CURRENT SEASON
George Kuchar: HotSpell
February 23, 6:00 p.m.
Introduced by Abina Manning, Executive Director of the Video Data Bank
George Kuchar, HotSpell (2011). Courtesy the Video Data Bank.
George Kuchar became a legend with his Super 8 and 16mm melodramas from the 1950s and ‘60s, influencing artists including Andy Warhol, John Waters, and Todd Solondz. He turned to video in the mid-1980s, crafting hundreds of often diaristic videos from “the pageant that is life.” For the last quarter-century, the Video Data Bank has collected and distributed this work; it now houses the artist’s complete archive of nearly 300 videos. This evening Executive Director Abina Manning presents Kuchar’s “greatest hits,” including his last video, the remarkable and revealing Hotspell (2011).
Presented in collaboration with the Video Data Bank.
1989–2011, USA, various formats, ca. 85 minutes + discussion
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Laure Prouvost: Don’t Look Up
March 1, 6:00 p.m.
Laure Prouvost in person
Laure Prouvost, Monolog (2009). Courtesy the artist and MOT International.
The brilliantly anarchic videos of Laure Prouvost run wild with the rules of narrative and language. Prouvost’s fast-paced works often feature surreal tales jarringly interrupted by self-conscious text, unsettling imagery, or the artist herself undermining and adding new meaning to the original story. This evening Prouvost, who is also the founder and former director of Tank.tv, will present her videos alongside a selection of contemporary and historical moving image works by other artists, including John Latham and Owen Land.
1968–2012, multiple directors, France/Italy/UK/USA, various formats, ca. 90 minutes + discussion
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Tomonari Nishikawa & Small-Gauge Japan
March 8, 6:00 p.m.
Tomonari Nishikawa in person
Tomonari Nishikawa, Tokyo-Ebisu (2010). Courtesy the artist.
Working in formats ranging from Super 8 to 35mm still photographic film, Tomonari Nishikawa constructs his films through precise single-frame shooting, elaborate masking, superimposition, and in-camera editing. He transforms the elements of urban life into multilayered abstractions of light, movement, and space. This evening Nishikawa will present a selection of his own works alongside a survey of films by other contemporary Japanese filmmakers working in small-gauge formats.
2005–11, multiple directors, Japan/USA/Thailand, various formats, ca. 80 minutes + discussion
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Sara Ludy: A Space In-Between
March 15, 6:00 p.m.
Sara Ludy in person
Sara Ludy, Transom (2011). Courtesy the artist.
The work of SAIC alumna Sara Ludy (BFA 2003) spans a wide variety of formats including photography, video, animated gifs, live performance, and large-scale installations. She explores the representation of domestic interiors, suburban architecture, and landscape design in virtual and real environments. This evening Ludy presents a selection of work, including videos from her ongoing Space Portraits (2010) series; clips from her Projection Monitor (2010–ongoing) project; and exhibition footage from Wallpapers (2011–ongoing).
2010–12, USA, various formats, ca. 75 minutes + discussion
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Brent Green: Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then
March 29, 6:00 p.m. & March 31, 12:30 p.m.
Brent Green in person
Brent Green, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then (2010). Courtesy the artist.
Brent Green’s folk-punk films interweave drawing, puppets, hand-built sets, and stop-motion animation to spin tales of transformation and loss. This evening, Green presents his acclaimed animated feature Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then (2010). Based on the true story of a Kentucky hardware clerk who attempted to transform his house into an eccentric healing machine to save his dying wife from cancer, the film was shot in a full-scale model of the house Green built in his rural outdoor studio in Pennsylvania. Mirroring the architecture of the house itself, Gravity is a crazy-quilt of fantastic imagery, fabulist narration, and themes of love, obsession, and spirituality.
Presented in collaboration with SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program, which features a lecture and live musical performance by Brent Green on March 28, 6:00 p.m., The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr.
2010, USA, Blu-Ray, 75 minutes + discussion
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Handsworth Songs
April 5, 6:00 p.m.
John Akomfrah/Black Audio Film Collective, Handsworth Songs (1986). Courtesy the artists and LUX, London.
