Documentary / Ethnography

April 17, 2011: SPACE PROGRAM presents: Mercury, or One-Half a Life Spent in Darkness is One-Half a Life Spent Facing the Sun

15 April, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

SPACE PROGRAM presents
“Mercury, or One-Half a Life Spent in Darkness is One-Half a Life Spent Facing the Sun”
Curated by Ben Russell

This Sunday!
April 17, 2011 | 7:30pm
at Thalia Hall
1807 S Allport, Chicago, IL, 60608 (map)
$5 suggested donation

Messenger Mercury is retrograde until April 23, but with this SPACE PROGRAM screening series, Mercury turns direct on Sunday, April 17th, 2011. Guided by the afflatus of the planetary teachers, Space Program projects indelible cinema in the historic, Pilsen-based Thalia Hall — both NASA employees and non-NASA employees are invited — but please note that this space is unheated, so bring warm clothes, sleeping bags, blankets, beaver pelts, caribou furs, and other warm goods. Considering the typical 40°–80° Chicago-flux of weather this time of year, it is advised that you bring extra beaver pelts and warm materials.

Synopsis of the Mercury Programme: “In honor of its eccentric orbit, its 176-day day, its large iron core, its tidal bulges and Beethoven Crater and its ‘gently rolling, hilly plains,’ your navigators at SPACE PROGRAM hereby propose an audiovisual third fly-by of the smallest galactic sphere: MERCURY. The innermost planet of our Solar System, Mercury is metaphorically volatile, changeable, fickle and flighty. It is a slow rotation with a sharp edge; one that occupies the two poles of our human psyche – Mercury is radical darkness, sorrow and despair; Mercury is blinding radiance, heat and wonderment. Mercury is youth. It is the cusp of adulthood, the terrors of development, that bittersweet joy of (not) knowing enough. Viewed from our telescope, Mercury is Eva Marie Rødbro’s constellation of Texan teenagers, all infrared desire and insect and nipple pierce and imminent danger — the anxiety of that next rotation is deep, soul-shaking. When we focus again, we see Mercury in the overwhelming sweetness and sorrow of Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Marks’ Streetwise (1984) — a document of a 1980s gang of Seattle street kids living in abandoned spaces (echoes of Thalia Hall), with the sort of heart-baring openness that can only come from living far too close to the sun … Where there is light, there is darkness.”

Below is a letter from the curator, Ben Russell:

Fellow Travelers,

On behalf of your friends at Mission Control (Pilsen), I am proud to announce the launch of SPACE PROGRAM* – a screening series in four parts that will temporarily re-colonize a world heretofore lost to Silence-and-Darkness in the name of Light-and-Sound. Presented in the shadowy maw of Pilsen’s historic Thalia Hall under the guidance of artist/astronaut Ben Russell, SPACE PROGRAM is a satellite alternative to dominant media practices, a time-image map for those new constellations rapidly forming in your heads. From April 17th onwards, each of the initial four SPACE PROGRAM screenings are named after and thematically curated in relation to one of the planets of our solar system. Come, discover new worlds with us! More specifically:

April 17th, 2011: MERCURY (see details below)
April 24th, 2011: VENUS (details TBA)
May 1st, 2011: MARS (details TBA)
May 8th, 2011: JUPITER (details TBA)

Space Is the Place,

Ben Russell

MERCURY PROGRAMME DETAILS

Featuring:
I Touched Her Legs by Eva Marie Rødbro (15:00, video, 2010)
Streetwise by Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Marks (91:00, 16mm, 1984)
TRT 106:00

I Touched Her Legs by Eva Marie Rødbro (15:00, video, 2010)
These Texan youth are the descendants of David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’, and they are both invincible and as fragile as a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car. The Danish artist Eva Marie Rødbro’s sound-and-image montage is an extraordinary experience – a deeply poetic anthropological study of the self-destructive rites of passage of teenage life. This is the fragility of youth, caught shattering. Everything is simultaneously animal and human, domestic and ethereal – that kid backflipping off his couch is an astronaut, untethered in space; those forgotten Jesus hymns are portals to St.Elsewhere, true. If this video is a document then it’s also a vision – not just about what one looks at, but how one sees and hears the world.

