From: Weekly Listing (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Apr 05 2008 - 09:57:31 PDT
Part 2 of 3: This week [April 5 - 13, 2008] in avant garde cinema
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2008
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4/9
Nashville, Indiana: Bearded Child Film Festival
http://myspace.com/beardedchildfilmfest
7pm, Lotus Petal, 75 S. Jefferson St.
BEARDED CHILD FILM TOUR
A selection of underground and experimental short films from the Bearded
Child Film Festival.
4/9
San Francisco, California: SFAI Film Salon
7:30pm, SFAI, Studio 8, 800 Chestnut Street
SFAI FILM SALON: FLAT IS BEAUTIFUL
Sadie Benning's confrontational and highly personal works impart an edgy
playfulness with the often painful experiences of growing up outside of
societal norms. In Flat is Beautiful Benning integrates animation, film
and pixelvision into a live action cartoon to explore the inner and
external experiences of an androgynous eleven year old girl. Film loops
and light show liquids were processed through a video effects bank and
then filmed to create something entirely different in Scott Bartlett's
Off/On, an early meeting of film and video that delves into a psychic
and psychedelic landscape. Program to Include: Flat is Beautiful, Sadie
Benning, 1998, 52 min. (on video) Off/On, Scott Bartlett, 1968, 9 min.
16mm For more information contact: email suppressed or
(address suppressed) The SFAI Film Salon is supported by the SFAI
Student Union and Legion of Graduate Students (LOGS)
4/9
San Francisco, California: Artists Television Access
http://www.atasite.org/
8pm, 992 valencia st
THIS SHALL BE A SIGN BY JAMES T. HONG
THIS SHALL BE A SIGN by James T. Hong $8.00 The Roof by Kamal Aljafari »
More images Local San Francisco artist James T. Hong presents THIS SHALL
BE A SIGN (2007) and visiting Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari
presents The Roof (2006). While each of these works takes up the
contemporary moment in Palestine/Israel, they do so in radically
different ways, both formally and thematically. Hong's half-hour video
is an experimental collage that includes his own observational footage
and various media reports of the recent conflict over the reconstruction
of an entrance ramp to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem.
Representations of this conflict, and some of those other conflicts
metonymically and metaphorically associated with it — from land rights
to the battle of civilizations to Armageddon — form the core of Hong's
larger exploration of how information, beliefs, and truths are
manufactured, embellished, circulated. Hong describes the piece as: "an
interpretation of the conflict over the reconstruction of a ramp in
Jerusalem, of the struggle for sovereignty over a holy site, and of the
power of technology as the ubiquitous medium of communication and
information in the age of multinational capitalism and the dominion of
the English language." Shot while he was briefly in Israel to present an
earlier film, THIS SHALL BE A SIGN is the work of a consummate outsider
who takes us on an outsider's journey where we must navigate the
carefully crafted inhuman and all-too-human languages and rhetoric of a
mass of competing, conflicting media. (32 mins, in English, Arabic, and
Hebrew with English subtitles throughout, color, beta) Kamal Aljafari's
The Roof, on the other hand, is a work literally "from the interior"
—from and about a Palestinian family that circumstances forced to stay
in the area that is now part of the state of Israel. A loosely
structured, visually eloquent, and politically understated cinematic
essay, The Roof explores physical and psychic senses of place in the
context of Aljafari's family history. He returns to and films his
parents' and grandmother's homes in Ramleh and Jaffa, now part of
Israel, and portrays moments of three generations' lives indelibly
marked by the events of 1948. Using elegant cinematography, unhurried
rhythms, and fragmented narrative, Aljafari conveys how the region's
space, time, history — as well as the forms of individual and collective
experience they generate — have been molded by politics and Israeli
institutionalized neglect. The roof of Aljafari's title is an absent
one, on the unfinished house where his family has lived since their
resettlement in 1948, and it functions as a place of waiting, literal
and figurative, marked by constant deferral. French critic and curator
Jean-Pierre Rehm has called the film "as much a stylistic as a political
manifesto" that "reveals not so much the meaning of an absent roof, but
the architecture of identity, place, and present pasts." (61 mins, in
Arabic, Hebrew and English with English subtitles, color, beta)
4/9
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
7:00 PM, Joseph Workman Theatre, 1001 Queen Street West at Ossington
HAIL THE NEW PURITAN BY CHARLES ATLAS
Neither documentary nor fantasy but a dynamic hybrid of the two, the
seminal videodance Hail the New Puritan juxtaposes the ballet-based but
punk-fueled choreographies of Scottish dance sensation Michael Clark
with the fabulous banalities of the 80s London scene that spawned him.
