer, and most are derived from a single take.
Fluctuations of light, geometry and time reveal what might be hidden in the
photographic depths of the material. My filmic interest in animals is that
they are unselfconscious, authentic, and don't act." (GS). Short Film
Series (1975-2000, 5 X 3 mins.): "100 foot reels of epiphanies, time-lapse
studies, ordinary objects and scenes rendered strange and ambiguous. Shot
in black-and-white they reveal Sherwin's excellence as a photographer of
delicate compositions, sensuous textures and chiaroscuro, together with his
commitment to the personal; to the capturing of moments excluded by the
conventions of mainstream (and much independent) cinema." (Michael O'Pray).
Also by Sherwin: Filter Beds (1998, 9 mins.): Made at the site of the
disused Middlesex Filter Beds in East London, it conveys images of grasses
and reeds, subtle shifts of focal point, the appearance of a vapour trail.
Barbara Meter's From the Exterior (1970, 9 mins.): "Spontaneous searching,
looking at people's lives through open-curtained windows, from the
outside-in." (Peter Gidal); Meter's Departure on Arrival (1996, 21 mins.)
"draws the viewer into a world which is both historically specific and
powerfully emotive. The film gives a strong sense of European life, possibly
though not necessarily Jewish, lived in the middle and latter part of the
20th century, with references further back." (Nick Collins). Greece, to me
(2001, 10 mins.): The emotional center of the film is my love for Greece
(BM). Convalescing (2000, 3 mins.): When one is allowed not to take part in
the world. Time to just read, look, dream. (BM). Meter's Appearances (2000,
18 mins.) is a "film about the liberal Weimar republic and the happy '20s
and '30s in Germany... the sinister black forests, their dark myths and the
matching heavy symphonies - and about Jewish life, before the war and in
immigration." (Mieke Bernink)
Sunday, February 15 -- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Al-Jazeera Exclusive
Co-Presented by Chicago Media Action
Al-Jazeera Exclusive (2003, 60 mins., video, UK) by Ben Anthony. This
compelling and informative documentary, made for the BBC series
Correspondent, takes a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial
Qatar-based satellite television station Al-Jazeera in the days leading up
to and during the Iraq War. The BBC "sent producer Ben Anthony to the
station to record the processes that brought al-Jazeera's coverage of the
conflict to the screen. His film offers a unique and extremely valuable
insight into the Arabic view of the Coalition's invasion of Iraq. Anthony's
camera records a number of key moments: the day when Saddam's ministers
tried to ban al-Jazeera, the al-Jazeera decision to screen images of
American and British corpses, the 'accidental' bombing of the hotel in
Baghdad where al-Jazeera's reporters were based and the reaction of
al-Jazeera's staff to the death of its reporter in that blast. We see a
professional (but underfunded) newsroom in operation and we witness them
catching other broadcasters pirating their material. In short, Anthony's
Al-Jazeera Exclusive does what all the best documentaries do: it shows you
things that no one else is showing you." (Tony Rayns, Vancouver
International Film Festival)
Saturday and Sunday, February 21 and 22; February 28 and 29; March 6 and 7
-- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
[Part One shows on Saturday nights; Part Two shows on Sunday nights - each
Part will last approximately 3 1/2 hours.]
Special Limited Run!