Streetwise by Martin Bell (91:00, 16mm, 1984)
“The first time I saw this film, when I was a child, I felt like running away and living under a bridge, someplace or other. It’s an extremely beautiful film, which captures a time and a place that no longer exists in this way.” — Harmony Korine

Martin Bell’s unforgettable vérité documentary was shot on the streets of Seattle in the mid-1980s, and follows a group of homeless teenage kids aged between 13 and 19, who live off ‘container-raiding’, stealing and hustling. Rat, the dumpster diver, Tiny, the teenage prostitute, Shellie, the baby-faced blonde, DeWayne, the hustler, all old beyond their years. They talk as if they were port workers, but behind the tough façade lie the vulnerable, small beings that have chosen the freedom of the street instead of the broken homes they come from. A raw masterpiece, and a kind of documentary precursor to Larry Clark’s Kids (1995), which Harmony Korine himself wrote the screenplay for as a teenager. This is a film that is rarely screened, one that you’ll never forget.

===========================================================================

STREETWISE courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

SPACE PROGRAM is made possible by a grant from Propeller Fund and through material support from the The Foundation for Emerging Artistic Talent (E.A.T.).

Launched in May 2010, Propeller Fund is administered jointly by Gallery 400, UIC and threewalls. Initial support for the program is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts as part of its initiative to promote informal and independently organized visual arts activities across the United States.

The Foundation for Emerging Artistic Talent (E.A.T.) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promote the arts by providing exhibition opportunities and educational resources for emerging artists in the Chicago-land community. E.A.T.’s goal is to enrich the neighborhood of Pilsen through inspired artistic productions showcased in Thalia Hall’s 800-seat theater and gallery space. E.A.T’s dynamic programs will cultivate a supportive artistic network where emerging artists can be empowered to share their voice.

More:
www.dimeshow.com

Thalia Hall

Posted in art, avant-garde, documentary / ethnography, event, film
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The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity (2007), by Brian Springer, at Conversations at the Edge, Chicago, this Thursday, March 17, 2011

16 March, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

Image: The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity, Brian Springer, 2007

“Brian Springer presents his latest work The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity (2007) at Conversations at the Edge this Thursday, March 17, 2011.

Followed by a Q&A with the artist and Brian Holmes.

‘An unexpected masterpiece.’ — Grady Hendrix, New York Sun

Best known for his scathing news media exposé Spin (1995), Brian Springer’s latest film is a labyrinthine, semi-autobiographical documentary about the search for four disparate treasures buried on his family’s farm in Missouri. These include gold coins left behind by a 16th Century Spanish explorer; silver from the Civil War; the legendary lost diary of anarchist Kate Austin, who lived on the farm in the 1890s; and a mysterious limestone sculpture of dubious origin. Springer interweaves the stories surrounding these treasures with those of his family to spin a tale of spirit possession, Napalm, Indian massacres, early American opera, fanatical obsessions, 200 tons of dirt, and the way mothers try to protect their families from wounds that never heal.

At its core, The Disappointment meditates on the ways history is passed along, altered, and sometimes lost through archeological findings. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist and writer Brian Holmes.”

2007, Brian Springer, USA, Beta SP video, 70 min plus discussion.

BRIAN SPRINGER (b. 1959, Kansas) studied video at the State University of New York at Buffalo and received his MFA in Art from the University of California Santa Barbara. While in Buffalo, Springer worked with a group of artists to create Squeaky Wheel, a nationally respected grassroots media arts center. Springer’s work has been shown at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Germany, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Whitney Museum (NYC), the Institute for Contemporary Art (London), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and has been broadcast nationally in the UK. He currently lives in Ohio, where he works in the public schools through the Ohio Arts Council’s arts residency program.

Co-presented by Video Data Bank, in collaboration with Conversations at the Edge, a program of the Film, Video, New Media and Animation Department at SAIC.

SCREENING DETAILS
Thursday, March 17, 2011, 6:00 PM
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State Street
Chicago, IL
312.846.2600
www.conversationsattheedge.org

More:
The Disappointment on VDB.org

Posted in avant-garde, documentary / ethnography, event
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The Great Northwest (2011) by Matt McCormick, Feb 17–April 2, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland

21 February, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

The Great Northwest
an experimental documentary / video installation by Matt McCormick
76 minutes / HD / 2011 + photography
More info and a short video excerpt can be found here.