Atlas' simulated day-in-the-life approach shows Clark and his dancers
rehearsing, performing and marking time between those two modalities. It
also allows for a dizzying array of colourful cameos from the likes of
performance artist Leigh Bowery, The Fall's Mark E. Smith, artist
Grayson Perry and a multitude of London scenesters. It is an
unsentimental yet loving glimpse at a sub-cultural landscape that no
longer exists, yet still remains inspirational to contemporary artists
in many media. Atlas' heady blend of artifice, physicality and
psychoanalytical speculation also pays solid tribute to the
controversial but very real genius of Clark who was 23 when the film was
shot. Clark's inventive dances fluidly interweave the narrative with
varying degrees of theatricality; at times the staginess is wittily
flamboyant; at others the choreography is as simple as getting undressed
for bed after a night in the clubs. Atlas frames both with considerable
sensitivity and an eye for the beautiful fusing of youth, life and art.
This screening marks the Canadian premiere of Hail the New Puritan,
which was re-mastered to be a centerpiece of the Tate Modern's
retrospective of Atlas' work in 2006. Following the screening, curators
Kathleen M. Smith from Moving Pictures and Ben Portis from Pleasure Dome
will join Charles Atlas on-stage for a free-ranging discussion of media
and performance. Charles Atlas is one of the premier interpreters of
dance, theater and performance on video. He has transformed this genre
into an original new form, a provocative and ironic collusion of
narrative and fictional modes with performance documentary. In his
vibrant, inventive film and video pastiches of narrative performance, he
has collaborated with such international performers as Michael Clark,
Leigh Bowery, John Kelly, Diamanda Galas, Marina Abramovic, Karole
Armitage and Bill Irwin. Throughout his career, Atlas has also been
involved in live performance work as director and also as designer of
sets, costumes, lighting and mixed media presentations, and has
exhibited several large-scale gallery installations works. Recently, he
has collaborated with musicians Christian Fennesz and Antony and the
Johnsons on live performance events. For Atlas, the theatricality of
dance and performance is a point of inquiry into artifice, fiction and
reality. His groundbreaking early works, including Blue Studio: Five
Segments (1975-76), evolved from a unique collaboration with Merce
Cunningham, for whose dance company he was filmmaker-in-residence from
1978 to 1983. Atlas has also created several portraits of the late
performance artist/fashion icon Leigh Bowery: the video installation
Teach (1998), the short film Ms. Peanut Visits New York (1999), and the
documentary feature The Legend of Leigh Bowery (2002). Atlas' films and
videotapes have been exhibited around the world, at festivals and
institutions including the Cinematheque Francaise, the Musee d'Art
Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris;
The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam; Participant, Inc., New York and Tate Modern, London. He is
the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation
Fellowship and three Bessie Awards, as well as grants from the Jerome
Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and was recently
presented with the prestigious John Cage award, by the Foundation for
Contemporary Arts, 2006. Atlas lives in New York.
