“Desire and death are in the air, along with some aromatic wisps of ethnic edibles, so be sure to sniff it all.” —George Kuchar

George Kuchar became a legend with his lo-fi Super-8 and 16mm melodramas from the 1950s, and ‘60s, influencing generations of artists such as, including Andy Warhol, John Waters, and Todd Solondz.  Kuchar, who passed away last in September, 2011 turned to video in the mid-1980s, crafting hundreds of hilarious and often diaristic videos from “the pageant that is life.” For the last quarter-century, the Video Data Bank has collected and distributed this work; the organization now houses the artist’s complete video archive, totaling nearly 300 pieces. Charting the passing of seasons, students, pets, and loved ones, the Video Data Bank has developed a singular perspective on Kuchar’s artistic output. This evening, Executive Director Abina Manning presents showcases the Video Data Bank’s unique perspective on Kuchar’s artwork with a collection of his “greatest hits” through the decades, including his last, HotSpell (2011). 1989–2011, USA, various formats, ca. 85 min. Co-presented by the Video Data Bank.

Program:

Point ‘n Shoot (1989, 5 min)
Route 666 (1994, 8 min)
Season of Sorrow (1996, 12 min)
Uncle Evil (1996, 7 min)
Honey Bunnies On Ice (2001, 7 min)
Burnout (2003, 20 min)
HotSpell (2011, 26 min)

GEORGE KUCHAR (1942–2011) ranks as one of America’s most influential and prolific independent film and video artists. With his homemade Super 8 and 16mm potboilers and melodramas of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, he became legendary as a distinctive and outrageous underground filmmaker whose work influenced many other artists including Andy Warhol, John Waters, and David Lynch. After his 1980s transition to the video medium, he remained a master of genre manipulation and subversion. In 1984 Kuchar received the Los Angeles Film Critics Award in the experimental/independent category. In 1992, he received the prestigious Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video Artists from the American Film Institute. In 1996 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute for 40 years, where he made many videos in collaboration with his students.

MORE:
George Kuchar at the Video Data Bank

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 Baillie, 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. Additional Radical Light programs are being held by Block Cinema (2/2) and Chicago Filmmakers (2/24). 1906–84, Multiple directors, USA, 16mm, ca 82 minutes + discussion.

PROGRAM:

A Trip Down Market Street, Miles Brothers (1906, 12 mins, Silent, B&W, 35mm)
North Beach, Dion Vigne (1958, 5 mins, Color, 16mm)
Odds and Ends, Jane Conger Belson Shimane (1959, 5 mins, Color, 16mm)
Castro Street, Bruce Baillie (1966, 10 mins, Color/B&W, 16mm)
Oh Dem Watermelons, Robert Nelson (1965, 11 mins, Color, 16mm)
Dufus!, Mike Henderson (1970, 8 mins, B&W, 16mm)
Riverbody,  Alice Anne Parker Severson (1970, 7 mins, B&W, 16mm)
Degrees of Limitation, Scott Stark (1982, 3 mins, Silent, Color, 16mm)
Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue, Leslie Thornton (1984, 21 mins, B&W, 16mm)

MORE:

Radical Light website

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 Alsharif, Mona Hatoum, and Annemarie Jacir. Curated by artist and SAIC Professor Tirtza Even, these short films are informed by stories of loss and violence. Together, they invoke and measure the space between past and present, mother and daughter, as well as home and exile. The landscape depicted is irreparably estranged, fragmented, and torn, offering no safe anchor and no available return. 1988–2011, Multiple directors, Egypt/Israel/Lebanon/Palestine/UK, Various formats, ca 80 minutes + discussion

PROGRAM:

Pomegranate, Jumana Emil Abboud (2005, DVD, Color, Sound, 3 min)
We Began By Measuring Distance, Basma Alsharif (2009, DVD, Color, Sound, 19 min)
Measures of Distance, Mona Hatoum (1988, DVD, Color, Sound, 16 min)
Like Twenty Impossibles, Annemarie Jacir (2003, DVD, Color, Sound, 17 min)
The Story of Milk and Honey, Basma Alsharif (2011,DVD, Color, Sound, 10 min)
The Return, Jumana Emil Aboud (2002, DVD, Color, Sound, 5 min)

JUMANA EMIL ABBOUD uses drawing, video, performance, objects and text to navigate themes of memory, loss and resilience. She has consistently reflected a Palestinian cultural landscape in which the struggle for continuity amid the wider political context necessitates a constant process of metamorphosis and ingenuity. She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions over the last decade. This included the Venice Biennial, the Istanbul Biennial, the Bahrain National Museum, Manama and the Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris.