Ken Jacobs' Epic Masterpiece
Star Spangled To Death
Experimental film great Ken Jacobs' legendary and monumental film Star
Spangled To Death (1957/59-2003, 6 1/2 hrs., 16mm film transferred to video)
is a provocative spring-cleaning of the mind, an autopsy of the banal, and
ultimately a deeply affecting extended meditation on freedom vs. lemming
conformity. Seen in various "reasonable" versions for almost 50 years, it
is now complete. SSTD centers on performer and filmmaker Jack Smith (some
years before Flaming Creatures) and luckless Jerry Sims. Their madcap
antics are positioned as an uninhibited and ecstatic way of life, even when
tinged by life's miseries, as contrasted to found-footage examples of social
and political control and constraint. Thus we are shown science experiments
in pursuit of the quantification and mechanics of love, images from
"anthropological" films from the openly racist 1930's, animated cartoons
from hell, and political wisdom from the likes of Richard Nixon, Nelson
Rockefeller, and Ronald Reagan, with reference to George W. Bush as The
Twentieth Hijacker. SSTD is a diatribe with a sense of humor, an
avant-garde opus accessible to all; a film of its time and a film for all
times. Ken Jacobs writes: "Star Spangled To Death is an epic film costing
hundreds of dollars! An antic collage combining found-films with my own
more-or-less staged filming (I once said directing Jack and Jerry was like
giving instructions to the wind). It is a social critique picturing a stolen
and dangerously sold out America, allowing examples of popular culture to
self-indict. Race and religion and monopolization of wealth and the
purposeful dumbing down of citizens and addiction to war become props for
clowning. In whimsy we trusted." Admission: Separate $7 admission each
night; no member discounted or free admissions may be used for this special
screening.
Saturday, March 13 -- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Third Party: Political Alternatives in the Age of Duopoly
Just in time for the Illinois Primary next week! This new documentary takes
a look at third party movements in the U.S. over the last century and at the
current state of alternative political movements. Third Party (2003, 105
mins., video), directed by Michael Burns, investigates the historical
evolution of third parties and provides a comprehensive survey of the major
movements active today. Interviews with leaders in the Libertarian, Green,
Reform, Labor, Communist, Socialist, Working Families, and Workers World
Parties are presented in conjunction with commentary from activists and
academics, including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ronnie Dugger, and Francis
Fox Piven. Third Party explores the difficulties faced by and the potential
of these often grassroots movements. "This documentary provides important
insight into our political system. It should inspire fresh thinking about
alternatives which offer hope for true democracy in our country." (Howard
Zinn)
Saturday, March 20 -- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Open Screening
Come one and all with your film and video in hand. We'll show it all, from
that 50 year old home movie you just found in the attic to the latest Flash
animation. Acceptable formats: 16mm, Super-8mm, DVD, Mini-DV, and VHS.
Suggested maximum length per person is 15 minutes, but we'll try to show
everything, no matter how long. Admission is free.
Saturday, March 27 -- 7:00pm Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.)
Speaking Of...: Recent Video by Jacqueline Goss
Jacqueline Goss in Person!
Videomaker Jacqueline Goss' recent work has been an extended and fascinating
exploration of language and learning, cognition and perception, linguistics
and signs, the hows and whys of understanding the world around us. Whether
it is through experimental narrative or digital animation, Goss investigates
what could easily be very dry material with intelligence, humor, and a
strong visual wit. How To Fix the World (2004, 25 mins.): Based on Soviet
cognitive scientist AR Luria's research on Central Asian collective farms in
the 1930's, Goss's animation maps out the cultural conflicts between
speaking and writing, drawing and photography, and Soviet Socialism and
Islam. There There Square (2002, 14 mins.): The desire to own and name land
and the pleasures of seeing from a distance color this personal survey of
the history of mapmaking in the New World. There There Square takes a close
look at the gestures of travelers, mapmakers, and saboteurs that determine
how we read - and live within - the lines that define the United States. The
100th Undone (2001, 9 mins.): A love letter of sorts, The 100th Undone
considers the individual in the age of biotechnical reproduction. Using
outdated film and video tools, Goss makes a personalized pre-history for
future human clones. So To Speak (2000, 21 mins.): A girl and her teacher
learn to use the fixtures of speech. As they move deeper into domestic
space, their relative positions shift accordingly. Drawing from writings by
and about Helen Keller, Genie the "wild child" and New Zealand author Janet
Frame, So To Speak is structured as a three-part tour of the house and
grounds of language.
Unless otherwise indicated, all screenings are $7.00 general and $3.00
Chicago Filmmakers members.
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.