4/9
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
10:00 PM, The Royal, 608 College Street
LIVE IMAGES 3: THE VALERIE PROJECT
Following sold-out shows in New York, Philadelphia and London, The
Valerie Project brings its haunting sounds and dreamy visuals to Toronto
in a special co-presentation with Cinematheque Ontario and Wavelength
Music Arts Projects. A classic of Czech New Wave cinema, Jaromil Jireš's
surrealist fantasy film, Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders (1970) receives
a new soundtrack composed and performed live by 10 musicians, including
members from the acclaimed Philadelphia psych folk band, Espers. Set in
an undetermined Transylvanian setting, with a Pre-Raphaelite protagonist
in the throes of sexual awakening, Valerie revels in an innocence-lost
decadence–or a polysexual paradise regained in which "virtually every
shot is a knockout" (Jonathan Rosenbaum). The alternate, lusciously
chimerical soundtrack will be performed during the projection of a 35mm
archival print imported from the Czech Republic especially for this
one-night-only event. –Andréa Picard, Cinematheque Ontario Alongside
Milos Forman and Vera Chytilova, Jaromil Jireš (1935—2001) was one of
the first directors associated with the Czech New Wave. Valerie and Her
Week of Wonders, based on a novel by Vítězslav Nezval, was in a
sense Jireš' last film produced in the true spirit of the New Wave, as
the Soviet invasion and subsequent political changes that took place
throughout the 1970s prohibited such work from getting made. Spearheaded
by Greg Weeks (Espers, Grass), Margie Wienk (Fern Knight) and Brooke
Sietinsons (Espers, Grass), The Valerie Project includes harpist Mary
Lattimore, cellist Helena Espvall (Espers), Vocalist Tara Burke
(Fursaxa), bassist/percussionist Jesse Sparhawk (Fern Knight,
Timesbold), flautist/keyboardist Jessica Weeks (Woodwose, Grass),
enigmatic electronicist Charles Cohen and percussionist Jim Ayre (Fern
Knight, Rake.). The Valerie Project started with a simple concept: that
of recontextualising the filmic meaning and impact of a particular work
through the substitution of a newly composed soundtrack. Valerie And Her
Week Of Wonders is the first film in the project series.
4/9
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
4:00 PM, Gladstone Hotel Art Bar, 1214 Queen Street West
TALK TO THE PIE #3: EXPANDING PROJECTIONS
Greg Pope, Jennifer Reeves, and Redmond Entwistle come together to
discuss their work as it exists outside of the bounds of the usual
cinema experience. Moderated by Jacob Korczynski.
4/9
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
4:00 PM, Gladstone Hotel Art Bar, 1214 Queen Street West
TALK TO THE PIE #4: TRANSLATIONS/TRADUçõES
Curators Emelie Chhangur and Daniela Castro are joined by Brazilian
artists Giselle Beiguelman and Vera Bighetti to talk about new media and
visual art practice and their exhibition at WARC Gallery.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2008
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4/10
Chicago, Illinois: Conversations at the Edge
http://myspace.com/conversationsattheedge
6 pm, 164 N. State St.
SPECIAL SNEAK PEAK: MOCK UP ON MU WITH FILMMAKER CRAIG BALDWIN IN PERSON!
Legendary for his rapid-fire found-footage collage films, underground
filmmaker Craig Baldwin returns to the Midwest with a special sneak
preview of his latest feature, Mock Up on Mu. A radically hybridized
pulp-serial-spy-science-fiction-western-horror mash-up, Mu recounts the
intertwined histories of Jack Parsons (inventor of solid-rocket fuel,
founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Aleister Crowley acolyte),
Marjorie Cameron (artist, beatnik, occultist) and L. Ron Hubbard
(pulp-fiction writer, founder of Scientology). Baldwin promiscuously
intercuts his own live-action desert footage with archival stock and
other found material to weave a dense tale of mind-control, subterranean
intrigue, scientific speculation, and the militarization of space.
(2008, Craig Baldwin, USA, 16mm on Beta SP, 115 min.)
4/10
San Francisco, California: San Francisco Cinematheque
http://www.sfcinematheque.org
8:00 pm, 992 Valencia St/ATA
LIVE CINEMA: A CONTEMPORARY READER—BOOK RELEASE PARTY!