BASMA ALSHARIF is a visual artist using moving and still images, sound, and language, to explore the anonymous individual in relation to political history and collective memory. She received an MFA from the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 2007 and has been working in Cairo, Beirut, and Amman since then. Her work has shown in exhibitions and film festivals internationally including the 17th SESC Videobrasil, Forum Expanded: Berlinale, Images Festival Ontario where she received the Marion McMahon Award, Manifesta 8 The Region of Murcia, The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, The 9th Edition of the Sharjah Bienniale where she received a jury prize for her work, the Toronto International Film Festival, and she was awarded the Fundación Marcelino Botín Visual Arts Grant in 2009-2010.

NAHED AWWAD, an independent filmmaker, lives in Ramallah/Palestine. She discovered the world of film and media in the first Intifada, the popular uprising against the Israeli occupation. Initially a self-taught editor, she edited for well known Palestinian film-makers, local Palestinian TV stations and later international networks. She later got professional training at film schools and training centers in Canada, Denmark, Qatar, and Belgium. Awwad’s films contrast the superficial, quick eye of the news camera and edit, with intimate insights rich in detail. She released eight documentary films. Awwad’s films were screened at various international film festivals, including Vision du Reel Film Festival, Nyon, Switzerland in 2005 and 2008 and the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. In 2009 she was granted the International Trailblazer Tribute -Middle East Trailblazer in MIPDOC.

TIRTZA EVEN (Curator): A practicing video artist and documentary maker for more than ten years, Even has produced both linear and interactive video work representing the less overt manifestations of complex and sometimes extreme social/political dynamics in specific locations (e.g. Palestine, Turkey, Spain, the U.S. and Germany, among others). Her work has appeared at the Modern Art Museum, NY, at the Whitney Biennial, the Johannesburg Biennial, as well as in many other festivals, galleries and museums in the United States, Israel and Europe, and has been purchased for the permanent collection of the Modern Art Museum (NY), the Jewish Museum (NY), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), among others.  She has been an invited guest and featured speaker at numerous conferences and university programs, including the Whitney Museum Seminar series, the Digital Flaherty Seminar, Art Pace annual panel, ACM Multimedia, The Performance Studies International conference (PSI), The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference (SLSA) and others. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

MONA HATOUM is an artist living in Britain whose work around issues of fear, fascination, and the body takes the form of performance, video, installation, and photography. Hatoum was born in Lebanon and attended Beirut University College. Her graduate education in London was followed by artist-in-residencies at Western Front in Vancouver and broad international exhibitions, including major solo shows at Centre Pompidou in Paris and Arnolfini in Bristol.

ANNEMARIE JACIR has been working in independent film since 1994 and has written, directed and produced a number of films including ‘a post oslo history’ (1998), ‘The Satellite Shooters’ (2001) and ‘like twenty impossibles’ (2003). She has taught courses at Columbia, Bethlehem, and Birzeit University. She also works as a freelance editor and cinematographer. Annemarie Jacir was named one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema in 2004. Her short film, Like Twenty Impossibles was the first Palestinian short film to be an official selection of the Cannes International Film Festival (Cinefondation), went on to be a Student Academy Awards Finalist, and won over 15 awards at International festivals including Best Film at the Palm Springs Short Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Institute Du Monde Arabe Biennale, Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, and IFP/New York.

MORE:

Basma Alsharif at the Video Data Bank

Nahed Awwads’s website

Tirtza Even’s website

Mona Hatoum at the Video Data Bank

Annemarie Jacir’s website

Visit our Current Season and keep checking back for more info!

Basma al-Sharif, We Began By Measuring Distance (2009). Courtesy the artist.

Our Spring 2012 season will start in February — stay tuned for schedule details!

Image from things we want to see (Rebecca Meyers, 2004). Courtesy the artist.

