Confronting Paradise: New Film and Video from CalArts

From: Vera Brunner-Sung (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Jun 29 2007 - 00:18:32 PDT


Dear Frameworkers,

On Sunday July 8, at 8 PM, I will be presenting a screening of brand
new work from CalArts MFA students and recent graduates at The Tank
in New York City. The program will travel to Chicago in the fall. I
hope some of you will be able to make it!

Details and press release are below.

Best,

Vera Brunner-Sung
Los Angeles

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Confronting Paradise: New Film and Video from CalArts
When: 8 pm Sunday, July 8, 2007

Where: The Tank 279 Church Street, New York, NY

Tickets: $7

Valencia, California, June 18, 2007—The Tank is pleased to present
Confronting Paradise, a program of short films and videos from
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Last summer, The Museum
of Modern Art screened Tomorrowland: CalArts in Moving Pictures – a
30-year retrospective of student work from CalArts. Confronting
Paradise picks up where Tomorrowland ended, with new 16mm, super-8
and video work that challenges the bounds of contemporary American
film and video culture.

The CalArts film and video program “has consistently produced work
that is at once intimate, inventive, and technically sophisticated,"
noted Tomorrowland's curator Joshua Siegel. The 14 current students
and recent graduates of CalArts’ MFA program featured in Confronting
Paradise continue to forge new creative pathways. “The work ranges
from observational and essay-based documentary to abstract narrative
forms," said co-programmer Vera Brunner-Sung. "Above all, it is
defined by its persistent level of inquiry into the world, and
uniquely personal vision."

Films in the program:

Juan’s Yard (Val Verde, 91384)
Aleigh Lewis
2007, 8:00, mini-dv
An observation of three goats whose spontaneity and naughtiness are
rivaled only by the neighborhood children who come to heckle and
tease them. The goat's owner, Juan Mendez, raises them to maintain a
connection to his land and food despite his suburban surroundings in
Southern California.

Recordando el Ayer
Alexandra Cuesta
2007, 9:00, 16mm
An exploration of memory and identity through textures of everyday
life in a portrait of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, home to a
large Latin American population.

Wayward Pilgrims
Taylor Greeson & Seth Stewart
2007, 6:30, super-8/dvcam
What begins as a short documentary about a polygamous Mormon
Fundamentalist community soon meanders unexpectedly as caprice,
uncertainty, and commercialism force the two young filmmakers to
reexamine their intentions and the uncharted territory of their own
relationship.

Garden City
Vera Brunner-Sung
2007, 13:30, 16mm
To what extent can we control the lived environment, and how does
this impact our lives? A letter recounts a journey from American
suburbia to a foreign city, becoming a meditation on growth and
development that suggests all landscapes are human.

AM/PM
Brigid McCaffrey
2007, 9:00, 16mm/mini-dv
Off hours spent on the western frontier, a young Sikh immigrant lays
out his choices.

Naoko is Trying to Teach Me How to Make “Tonkatsu” in 1 Minute
Sompot Chidgasornpongse
2006, 1:00, mini-dv
Naoko is trying to teach me how to make "Tonkatsu" in 1 minute.

Hallway #2
Cristina Hortiguela
2006, 3:30, mini-dv
An exploration manipulating different layers, dynamics of movement
and changes of speed.

Footnotes to a House of Love
Laida Lertxundi
2007, 13:00, 16mm
A series of minimally arranged scenes in the California desert in
which there is a constant play between sound and image, on frame off
frame. There is an effort to create the space of a story, without a
story, partly by the use of natural/diegetic sound.

Naomi & Irving
Laura Bouza
2007, 4:00, 16mm/mini-dv, BW
Naomi and Irving share their routines.

Salt Lick
Michelle Dean
2007, 1:00, 16mm/mini-dv
A man, a deer head, and a motel room.

Emperor
Thorbjorg Jonsdottir
2007, 17:00, 16mm/mini-dv, BW
A short film about the life of Joshua Norton, a failed San Francisco
businessman who, in the mid-19th century, declared himself Emperor of
the United States and Protector of Mexico.

Speech Memory
Caroline Key
2007, 23:00, 16mm
Father and daughter discuss the lives of past generations, and in
doing so, attempt to reach some common understanding on the shifting
complexities of history, identity, and memory.

TRT 108:30

Organized by CalArts students Vera Brunner-Sung (MFA ’08) and Pacho
Velez (MFA ’09). For information about California Institute of the
Arts School of Film/Video, please see: www.calarts.edu/schools/film.

For more information about The Tank, please visit: www.thetanknyc.org

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