“The Great Northwest is a 76-minute experimental documentary that explores how the visual landscape of the Pacific Northwest has changed over the past 50 years. The project is based on the re-creation of a 3,200 mile road-trip made in 1958 by four Seattle women who thoroughly documented their journey in an elaborate scrapbook of photos, postcards, brochures and receipts. Fifty years later, Portland artist and filmmaker Matt McCormick found that scrapbook in a thrift store, and in 2010 set out on the road, following their route precisely and searching out every stop in which the ladies had documented.

The urban and natural landscapes the women experienced during their trip has changed greatly since 1958. While urban centers such as Seattle, Portland, and Spokane have sprouted sky-scrappers and hefty suburban growth, other towns such as Vantage and Taft no longer exist; one being flooded by Columbia River damming and the other paved over by Interstate 90. Development, damming, industry, and construction of the Interstate Highway System have moved mountains and rivers as well as towns and communities. Yet many aspects of the Pacific Northwest appear relatively unchanged. Carefully preserved towns such as Wallace, Idaho, and steadfast tourist attractions such as the Oregon Coast’s Sea Lion Caves seem almost stuck in time except for perhaps a few new layers of paint.

The film is a meditative look at these changes while also becoming it’s own scrapbook-like document. With a very patient and observational approach, the film compares and contrasts the 1958 landscape with that of the present day while celebrating the enduring features of the Pacific Northwest. It is a lyrical time capsule that explores the fragility of history.”

The Great Northwest was funded in part by a 2010 Regional Arts and Culture
Council Project Grant and the 2011 Oregon Art Commission Media Arts
Fellowship.

Runs February 17-April 2
Elizabeth Leach Gallery
417 N.W. 9th Avenue Portland
www.elizabethleach.com

Posted in documentary / ethnography, event, experimental film
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Reefs, Sanctuaries of Life in the Sea

25 January, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

Destructive Trawling: Reefs to Rubble from Oceana on Vimeo

The honestly of nature only comes from the wild.

The year is 2011, and we need to realize that our Earth will come first. The ambit of our Spirit Earth is what matters. The Great Earth is our Mother.

We must respect our ocean, our Earth. Please take the time to watch these two videos, a brief glimpse into coral reefs and the devastating effects of bottom trawling. “With the capability to destroy century-old reefs in mere moments, bottom trawling is the single most destructive human impact on the ocean floor. Oceana fights to stop bottom trawling and protect the marine life that call these habitats home.”

More information on Oceana’s website.

Trailer: OUR NIXON (2011) by Penny Lane and Brian Frye

24 January, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

OUR NIXON (trailer) from Penny Lane on Vimeo.

OUR NIXON
Directed by Penny Lane & Brian Frye
A feature documentary – coming in 2011!
Support this project: visit the Our Nixon kickstarter page: http://kck.st/eK7tjP

“Everyone knows that during the Watergate investigation, the FBI confiscated more than 3700 hours of secret audio recordings from the Nixon White House. But the FBI also confiscated 204 reels of Super-8 film from John Ehrlichman’s personal files. The confiscated films were home movies made by Nixon aides H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Dwight Chapin, and Larry Higby. When the Watergate investigation ended, the home movies were filed away by the government and forgotten.

OUR NIXON presents those home movies for the first time, using them to create an intimate and surprising portrait of the Nixon administration.

Between 1969 and 1973, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Chapin and Higby captured every aspect of their life with Nixon in more than 17 hours of home movies. They filmed the pivotal and the prosaic, from Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao to the bathroom fixtures in the Forbidden City. They filmed White House performances by Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Dionne Warwick, Johnny Cash and Raquel Welch, the historic 1971 May Day Protests against the Vietnam War on the National Mall, and Tricia Nixon’s Rose Garden wedding. But mostly, they filmed each other: Higby standing in front of the Eiffel Tower and waving at the camera, Chapin and Kissinger clowning around at the beach, and a hummingbird sipping nectar from a feeder. Ehrlichman was quite fond of hummingbirds.

Sometimes, stories get lost in their endings. Using these never-before-seen home movies, Nixon’s secret recordings, Haldeman’s audio diary, and the recollections of our four cameramen, OUR NIXON tells the forgotten story that ends with Watergate.”