Image from THE SMILE (Amar Kanwar, 2007). Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

Amar Kanwar’s films and installations offer incisive and meditative explorations of the political, social, economic, and ecological conditions of the Indian subcontinent. They are also formally inventive, synthesizing documentary, travelogue, and essay forms to re-imagine subjects from sexual violence to the political situation in Burma. This evening, Kanwar presents and discusses a range of films from across his vast oeuvre, including new and works-in-progress, selections from the 19-channel installation The Torn First Pages (2004-08), and his widely-esteemed 1997 short, A Season Outside (1997). The film established Kanwar, according to critic Jerry Saltz in the Village Voice, as an artist whose works “escape their own pedantic weight and exist in a lyrical realm where politics, poetry, passion, and form meld.” Amar Kanwar, 1997-2011, India, various formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.

Co-presented by SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program, the Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Asian Art.

RELATED EVENT:
Artist Lecture
Wednesday, November 16, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Visit Visiting Artists Program for details.

AMAR KANWAR (b. 1964, New Delhi, India) is an artist and filmmaker living and working in New Delhi, India.  Recent solo exhibitions have been at the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, NY; Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; and the Stedilijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has participated in Documenta 11 and Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany and is also the recipient of the 1st Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art, Norway and an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, USA. His films are also shown at film festivals where he has received awards like the Golden Gate Award, San Francisco International Film Festival; the Golden Conch, Mumbai International Film Festival; and the Jury’s Award, Film South Asia, Nepal.

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Amar Kanwar’s work at Marian Goodman Gallery

Image from LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH (Nicolas Provost, 2009). Courtesy the artist and the Video Data Bank.

With digital prowess and deft editing, Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost transforms clichéd Hollywood scenes into something altogether more alluring, mysterious, and occasionally, more grotesque. Long Live the New Flesh (2009) takes this notion to extremes, melting the pixels of canonical horror films (The Shining, The Exorcist, and others) into new forms, effectively creating new kinds of monsters. Gravity (2007) considers the trope of romance fulfilled in a strobe-like succession of seemingly endless Hollywood kissing scenes. Provost based two of his latest works, Stardust and Storyteller (both 2010), in Las Vegas, imbuing banal shots of life on the strip and inside its casinos with a sense of the uncanny. On the whole, Provost’s art attests to the malleability of the cinematic images that remain ingrained in our memory, but also just out of reach.  Nicolas Provost, 2007-2010, Belgium, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.

Co-presented by the Video Data Bank.

NICOLAS PROVOST (b. 1969, Ronse, Belgium) is a filmmaker and visual artist working in Brussels, Belgium. His work has been broadcast, screened and exhibited worldwide on visual art platforms and film festivals, and has earned a long list of awards and screenings at prestigious festivals including The Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah; The San Francisco International, Film Festival, San Francisco, CA; Cinevegas, Henderson, NV; The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; The Viennale, Vienna, Austria; and The Locarno Film Festival, Locarno, Switzerland. Solo exhibitions include The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, France; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; C-Space Gallery, Beijing, China; The International Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland; Solar Galeria de Arte Cinematica, Vila do Conde, Portugal. Provost’s first feature The Invader, a thriller about an anti-heroic immigrant and his struggle for economic and emotional survival in the new world, will premiere at the 2011 Venice Film Festival.

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Nicolas Provost’s website

Dazed Digital interview with Nicolas Provost

Introduced by film historian Bruce Jenkins and followed by audience Q&A with Jenkins and avant-garde film scholar P. Adams Sitney (who will join us via Skype).

Image from ENIAIOS II (Gregory Markopoulos, 1949-1991). Courtesy the Temenos Archive and the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna.

Remembered as the “supreme erotic poet” of the American avant-garde, Gregory Markopoulos spent decades creating his monumental film Eniaios, an eighty-hour composition of twenty-two cycles. Eniaios (meaning “unity” or “uniqueness”) was originally conceived for screening at Temenos, Markopolous’s open-air theater in the hills overlooking Lyssaraia, Greece. Silent yet sensuous, the film journeys through a host of imagery, including pulses of white light, passages of black, fragments of earlier works, and images of sacred places. Markopoulos died before Eniaios could be printed and his partner, filmmaker Robert Beavers, has spent the last two decades restoring the work. Only six of the twenty-two film orders have been printed thus far. Tonight’s screening of Eniaios II — the second cycle in the piece and an epic film in its own right — affords a rare opportunity to view Markopoulos’s magnum opus in the making. Gregory Markopoulos, 1949-1991, Greece/USA, 16mm, 125 min plus discussion.