Presented by book editor Thomas Beard. Sue Costabile, Animal Charm and
members of Wet Gate and Cine Pimps In Person. Tonight we celebrate the
release of Cinematograph Seven—Live Cinema: A Contemporary Reader,
edited by Thomas Beard, with a blowout event on the verge of raucous
cinematic madness. Join us for the rhythmic analog anomalies of
Refraction ("performative cinema with motion film and sound delivered by
mechanical means"), presented by collective members of Wet Gate and Cine
Pimps; the patchwork performance of Sue Costabile, aka SUE.C, which
combines a crafty amalgam of photography, watercolor, hand-made paper,
fabrics and drawing into a dark and moody textural milieu; and the
convulsive vintage video-scape mash-ups of SoCal duo Animal Charm, as we
commemorate this elated occasion. Come for the "live cinema" delirium
and flip through the pages of our publication of honor. This fine
volume, available tonight includes documentation of Brian Frye in
conversation with Guy Sherwin, Lia Gangitano on Luther Price's
performance films, Ed Halter in conversation with Sandra Gibson and Luis
Recoder, program notes by Bruce McClure with annotations by Tess
Takahashi, and Mike Plante on Animal Charm, as well as other essays and
ephemera from Cory Arcangel, Zoe Beloff, silt, and Ian White.
4/10
Springfield, MO: Bearded Child Film Festival
http://myspace.com/beardedchildfilmfest
9:15pm, Moxie Cinema
BEARDED CHILD FILM TOUR
A selection of underground and experimental short films from the Bearded
child Film Festival.
4/10
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
7:30 PM, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queen's Quay
LIVE IMAGES 4: EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY BY DANIEL BARROW
Daniel Barrow's newest "manual animation" combines overhead projection
with video, music, and live narration to tell the story of a garbage man
with a vision to create an independent phone book chronicling the lives
of each person in his city. In the late hours of the night, he sifts
through garbage, collecting personal information and then traces
pictures of each citizen through the windows of their homes as they
sleep. What he doesn't yet realize is that a deranged killer is trailing
him, murdering each citizen he includes in his book, thus rendering his
cataloguing efforts obsolete. Presented in partnership with Harbourfront
Centre's World Stage. NOTE: Tickets for Daniel Barrow's performance
Everytime I See Your Picture I Cry are now available from Harbourfront
Centre's Box Office: www.harbourfrontcentre.com or 416.973.4000. Daniel
Barrow is a Winnipeg-based media artist, working in performance, video
and installation. He has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad.
Recently, Barrow has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los
Angeles), New Langton Arts (San Francisco), and the Contemporary Art
Gallery (Vancouver). Since 1993, Barrow has used an overhead projector
to relay ideas and short narratives. Specifically, he creates and adapts
comic book narratives to a "manual" form of animation by projecting,
layering and manipulating drawings on mylar transparencies. Barrow
variously refers to this practice as "graphic performance, live
illustration, or manual animation."
4/10
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
4:00 PM, Gladstone Hotel Art Bar, 1214 Queen Street West
TALK TO THE PIE #5: DOCUMENTARY UNCERTAINTIES
German artist Hito Steyerl in conversation with Stephen Andrews, John
Greyson and Werner Ruzicka discussing the intersection of documentary
practice and contemporary art. Moderated by Sharon Hayashi.
4/10
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
9:30 PM, Joseph Workman Theatre, 1001 Queen Street West at Ossington
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS PROGRAM 7: THE NOBILITY INHERENT IN STRUGGLES THAT
CANNOT BE WON
A trio of landscape-focused films that consider past and present utopian
visions of the future. The work oscillates between spaces of failure and
victory—from a remote town in Siberia recovering from atomic testing
during the Cold War, to the abandoned architectural spaces of World's
Fair sites, to the quiet serenity of rural farm living. On the Third
Planet From the Sun by Pavel Medvedev [Russia, 2006, 35mm, 31 min] In
the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia, debris left behind by H-bomb
testing some half a century earlier is scattered throughout the
landscape. The local population collects various bits of metal and
electronic waste to resell or use in their day-to-day life. Victory Over
the Sun by Michael Robinson [USA, 2007, 16mm, 13 min] In the 1913
Russian Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun, the sun is torn from the
sky and entombed in a concrete box, a metaphor for the early 20th
century notion of "modern man" rejecting the old and embracing
technological and industrial innovation. Considering these notions of
forward thinking utopianism, Robinson's film is a dizzying collision of
Ayn Rand, Axl Rose and Skeletor amidst a landscape study of structures
at World's Fair sites. Ah, Liberty! by Ben Rivers [UK, 2008, 16mm
cinemascope, 20 min] Ben Rivers' hand processed, intimate portraits of
rural locales in Scotland serve as documents of and poetic homages to
the solitude and resilience of life in the country. Shot in black and
white, 16mm cinemascope, Ah, Liberty! focuses on a group of kids at play
on a farm: herding horses, riding homemade carts, and climbing piles of
debris and scrap.
