Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Worldly Desires
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 12, 2006
Thursday, October 12, 2006, 6pm
Called “one of the most creative and unpredictable film artists now working anywhere” by Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader, tonight’s program is a slate of new films and videos by multiple Cannes-winner and SAIC alum Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady, Blissfully Yours), including the dazzling 2005 featurette, Worldly Desires. A musical companion piece to Tropical Malady, the film begins as a behind-the-scenes look at the jungle productions of a Thai soap opera and a music video but soon falls under the verdant spell of the rainforest. The two shoots bleed into one another and into the reality of the backstage production, punctuated by shimmering pop song-and-dance numbers and overgrown with images of the verdant backdrop. Also screening: Ghost of Asia (w/Christelle Lheureux, 2005) and The Anthem (2006), among others. 2006, Achipatpong Weerasetakul, Thailand, ca. 70 min, various formats.
JODI: Max Payne Cheats Only
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 5, 2006
Thursday, October 5, 2006, 6pm
Joan Heemskerk & Dirk Paesmans in person!
Digital provocateurs JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) pioneered Web art in the mid-‘90s, upending the conventions of the emerging medium to create anarchic programs that simulated computer crashes, viruses, and error messages. The duo has wrought similar havoc on computer programs and video games, radically disrupting the language of these systems—including interfaces, commands, errors, and code—to subvert the relationship between computer technology and its users. Tonight, in a rare public appearance, JODI will demonstrate their latest game modifications, Max Payne Cheats Only (2005), a series of “cheats” the duo compiled from the ultra-violent New York vigilante game Max Payne, along with their ground-breaking modifications of the game Quake 1, Untitled Game (1996-2001), id Software’s game Wolfenstein 3D, Sod (1999), and the early 80s game Jet Set Willy, Jet Set Willy Variations ©1984 (2002). Co-presented by CATE, the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Department of Interactive Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago. 1996-2005, JODI, Netherlands, ca. 60 min, various formats.
Kelly Reichardt: Old Joy
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 28, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006, 6pm
Kelly Reichardt in person!
Best known in recent years for her accomplished short films (Ode, Travis), Kelly Reichardt’s latest award-winning feature is an elegiac road movie shot on the highways and in the lush backwoods of the Pacific Northwest. Alt-country star Will Oldham and Daniel London play estranged friends, one on the verge of fatherhood, the other has no strings attached. As the two struggle to reconnect during a weekend camping trip, they travel deeper into the past over progressively political terrain, on a journey of reconciliation and loss. With original score by Yo La Tengo. “Old Joy is about the miles we put on our lives and the directions known and unknown still facing us…one of the most persuasive portraits of generational malaise—and tentative hope—to come from an American director in recent memory” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times). Reichardt’s 2002 short Then, A Year will precede the feature. 2002-06, Kelly Reichardt, USA, ca. 90 min, various formats.
In Between Days
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 21, 2006
Thursday, September 21, 2006, 6pm
So Yong Kim in person!
Winner at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals, SAIC alum So Yong Kim’s luminous debut feature is the delicately observed story of Aimie, a Korean teenager newly immigrated to Canada. Aimie lives with her single mother in a bleak Toronto housing block, killing time smoking, window-shopping, and playing video games with her best, and only friend, Tran. As her feelings for Tran deepen, however, he turns his attentions to another, more westernized, girl. Set against the stunning, snow-covered landscape of a Canadian winter, In Between Days captures the daily trials of assimilation and the longing and sexual insecurity of youth. Kim “is a gifted artist…with a rare appreciation for the poetic possibilities of digital video” (Scott Foundas, LA Weekly). In English and Korean. 2006, So Yong Kim, USA, 83 min, video.
Terra Incognita: Films & Videos by Ben Russell
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 14, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006, 6pm
Ben Russell in person!
