The Sankofa Film and Video Collective was part of a wave of politically-minded Black independent filmmakers who emerged in London in the 1980s, during an era of increasing social conservatism and racial unrest. The group’s acclaimed first feature, co-directed by members Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien, is a prismatic look at gender, race, sexuality, and […]
This week, we are excited to welcome back graduate student Julia Sharpe to write for us! Sharpe’s essay looks at Stacey Steers’ surreal films, which explore the inner-lives of women, meditating on fraught relationships, motherhood, medicine, and death. Whispering, dropping, digging, buzzing… A page peels back and a rose rapidly blooms and decays; the forest […]
Bees swarm, a bat swallows a young woman, and eggs and orbs multiply against backdrops of flora, viscera, and pulsating night skies. Such are the surreal visions of Stacey Steers’ animated films, which she composes by hand from thousands of silent film stills and fragments of 19th-century engravings and illustrations. Over the last decade, she […]
We are thrilled to welcome graduate student George Olken to write for us this week. In his essay, Olken reflects on the work of Nathaniel Dorsky, whose films explore the relationship between cinema and the unknowable. Nathaniel Dorsky captures silent images of the world, subtle shifts, beauty. His tools are deceptively simple: a 16mm camera […]
Since the early 1960s, Nathaniel Dorsky has been making extraordinarily beautiful films that blend a reverence for the sensual world with a deep contemplation of the mysteries beyond. They are “occasions for reflection and meditation on light, landscape, time, and the motions of consciousness,” writes curator Steve Polta. Dorsky’s “photography emphasizes the elemental frisson between […]
We are excited to present Against Ethnography, a program of contemporary videos from Latin America which charts the limits of communication between indigenous and non-indigenous worlds. Curated by film scholar Federico Windhausen, this program was originally put together as part of a larger series for the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival titled El Pueblo: Searching for Contemporary Latin America. To […]
Curated by Federico Windhausen, this revealing program of contemporary videos from Latin America charts the limits of communication between indigenous and nonindigenous worlds. Vincent Carelli and Dominique Gallois’ Meeting Ancestors / A arca dos Zo’é (Brazil, 1993) follows an Amazonian tribal leader who makes videotapes to share stories about the past and dangers of encroaching development. Vicente Cueto […]
We are excited to kick off our spring 2017 season this week with a rare expanded film performance by Japanese underground filmmaker Rikurō Miyai! Expanded cinema describes a form of practice that emerged in the 1960s involving the film projector being used as a performative instrument. Existing between film, performance and installation art, it questioned […]
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room Modern Wing Entrance, 158 East Monroe Street Free, registration required (see saic.edu/cate for details) A central figure in Japan’s 1960s underground, Rikurō Miyai’s expansive, pop-infused practice spans filmmaking, art criticism, design, and television. In this rare US appearance, he presents two of his best-known works of expanded […]
We’re excited to announce the full lineup for Conversations at the Edge’s Spring 2017 season! Guests include Rikurō Miyai alongside Tatsu Aoki, film scholar Federico Windhausen, Nathaniel Dorsky, Stacey Steers, a film by Isaac Julien & Maureen Blackwood, Sky Hopinka, Hyphen-Labs, Melika Bass, Wael Shawky, and VALIE EXPORT. Check out full season details here. […]