Penny Lane’s website: http://www.p-lane.com/

Support this project: visit the Our Nixon kickstarter page: http://kck.st/eK7tjP

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The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003)

5 January, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

The Story of the Weeping Camel, 2003, Germany, 87 min

The Story of the Weeping Camel is an enchanting film that follows the adventures of a family of herders in Mongolia’s Gobi region who face a crisis when the mother camel unexpectedly rejects her newborn calf after a particularly difficult birth. Uniquely composed of equal parts reality, drama, and magic, this film is a window into a different way of life and the universal terrain of the heart.

More at National Geographic.

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The Return of Navajo Boy (2008) by Groundswell Educational Films

4 January, 2011 by Andrew Rosinski

Trailer for The Return of Navajo Boy (2008) by Groundswell Educational Films

Here is superb documentary film examining an important struggle for environment justice. Support this film; support Mother Earth; support the Navajo People. Again, support the film, click here, watch it, purchase it, screen it. Or support this benevolent cause digitally: spread the word by some means, follow Groundswell Films via Twitter, join the Facebook group, suggest to friends.

There is forthcoming film review, until then, read this Salt Lake Tribune article, “A legacy of uranium, a prayer for healing.”

It is was posted yesterday (1/3/2011) — it is a big story on the uranium contamination of Navajo Nation and mentions Groundswell’s work on the issue.

Synopsis: The Return of Navajo Boy, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and PBS, is an internationally acclaimed documentary that reunited a Navajo family and triggered a federal investigation into uranium contamination. It tells the story of Elsie Mae Begay, whose history in pictures reveals an incredible and ongoing struggle for environmental justice. A powerful new epilogue (produced in 2008) shows how the film and Groundswell Educational Films’ outreach campaign create news and rally supporters including Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA). The Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform mandated a clean-up plan by the five agencies that are responsible for uranium contamination.

Ironically, the US EPA’s Comprehensive Five-Year Plan did not include Ms Begay’s backyard, until she traveled with this film to Washington, DC and screened it on Capitol Hill in September, 2008. Together we are building a groundswell for environmental justice.

Join Groundswell and Navajo Communities in this mission. We will continue filming and raising awareness until all Navajo communities impacted by more than one thousand abandoned uranium mines are cleaned up.

What Critics Say About The Return of Navajo Boy:

“Like a finely made rug, The Return of Navajo Boy contains multiple layers of color, construction, and meaning. . . A must see.”

- Native Peoples Magazine

Not only did the film lead to the reunion of the Cly family with the long-lost John Wayne Cly, but it also brought public and legal attention to the issue of uranium mining, a former way of life in Monument Valley that has led to an alarmingly high cancer rate.”

- Chicago Tribune

“I used this remarkable documentary in a large U.S. history survey course comprised mostly of students from Southeast Asian and Central American immigrant-refugee communities… Although centered on the experiences of one Native American family, this film is an instructive text for all of us living through this era of pervasive social disasters and profound displacements.”

- Art Hansen, Professor of History, California State University

“A decade after its release and initial acclaim, the documentary “The Return of Navajo Boy” is still garnering attention and educating audiences about Native American issues, past and present.”
- Oregon Gazette Times

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Ann Arbor Film Festival DVD Collection: Volume 3

12 December, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

AAFF DVD Collection: Volume 3

You know, a great many associate Christmas Day with opening gifts. This Christmas, sit down by the fire light with your kids and your cuddle-duds and give them the gift of avant-garde with the giving of the AAFF DVD Collection: Volume 3.

The first 200 DVDs come in a screen-printed matteboard case, printed by Michigan-based print-shop, VGKids (VGkids printed the dinca stickers as well), and include a set of five postcards with original artwork by filmmakers Martha Colburn, Lewis Klahr, Julie Murray, Michael Robinson and Deborah Stratman.

$18 plus shipping 

NTSC DVD Region 0 (All)
 Total Runtime: 106 minutes
BUY HERE

View film information here.

Posted in animation & motion design, avant-garde, documentary / ethnography, experimental film, film, video art
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Erie (2010) and Selected Shorts Presented by Kevin Jerome Everson, Gene Siskel Film Center, November 11

10 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

Image: Erie, Kevin Jerome Everson, 2010

Over the past thirteen years, Kevin Jerome Everson has crafted an exquisite–and prodigious–body of work on the working-class culture of African-Americans and people of African descent. Combining documentary and fiction, Everson’s nearly 70 shorts and four features center on everyday tasks and gestures to unearth and illuminate the ordinary grace of daily life. This evening, in conjunction with the Video Data Bank’s release of the 24-title DVD box set, Broad Daylight and Other Times: Selected Works of Kevin Jerome Everson, the artist presents his acclaimed feature Erie (2010) along with a handful of new shorts.