Founded against the backdrop of rising neo-fascism, police brutality, and extreme racial unrest of 1980s Britain, the Black Audio Film Collective produced some of the period’s most poetic and provocative works before disbanding in the 1990s. BAFC’s acclaimed essay film, Handsworth Songs, examines the 1985 race riots in Handsworth and London. Interweaving archival photographs, newsreel clips, and home movie footage, the film is both an exploration of documentary aesthetics and a broad meditation social and cultural oppression through Britain’s intertwined narratives of racism and economic decline.
1986, John Akomfrah/Black Audio Film Collective, UK, 16mm, 60 minutes + discussion
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Yvonne Rainier: Lives of Performers
April 12, 6:00 p.m.
Yvonne Rainer in person
Yvonne Rainer, Lives of Performers (1972). Courtesy Zeitgeist Films.
For the last half-century, Yvonne Rainer has played a central role in the American avant-garde with her influential works in dance, film, and print. This evening, she presents her acclaimed first feature, Lives of Performers (1972). Embodying Rainer’s aesthetic rigor and wit, the film combines fiction and documentary, script readings, dance snippets, still photos, and tableaux vivants to explore issues of power and gender that influence the emotional lives of her performers.
Presented in collaboration with the Society for Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, which features a lecture by Yvonne Rainier on April 11, 6:00 p.m., The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
1972, USA, 16mm, 90 minutes + discussion
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James Benning: Twenty Cigarettes
April 19, 6:00 p.m.
James Benning in person
James Benning, Twenty Cigarettes (2011). Courtesy the artist.
Celebrated for his minimal, monumental landscape studies, James Benning turns to the intimacy of the portrait in his latest film, Twenty Cigarettes. Referencing Warhol’s screen tests, 1930’s Hollywood glamour, and the disappearing cigarette break, the film captures twenty of Benning’s friends (including filmmaker Sharon Lockhart, cultural theorist Dick Hebdige, and book editor Janet Jenkins) satiating their smoke cravings. Each shot’s length is determined by the time it takes each subject to smoke a cigarette, and over the course of the film a dynamic range of personalities emerges out of an array of physical characteristics, distinctive settings, and personal relationships to the camera.
2011, USA, HDCAM, 99 minutes + discussion
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PAST PROGRAMS:
We Began By Measuring Distance
February 9, 6:00 p.m.
Introduced by Tirtza Even, SAIC Professor in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation
Basma al-Sharif in person
- Basma al-Sharif, We Began By Measuring Distance (2009). Courtesy the artist.
“We Began By Measuring Distance” reflects on intrinsic and imposed distances—physical, logistical, and psychological—represented in works by women filmmakers from or connected to Palestine, including Jumana Emil Abboud, Basma al-Sharif, Mona Hatoum, and Annemarie Jacir. Informed by stories of loss and violence, these short films invoke and measure the space between past and present, mother and daughter, as well as home and exile.
1989–2011, multiple directors, Egypt/Israel/Lebanon/Palestine/UK, various formats, ca. 80 minutes + discussion
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Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area New Prints/New Preservation
February 16, 6:00 p.m.
Introduced by Steve Anker, curator and Dean of the School of Film/Video at CalArts
- Image from Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue (Leslie Thornton, 1984). Courtesy the Pacific Film Archive Library.
Since the 1940s, San Francisco has been both a haven and inspiration for an influential constellation of moving imagists. “Radical Light” grows out of a decade-long research project into the history of experimental film and video in the Bay Area helmed by curators at the Pacific Film Archive and CalArts. Showcasing a number of recently preserved prints, tonight’s program explores the faces, places, and iconoclastic spirit of the region through films by the Miles Brothers, Jane Belson Conger Shiman, Alice Anne Parker Severson, Dion Vigne, Bruce Bailie, Robert Nelson, Mike Henderson, Scott Stark, and Leslie Thornton.
Followed by a book signing for Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000. Thanks to PFA Collection Curator, Mona Nagai. This program is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the William H. Donner Foundation. Additional Radical Light programs are being presented at Block Cinema (2/2) and Chicago Filmmakers (2/24).
1906–84, multiple directors, USA, 16mm, ca. 82 minutes + discussion
