. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

old skool revolutionaries

Thursday, November 6, 2003, 8:15pm First in the United States to offer BA and MFA degrees in Video Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has a critically important place in the history of this vital medium.  SAIC instructor and digital systems specialist jonCates has delved into the School’s archive of seminal video […]

Catfilms (For Sailor and Oscar)

Thursday, October 30, 2003, 8:30pm Martha Colburn, Cats Amore (2001). Cinematic catnip from filmmakers old and new!  Inspired by Intercat, the late 1960’s-early 1970’s international cat film festival organized by experimental filmmaker Pola Chapelle, Catfilms mixes Intercat gems with contemporary feline flicks in a program at once wild and domestic, standoffish and affectionate.  Meow! Programmed […]

Kino Dance: An Evening of Butoh Dance Films

Thursday, October 23, 2003, 8pm Katsura Kan in person! Emerging in late 1950’s Japan, the dance style known as Butoh is one of that nation’s key contributions to the avant-garde.  The Film Center is proud to host the critically acclaimed Butoh dancer Katsura Kan, who visits from Japan to present a collection of rarely seen […]

(Very) Short Films By Kevin Everson

Thursday, October 16, 2003, 8pm Kevin Everson in person! The relentlessness of everyday life, as well as its beauty, is the subject of Kevin Everson’s twenty-odd short films made over the past eight years.  Focusing on working-class African-Americans, these brief, intense works are fictional, but mimic documentary in their naturalism and attention to the material […]

Mysterial Power: Recent Video by Lana Lin

Thursday, October 9, 2003, 8:15pm Lana Lin in person! Translations of all types are the subject of video artist Lana Lin’s recent work. No Power to Push Up The Sky (2001) is structured around an interview with Chinese student activist Chai Ling in the turbulent days before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; Lin asked fifteen […]

Alma

Thursday, October 2, 2003, 8:15pm Ruth Leitman in person! “Everyone I’m related to is some weird, comical pervert,” observes Margie Thorpe of Atlanta, and the rest of this edgy, intimate documentary bears her out, sometimes hilariously, sometimes with horror.  Take mother Alma for instance – a working class Norma Desmond who spins tall tales out […]

Nema Problema

Thursday, September 25, 2003, 8pm Susana Foxley in person! In conjunction with the Film Center’s “Pinochet and Beyond: Contemporary Chilean Documentary” series, Conversations at the Edge is proud to present this poignant clash-of-cultures study, presented by co-director Susana Foxley.  Nema Problema (the title is Serbian) traces the lives of 26 refugees from the Balkans War […]

Codependence Some More! Contemporary Independent Animation

Thursday, September 18, 2003, 8pm James Duesing, Tender Bodies (2003). Animator and School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Chris Sullivan has put together a collection of recent work by animators from Chicago and beyond, leaning toward neurosis, relationship dynamics and attraction to disaster. Wild animals confess their sins in Jim Trainor’s work-in-progress Harmony, […]

Dead Birds

Thursday, September 11, 2003, 8pm “When I walked away from watching Dead Birds I almost seemed to stagger inside myself.  Today I am still jarred by it and still trying to understand the guilty significance of what it tells us about ourselves.” (Robert Lowell) Highly acclaimed yet rarely screened outside of anthropology circles, Dead Birds […]

Anti-Space Suit: The Dirty Future

Thursday, September 4, 2003, 9:30pm Curators Ben Russell & Sabine Gruffat in person! UFO’s made of cotton fluff.  Cyber-diving rods.  Sad robots.  Cosmic floating beauty aids.  All of this is but a small bit of the detritus that litters our dirty future, a new reality of the always everyday.  Media artists Sabine Gruffat and Ben […]

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