Unspooling in a series of hand-held, single-take shots filmed in the urban centers around the great lake, Erie captures the conversation of former General Motors workers as the plant is about to close; hospital employees carefully sorting and sterilizing surgical implements; and young performers krumping and rehearsing musical theater side-by-side, the camera moving between them in a kind of mash-up-en-scene and microcosm of the rich and multifaceted operation of the film as a whole. Co-presented by the Video Data Bank, SAIC’s Department of Film, Video, New Media & Animation, and the Gene Siskel Film Center. Kevin Jerome Everson, 2010, USA, HDCAM video, ca. 90 min, plus discussion. (Amy Beste)

SCREENING DETAILS
Thursday, November 11, 2010, 6:00 PM
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State Street
Chicago, IL
312.846.2600
www.conversationsattheedge.org

Posted in avant-garde, documentary / ethnography, film
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A Map Turned to Landscape: Winnipeg Cinematheque, November 6th, and Continuing Events Nov 2010 – May 2011

5 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

Beach Events, Rick Hancox, 1984, 16mm

“Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”
— Jorge Luis Borges

Winnipeg Cinematheque, November 2010 – May 2011
Curated by Brett Kashmere

A Map Turned to Landscape Saturday, November 6th at 7pm

Introduced by Brett Kashmere
Discussion with Rick Hancox, Philip Hoffman and Janine Marchessault to follow
“The “Escarpment School” receives its name from the Niagara Escarpment, the most prominent of several land shelves formed in the bedrock of the Great Lakes, located several miles southwest of Sheridan College. All of its central figures either grew up around, or lived/worked in some proximity to the escarpment.

This reference to a specific region, just an hour from the United States, and a transitional land formation is significant. While much of the “Escarpment School’s” history and activity is like cinema itself, spectral (now you see it, now you don’t), one manifest aspect is a desire for understanding through physical exploration and encounter with landscape. Taking their cameras on the road, to the ocean’s shoreline and across southern borders, the filmmakers featured here infuse rituals of masculinity with critical self-reflection and patient, poetic lensing; often conjoined in a diary or travelogue format.

Although varied in tone and texture, the films in this program share numerous qualities, including an attention to geography, a drive to record reality, the filtering of documentary material through individual experience, the looming presence of America, and a process-based, formalist approach to nonfiction. These characteristics in turn reflect the twin impact of the New American Cinema and its conterminous postwar movements, especially Beat literature, as well as the Canadian social documentary tradition, which were often viewed side-by-side in the “Escarpment School” classroom.”

Landscape (George Semsel, 1977, 16mm, 3 minutes)
A paint-by-number painting of a rural landscape is filled in using time-lapse cinematography, sometimes in ‘correct’ colours but more often with garish variations on natural tones. Periodically, the painting forms part of a collage of photographic and cut-out images.

Trains of Thought (Lorne Marin, 1983, 16mm, 10 minutes)
“In Trains of Thought Marin leaves the usual domestic setting of his films for a road trip to the Maritimes. Using the car’s windshield as his canvas, he conjures up dynamic scene changes thanks to an innovative optical printer he designed himself to accommodate his unique vision. Trains of Thought was invited to the Flaherty Film Seminar in 1983, but despite its immediate recognition, the film has fallen into neglect, like the rest of Marin’s remarkable body of experimental work.” (Rick Hancox)

Beach Events, Rick Hancox, 1984, 16mm

Beach Events (Rick Hancox, 1984, 16mm, 8.5 minutes)
“This film completes a trilogy of landscape/poetry films, and was shot near the family home on the Northumberland Strait in Prince Edward Island. In writing the text for Beach Events, I wanted to challenge the cinema’s dominant present tense by imitating primitive ‘event’ poetry, referring superficially to action present on the screen, but gradually slipping out of synchronization with its referent. This practice, together with reading a kind of sub-conscious, internal monologue… helps the viewer transcend the spectacle of the present, and be aware of a larger temporal universe.” (RH)