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FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2008
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4/11
Albuquerque, New Mexico:
http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org
6 pm, Southwest Film Center, University of New Mexico
OSKAR FISCHINGER RETROSPECTIVE: OPTICAL POETRY
Program features 35mm prints of Fischinger's classic Visual Music films,
including Allegretto (2 versions), Composition in Blue, Motion Painting
No. 1, Study No. 6, Study No. 7, Muratti Greift Ein, Radio Dynamics,
Kreise, American March, Spirals, Spiritual Constructions, Walking from
Munich to Berlin and many more. Features prints preserved by Academy
Film Archive, Center for Visual Music and Fischinger Archive, with the
support of Film Foundation, Sony, and Cinematheque quebecoise. CVM
presents this program in association with Southwest Film Center and The
Fischinger Archive. Tickets: $5 general admission, $3 students, $4
faculty/staff, available at box office before screening.
4/11
Harrison, Arkansas: Bearded Child Film Festival
http://myspace.com/beardedchildfilmfest
7:30 pm, North Arkansas College, Little Theatre
BEARDED CHILD FILM TOUR
A selection of underground and experimental short films from the Bearded
Child Film Festival.
4/11
Kansas City, Missouri: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
http://www.nelson-atkins.org
7:00 p.m., 4525 Oak Street
ELECTROMEDIASCOPE
The Early Films, Peter Greenaway (UK), 16mm films shown on DVD.
Intervals, 1969, 6 min. Windows, 1974, 4 min. Dear Phone, 1976, 17 min.
H Is for House, 1976, 9 min. A Walk Through H: The Re-Incarnation of an
Ornithologist, 1978, 41 min. Water Wrackets, 1978, 11 min.
4/11
London, England: Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/film
19:00, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
PARADISE NOW! ESSENTIAL FRENCH AVANT-GARDE CINEMA, 1890–2008
Friday 11 April, 19.00 Programme 9: Burlesque The thought-provoking
humour of burlesque has always been a major factor in cinematic
invention. Presenting films from the birth of cinema to the 21st
century, this night includes work by the pioneering Lumière brothers,
Fluxus icon Ben, Marcel Duchamp's hypnotic masterpiece, Anémic Cinema,
and Abel Gance's fantastical, farcical ode to the magic and power of
cinema starring Max Linder, Help! Louis Lumière, Démolition d'un mur
(The Falling Wall), 1896, 2', 35mm Louis Lumière, Écriture à l'envers,
1896, 1', 35mm Louis Lumière, Le squelette joyeux, 1897, 1', 35mm Abel
Gance et Max Linder, Au secours!, 1923, 40', 35mm Marcel Duchamp, Anemic
Cinema, 1927, 7', 35 mm Gérard Courant, Cinématon n° 288 : Jean-Pierre
Bouyxou, France, 1983, 3'55, Super 8 Ben, Actions de rue de Ben,
1960-1972, 25', video Christelle Lheureux, Bingo Show, 2003, 8', video
Programme duration 88 minutes Don't miss 7 weekends of the best French
avant-garde cinema, including an unprecedented selection of over 80
pioneering experimental films from the last hundred years, including
classics, as well as marvellous surprises, from psychedelia to erotica,
via music videos and radical political filmmaking. The theme of each
screening is inspired by manifestos written by celebrated DADA
provocateurs Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara, and is guaranteed to make
you look at the French avant-garde in a new light. It also marks the
40th anniversary of the May 1968 protest movements that sparked a
revolutionary shift which resounds today. The series demonstrates the
political vitality and formal diversity of the French avant-garde from
the beginnings of cinema to the present day. The series includes
pioneering films by Christian Boltanski, Alberto Cavalcanti, Marcel
Duchamp, Jean Epstein, Gérard Fromanger, Philippe Garrel, Jean-Luc
Godard, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Maria Klonaris & Katerina
Thomadaki, Ange Leccia, Maurice Lemaître, Rose Lowder, Louis Lumière,
Étienne-Jules Marey, Chris Marker, Georges Méliès, László Moholy-Nagy,
Pierre Molinier, Marylène Negro, Man Ray, Carole Roussopoulos,
Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Ben Vautier, René Vautier and many
more. Curated by Nicole Brenez, Michael Temple, Michael Witt, Pierre
d'Amerval and Laurent Mannoni in association with Tate Modern and La
Cinémathèque française.