Eniaios VI – VIII will premiere June 29 – July 1, 2012 at the Temenos in Lyssarea (Arcadia) Greece.  For more info, visit: www.the-temenos.org.

GREGORY MARKOPOULOS (1928-1992) was born in Toledo, Ohio to Greek immigrant parents. He attended Film School at USC in the 1940s and became a key figure in the New American Cinema movement with others like Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, and Stan Brakhage. A critic and teacher, Markopoulos founded the filmmaking program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1965. He and his partner Robert Beavers emigrated to Europe in 1967 after which he removed all of his films from circulation, refused interviews, and insisted that a chapter about him be deleted from the second edition of Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney’s seminal study of American avant-garde cinema. In the later part of his life, he focused almost entirely on the production of Eniaios.

Image from ANNA (TENEMENT FILMS) (Luke Fowler, 2009). Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd.

How one sees the world and how one hears it are the indelible questions underlying Luke Fowler’s startling, vibrant films. The award-winning Glasgow-based artist often collaborates with musicians and sound artists, drawing upon the histories of field recording, experimental music, and portraiture. Fowler’s early films shed light on such infamous experimental musicians as Cornelius Cardew (of the London-based Scratch Orchestra) and Xentos “Fray Bentos” Jones (of the post-punk The Homosexuals). More recently, his collaborations with Richard Youngs, Lee Patterson, Eric La Casa, and Toshiya Tsunoda have resulted in a series of audio-visual tone poems of domestic interiors, urban geography, and rural environments.  This evening, Fowler presents a collection of these works, including his Tenement Films (3 Minute Wonders) series (2009), and selections from his three-part 2009 A Grammar for Listening cycle, among others. Luke Fowler, 2007-09, Scotland, 16mm and video, ca. 75 min plus discussion.

Co-presented with the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center, which will present a second program of Fowler’s films on Friday, October 28.

Luke Fowler (b. 1978, Glasgow, Scotland) is an artist, filmmaker and composer based in Glasgow. His work pushes the limits of documentary, while also exploring the social significance of sound. Fowler has exhibited internationally and within the United States, with solo shows at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, NY; X-Initiative, New York, NY; The Modern Institute, Glasgow, UK; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland; Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium; Villa Concordia, Bamberg, Germany and White Columns, New York, NY. His work has also been included in group shows at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexico; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK; New Museum, New York, NY; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY, and Tate Modern, London, England. He was the recipient of the Derek Jarman Award in 2009.

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Luke Fowler at the Film Studies Center, University of Chicago

Life in Film: Luke Fowler in Frieze Magazine

Image from blue mantle (Rebecca Meyers, 2010). Courtesy the artist.

In her nimble, intimately-observed films, Cambridge-based filmmaker Rebecca Meyers illuminates the uncanny and exquisite in the everyday. lions and tigers and bears (2006) seeks out urban wildlife–from spiders and pigeons to bronze lions and chrome-plated jaguars; night side (2008) captures a wintry twilight of street lamp halos and solitary animals.  Shot along the Massachusetts coast, Meyers’ latest film is a haunting ode to the sea.  Combining historical accounts of ocean travel and disaster with images of its vast, roiling expanse, blue mantle (2010) meditates on humanity’s attempts to conquer the deep and reflects on its role as a metaphor and passageway to the unknown. This evening, Meyers presents these and a selection of earlier works, including glow in the dark (2002) and things we want to see (2004). Rebecca Meyers, 2002- 2010, USA, 16mm, ca. 65 min plus discussion.

REBECCA MEYERS (b. 1976, New York City) is a filmmaker and programmer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her films have screened internationally at festivals and in curated exhibitions such as Media City, Windsor, ON, Canada, and Detroit, MI; Images Festival, Toronto, Canada; New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde, New York, NY; Festival Les Inattendus, Lyon, France; the London International Film Festival, London, England; “Bringing to Light” at the San Francisco Cinematheque, San Francisco, CA; and “White Shadows: Stories and Polar Visions” at the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy. For three years she served as Co-Programmer of Chicago’s Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival and has curated film programs for the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Massachusetts College of Art Film Society, Brooklyn’s Light Industry and the Harvard Film Archive, where she acted as Archive Coordinator. She is currently Director of Film Programs at ArtsEmerson at Emerson College and Associate Director of Studio7Arts in Cambridge. Rebecca holds an MFA from the University of Iowa in Film/Video Production.