The Road Ended at the Beach, Philip Hoffman, 1983, 16mm

The Road Ended at the Beach (Philip Hoffman, 1983, 16mm, 30 minutes)
“Film images, stills and sound collected over six years coalesce in The Road Ended at the Beach. Hoffman interrogates both the journey, involving famed American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, and the process of its documentation as/in film.” (Rivers of Time: The Films of Philip Hoffman)

His Romantic Movement, Richard Kerr, 1984, 16mm

His Romantic Movement (Richard Kerr, 1984, 16mm, 15 minutes)
“His Romantic Movement reenacts the drama of going on the road, Kerouac style; but what it really depicts is the dream of freedom turning sour. His Romantic Movement re-presents the male-band on the road living it up, taking drugs, drinking in the sights, and just traveling, significantly, to the Florida Keys. But it does not simply depict these activities, and in doing so reproduce that myth. By depicting members of the band as ugly and vicious, it deconstructs the myths of the male-band and conveys uneasiness with that celebration of manliness that was so much part of the ethos of Beat literature.” (R. Bruce Elder, C Magazine)

Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan and Encarnacion, Philip Hoffman, 1983, 16mm

Somewhere Between Jalostotitlan and Encarnacion (Philip Hoffman, 1983, 16mm, 6 minutes)
“The bus stopped on the Mexican highway, placing us in full view of a young boy, motionless, on the hot pavement. In this film, the incident is revealed through a poetic text, derived from my written journals. The poetry mixes primarily with Mexican streetscapes, which compliment the text in a tonal sense. Most images are 28 seconds long, the ‘breath’ of the 16mm Bolex camera. A lone saxophone weaves its way through the narrative, blending to make stronger the tones and accentuations of the images.” (PH)

Mexico, Mike Hoolboom & Steve Sanguedolce, 1992, 16mm

Mexico (Mike Hoolboom and Steve Sanguedolce, 1992, 16mm, 35 minutes)
“This high contrast, anti-travelogue benefits from a sharply ironic image track and a mordant voice-over that lends menace to the notion of direct address. Between the film’s title and its somewhat arch ‘erasure’ the subject shifts from Mexico to its Canuck observers.” (Cameron Bailey, Now Magazine)

Approximate Running Time: 108 minutes.

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Related Events:

THE CINEMA LOUNGE:
PHIL HOFFMAN INTRODUCES THE FILMS OF RICK HANCOX
Special Guest: Rick Hancox
Fri, Nov 5, 7:30pm – Winnipeg Cinematheque
Free Admission

MASTER LECTURE SERIES: CURATING AND CONTEXT
Instructor: Brett Kashmere
This seminar will focus on the role and responsibility of the curator in contemporary life, providing an overview of curatorial practice within the stricter context of moving images. This will include a consideration of the methods, procedures, and decision-making processes of media art exhibition; the shifting relationship between artists, institutions, programmers, and curators; critical and conceptual aspects of curating; curating for different spaces; and writing about artists’ work.
Sat, Nov 6, 2-4pm – The Black Lodge (Winnipeg Film Group Studio)
Free Admission (Seating Limited)

Posted in avant-garde, documentary / ethnography, experimental film, film
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Lastaddress.org: Special Light of the Good Cookies

3 November, 2010 by Andrew Rosinski

Cookie Mueller

“Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won’t have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free.” – Cookie Mueller

“Lastaddress.org is an online resource that honors a group of New York City artists who died of AIDS, and provides access to a flow of material regarding those artists that can help introduce their work to a new audience. You can view the site here:
http://lastaddress.org/

The project is a companion piece to Last Address, a short film by filmmaker Ira Sachs that’s available for viewing on the site.

The material sourced includes biographies, interviews, performance videos, audio recordings, essays and many other ways to discover and learn about this immensely original and inspiring group of individuals.”

The artists included are:

Reza Abdoh
Patrick Angus
Reinaldo Arenas
Joe Brainard
John D. Brockmeyer
Harold Brodkey
Howard Brookner
Ethyle Eichelberger
Luis Frangella
Fèlix Gonzàlez-Torres
Keith Haring
Hibiscus
Peter Hujar
Harry Kondoleon
Charles Ludlam
Jim Lyons
Robert Mapplethorpe
Cookie Mueller
Klaus Nomi
Norman Renè
Arthur Russell
Vito Russo
Assotto Saint
John Sex
Jack Smith
Hugh Steers
Ron Vawter
David Wojnarowicz

Posted in art, documentary / ethnography, film
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