4/11
San Francisco, California: Artists Television Access
http://www.atasite.org/
8pm, 992 Valencia St
GLOBAL UNDERGROUNDS: 700IS, ICELANDIC EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL
In collaboration with international institutions, organizations and
filmmakers, Artists Television Access presents Global Undergrounds, a
film and video series that fosters awareness and appreciation of the
issues and aesthetics of our global diversity. This month, as part of an
ongoing cinematic and cultural exchange between ATA and 700IS
Reindeerland, Global Undergrounds presents a selection of films from the
2007 700IS Festival. 700IS is the only international experimental film &
video festival in East Iceland and takes place in the beginning of April
every year. More info: http://www.700.is/ The 2nd ATA Film and Video
Festival will be screened at the Hofn Culture Centre in Egilstadir, on
April 4, as part of their 2008 festival edition.
4/11
San Francisco, California: Artists Television Access
http://www.atasite.org/
8 pm, 992 valencia st at 21 st
GLOBAL UNDERGROUNDS
Friday, April 11, 2008. 8PM $6 GLOBAL UNDERGROUNDS 700IS: Icelandic
Experimental film and video festival Anna by Helena Stefánsdóttir Coffee
& Milk by Mary Magsamen & Stephan Hillerbrand A group of friends by Ruud
Vrugt Untitled by Ine Boermans Fokus Gabriela Löffel Switzerland-5 min,
2003 In "fokus" the viewer observes the intense expressions and
reactions of four women responding to the power of a gun. During the
impressive recoil of the weapon, the women elicit expressions mixed with
part-fear part-triumph. Gabriela Löffel poses with "fokus" the question
of how weapons are represented in the media and how these
representations impact our own perceptions via the gender specificity of
such scenes. Book Marta Daeuble Czech-2 min, 2003 This stop motion
animation unravels the mysteries of the written page when the book is
brought to life, only to reveal the ever lasting search for love and
self identity. Drawing a strong parallel with the direction of our lives
it shows how we can feel trapped by the rules of societies. Honey Nynke
Deinema Holland-1:05 min, 2003 A mouth spitting honey, and doing so,
altering the image. http://www.nynkedeinema.nl/ Guilty by Nature Joseph
Barnett UK-9:20 min, 2006 Set on a militant plant nursery, Guilty By
nature follows the life cycle of a wild and vigorous shrub; exploring
ideas of individuality & persecution. The film is shot with extreme
close-ups, varied frame rates and an exaggerated soundscape. Piiskaa
Nina Lassila Finland-1:13 min, 2005 In Piiskaa! / Beat it! we see a
woman cleaning a carpet. Though clearly she is beating the carpet
up...is she angry and why? Immortal Stories Rosie Pedlow and Roderick
Mills UK-5 min, 2006 Fragmented vignettes weave and divide in a film
that plays with Hollywood's portrayal of cancer. Anna Helena
Stefánsdóttir Icelandic-12:48 min, 2007 Icelandic film of the festival
Anna has carefully laid a coffee table for two. Sitting at the table,
checking if all is ready, she realizes that she has no sugar. Her
excitement to invite her neighbour Adam over, turns into a concern; she
needs to go to the grocery store. Her concern is due to the fact that
she has a serious tourette's syndrome; she imitates other people's
movements. Coffee & Milk Mary Magsamen USA-2:45 min, 2005 Coffee & Milk
is an experimental video that explores communication and sexuality
through the metaphor of everyday items, coffee, milk and children's
music. In Coffee & Milk our lives are transformed into something
cinematic and larger than life. Images of Stephan blowing milk into
coffee and Mary blowing coffee into milk are given an unexpected point
of view because the camera is placed underneath us. The images reference
both galactic and microscopic views of the world. HOT AIR: Keep Yourself
Alive Angela Ellsworth USA-4:28 min, 2006 Film of the festival 2007 Hot
Air is Tania Katan's one-woman all boy band. No amps, no guitars, no
breasts, no ovaries, just explosive silence. Stripped down and ready to
rock, Hot Air is one woman with no girl parts and all the bravado of an
entire boy band! She moves to the beat of Queen "Keep Yourself Alive" by
giving everything she has to breathe life into Hot Air.
