introduced by program curator Michael Robinson
In turns enthralling, disturbing and elegiac, this collection of recent American film and video highlights experimental works that express a loss of agency, either personal or collective, as related to the moral freeze of today's socio-political climate. Through poetic engagements with their mediums, these artists conjure analyses of control without use of standard documentary modes, but through the reassessment and rearrangement of cinema's aesthetics themselves. Thus, the phenomena of distance and disenfranchisement are evoked through a beautifully subtle dismantling of our cultures' most prevalent language of seduction, entertainment and control. Featuring work by Stephanie Barber, Jacqueline Goss, Rebecca Meyers, Shana Moulton, Julie Murray, Luther Price, and Ben Russell. Various formats.
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THINGS WE WANT TO SEE
Rebecca Meyers, 6:00, 16mm, 2004
An introspective work that obliquely measures the fragility of life against boundless forces of nature, such as Alaskan ice floes, the Aurora Borealis and magnetic storms. (Mark Webber, London Film Festival) -
HOW TO FIX THE WORLD
Jacqueline Goss, 28:00, video, 2004
Adapted from psychologist A.R. Luria's research in Uzbekistan in the 1930s, How to Fix the World brings to life Luria's conversations with Central Asian farmers learning how to read and write under the unfamiliar principles of Socialism. At once conflicting, humorous, and revelatory, these conversations between Luria and his "subjects" illustrate an attempt by one culture to transform another in the name of education and modernization. (JG) -
TOTAL POWER: DEAD DEAD DEAD
Stephanie Barber, 3:00, 16mm, 2005
The film is needy and demands you… is thinking of war and impressionism, death and love… is again at war and wonders at your sincerity. And is perverse. (SB) -
BLACK AND WHITE TRYPPS NUMBER THREE
Ben Russell, 12:00, 35mm, 2007
The third part in a series of films dealing with naturally derived psychedelia. Shot during a performance by Rhode Island noise band, Lighting Bolt, this film documents the transformation of a rock audience's collective freak-out into a trance ritual of the highest spiritual order. (BR) -
I BEGAN TO WISH
Julie Murray, 5:00, 16mm, 2003
The sea sucks the seed back into the ocean, the flowers fold like umbrellas, shoots recoil into hiding, in seeds that shrink. The plants accelerate their tremble and wobble and glass unbreaks all around them. Strawberries blanch and tomatoes grow pale. The father, leering, holds forth a flower and suddenly his smile fades to awful seriousness. In an odd concentrated ritual the father and son carefully tip over all the flower pots, laying the plants to rest and it is in this end, around the time he figures the flowers are talking to him, that the son wishes his father had killed him. (JM) -
WHISPERING PINES #'s 6-8
Shana Moulton, 18:00, 2006
Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Moulton plays a character whose interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew. As her protagonist navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny. (Electronic Arts Intermix) -
DIPPING SAUSE
Luther Price, 10:00, 16mm, 2005
Rube Goldberg mechanics triumph over the human spirit. (Patrick Friel)
2003-2007, color, approx. 1 hour 20 minutes, USA