http://aellsworth.com/index.html Untitled Ine Boermans Holland-4 min,
2005 Within the long history of art the nude female body is usually
being exposed as a symbol wihout her own feelings or emotions. The
exposed woman is almost always of less importance. Nowadays the ways of
looking at the female nude has not changed a lot. The intention of my
work is to give the female nude the possibility to express her feelings
of present discomfort and vulnerability. http://www.ineboermans.nl/ A
group of friends Ruud Vrugt Holland-1:40 min, 2006 He only had one wish
in his live: to belong to a group. He looks back on his live with
amazement and sadness. Although he is still longing for the things that
never came true, he is also curious to what the future will bring.
4/11
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
11:00 PM, Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West
NO CUTS, NO SPLICES, SELECTIONS FROM ONE TAKE SUPER 8
The original One Take Super 8 Event took place in Regina, Saskatchewan
in 2000 with 20 filmmakers each making a film. Using only a single
cartridge of super 8, each film was shot, processed, and projected
unaltered with the filmmaker never getting a chance to see their work
until the premiere. With a mandate to create new films and filmmakers
(and keep super 8 alive), over 250 films have been created for One Take
Super 8 Events held in Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Syracuse
(NY), and Fort Lauderdale (FL). This program features a broad selection
of work produced for these events over the past seven years. Not focused
on a single theme or objective, they are great examples of in-camera
editing, and creative experimentation using only a super 8 camera and 50
feet of film. Participants of these events vary from novice to
established filmmakers, from dancers to librarians. The resulting films
are as diverse as their creators, exploring every genre, form, style and
tone. Many of the films have gone on to screen worldwide at independent
film festivals, and have inspired another generation of super 8
filmmakers. All of the work shown in this program will be projected on
the original medium of super 8. The program includes work byJoshua
Stanton, Mike Rollo & Amber Goodwyn, Terryll Loffler, Brett Kashmere,
Andrea von Wichert & Arlea Ashcroft, Daïchi Saïto, Katherine Skelton,
Jaimz Asmundson, Solomon Nagler, Jessie Dishaw, Mike Maryniuk, Shawn
Fulton, Vanda Schmockel, Alex Rogalski, Danielle Sturk, Robert Daniel
Pytlyk, Alexandre Larose and David Lopan. Alex Rogalski is a programmer
and super 8 filmmaker who was born in Melville, Saskatchewan and began
filmmaking in Regina. His Super 8 camera of choice is the Minolta XL401
and he has established a great friendship with his Elmo ST-600
projector. Alex is a programmer for the Toronto International Film
Festival.
4/11
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
9:30 PM, Joseph Workman Theatre, 1001 Queen Street West at Ossington
LIVE IMAGES5: CHARLES ATLAS / ALAN LICHT
Curated by Ben Portis and Kathleen Smith. Live performance has been
fundamental to Charles Atlas's art for more than 30 years. He made his
first video work, Blue Studio: Five Segments, 1975–76, with Nam June
Paik and Merce Cunningham, two giants of harnessing chance procedure to
real time creation. Atlas began in film. From 1978–83, he was
Cunningham's filmmaker-in-residence, during which he observed and
participated in the myriad avant-garde collaborative strategies for
which his dance company is renowned. In the 1980s, Atlas frequently
worked with the Television Laboratory at WNET-TV 13 in New York, which
gave independent artists free access to industrial broadcasting and the
audiences associated with that. In addition to the ways that dance
brought Atlas into contact with musicians and composers, he was also an
avatar of New York's downtown music scene. His 1989 video, Put the Blood
in the Music, captured Sonic Youth, John Zorn and Arto Lindsay's
Ambitious Lovers at a moment that the experimental underground was
issuing a forceful challenge and irrevocable change of terms to the pop
mainstream. Lately, Atlas has joyously renewed his commitment to playing
with musicians, notable among them Antony and the Johnsons and Christian
Fennesz. In Toronto, Atlas debuts a new collaboration with a fellow New
Yorker, Alan Licht. Atlas draws on all aspects of his experience in his
live video mixes. His source material consists largely of anonymous film
excerpts that loop compulsively in unrequited time frames. He portrays
repetitive figural and psychic gestures (or their prosthetic
expressions) through a combination of feeling and appearance. Atlas
deftly manipulates these stock images. Colour, contrast and combination
morph and dissolve through a cascade of techniques that hearken back not
only to the example of Paik but the other pioneers of handmade video
such as Woody and Steina Vasulka, Peter Campus and Ed Emshwhiller.
Atlas's layered, dream atmospheres can pass from sensuality to violence
in a moment. -Ben Portis, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Art
Gallery of Ontario Charles Atlas is one of the premier interpreters of
dance, theater and performance on video. He has transformed this genre
into an original new form, a provocative and ironic collusion of
narrative and fictional modes with performance documentary. Atlas' films
and videotapes have been exhibited around the world, at festivals and
institutions including the Cinematheque Francaise, the Musee d'Art
Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris;
The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam; Participant, Inc., New York and Tate Modern, London. He is
the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation
Fellowship and three Bessie Awards, as well as grants from the Jerome
Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and was recently
presented with the prestigious John Cage award, by the Foundation for
Contemporary Arts, 2006. Atlas lives in New York. Composer, guitarist
and electronic musician Alan Licht coalesces minimalism, noise and pop
into waves of feedback, drone and volume washing against the solid
footings of song elements. He too has a long involvement with creating
sound for the moving image, and vice versa. Licht last visited Toronto
in October 2007 with Text of Light, a group he co-directs with Lee
Ranaldo, performing improvised music to the films of Stan Brakhage.
4/11
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
7:00 PM, Joseph Workman Theatre, 1001 Queen Street West at Ossington
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS PROGRAM 8: THREE SPACES OF DECAY
Place, memory, and transformation. Three works that address the
emotional and political impact of home: from the found detritus salvaged
from a juvenile detention center, to the disappearing neighborhoods of
old Shanghai, to a filmmaker's visits to his family in Palestine.
Verses, by James Sansing [USA, 2006, 35mm, 4 min, silent] The moldy
pages of an old notebook, photographed one spread at a time, produce a
swirling array of Rorschach patterns that have consumed the paper. This
decaying notebook, found in an abandoned juvenile detention facility,
serves as a reminder of the psychological impact of the institution on
its inhabitants. Under Construction by Zhenchen Liu [France/China, 2007,
video, 10 min] Shanghai's old town is slowly lost under the encroaching
shadows of towering new skyscrapers. Thousands of families are pushed
out of their neighborhoods as their homes are decimated to make way for
the regeneration of a city. Liu combines photographic collage with video
footage to show the effect of planning and development on people's
lives. The Roof by Kamal Aljafari [Palestine/Germany, 2006, video, 58
min] A poetic and intimate documentary tracing the filmmaker's travels
back to his native Palestine. The Cologne-based Aljafari approaches the
severe political context within which his work is situated in ways both
subtle and universal, weaving a narrative that revolves around place and
home. Aljafari focuses much of his gaze on architecture—from half-built
& half-demolished homes in Ramle and Jaffa, to the towering new
skyscrapers of Tel Aviv, to the massive separation barrier walling off
the West Bank. The narrative is built on conversations with family and
friends considering past and present—his grandmother's memories of 1948,
a friend's aspirations of becoming a judge in Jerusalem, and the
filmmaker's own memories of being a political prisoner as a teen. These
glimpses of day-to-day living gently frame the intense emotional place
within which the filmmaker, his family, and Palestinians face as they
consider these questions of home.
4/11
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Images Festival
http://www.imagesfestival.com/
7:30 PM, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queen's Quay
LIVE IMAGES 4: EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY BY DANIEL BARROW
Please see description on 4/10/08 for more details.
(continued in next email)
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.