Senses co-mingle, past becomes present, and geography is turned upside down in filmmaker and SAIC alum Ben Russell’s short films and videos. Shot throughout South and North America, these works play on the history and fantasies of the New World, mixing photography, ethnography, psychedelia, and ceremony to chart a kino-atlas of the west’s collective unconscious. Includes: Daumë (2000), The Tawny (2003), The Quarry (2002), Michoacan: La Muerta (w/Sabine Gruffat, 2006), Black and White Trypps Number One (2005), Terra Incognita (2002), Michoaca: El Traidor (w/Sabine Gruffat, 2006), Black and White Trypps Number Two (2006), and The Red and Blue Gods (2005). 2000-06, Ben Russell, Chile/Mexico/USA, ca. 75 min, various formats.
David Lamelas: Time Is a Fiction
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 7, 2006
Thursday, September 7, 2006, 6pm
Argentine-born conceptual artist David Lamelas has produced an extraordinary body of film and video work over the past 30 years, balancing a cheeky sensibility with a serious inquiry into the rhythms and syntax of contemporary life. Tonight’s program is a rare opportunity to see five of his earliest 16mm experiments, including Reading of an Extract From Labyrinths by J.L. Borges. (1970), To Pour Milk Into a Glass (1972), Time As Activity (Düsseldorf) (1969), A Study of Relationships Between Inner and Outer Space (1969), and The Desert People (1974). Curated by Jacqueline Holt for LUX. 1969-74, David Lamelas, Germany/UK/USA, ca. 95 min, 16mm.
SAIC Department of Film, Video and New Media Year-End Show
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | May 11, 2006
Thursday, May 11, 2006, 6pm
Filmmakers in person!
Tonight’s program is a cinematic toast to the semester’s end with a cross-section of current work by emerging talents in the School of the Art Institute’s Department of Film, Video, and New Media. Cheers!
Lilli Carré’s What Hits the Moon (2006) pits an aging cartoon character against the man in the moon. James Sweetbaum’s Monde Sarir (2006) explores the relationship between history, geography, and desire in contemporary urban spaces. Amber Hawk Swanson’s Feminists People (2006) and I’ve Never Really Been Into Feminism (2006) deliver an x-rated treatise on sorority-style feminism. Dylan Mira and Latham Zearfoss’ A Call and An Offering (2006) documents the creation of Pilot TV — a temporary laboratory for experimental public TV on Chicago’s south side. Chris Reilly explores the “prison level” of the US Army’s official video game, “America’s Army,” in Marksmanship Training (2006), a unique machinima performance. Mark Gallay & Noe Kidder creatively respond to author D.M. Thomas with their own version of White Hotel (2006). And Jeffrey Moss’ atmospheric Sisterhood of Night (2006) spins a tale about a group of high-school girls and their mysterious nocturnal society. 2005 – 2006, various directors, Morocco/UK/USA, ca. 94 min, various formats.
Calculations: Pioneers of Computer Animation
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | May 4, 2006
Thursday, May 4, 2006, 6pm
- Larry Cuba, Calculated Movements (1985).
Decades before Hollywood CGI spectaculars, artists worked with computers to create an aesthetic specific to the machine. At IBM, Bell, and in their own home-built labs, they generated visionary spectacles from mathematical precision– stroboscopic patterns, kinetic rhythms, and volumetric illusions. Tonight’s program is a cross-section of films by these early pioneers — from John Whitney’s stunning, analog-computer-generated Catalog (1961) and the pulsating geometry of Lillian Schwartz’s Enigma (1972) to the dense digital metaphysics of John Stehura’s Cybernetik 5.3 (1965-69) and the allegorical characters of Peter Foldes’ Hunger (1973). Also on the program: Hummingbird (1967, Charles Csuri); Sunstone (1979, Ed Emshwiller); Calculated Movements (1985, Larry Cuba); Poemfield No. 5: Free Fall (1966, Stan VanDerBeek); Permutations (1968, John Whitney). 1961-1985, various directors, Canada/USA, ca. 64 min, 16mm.
[FRAY]
Tonight’s show is an instance of [FRAY], a distributed series of screenings, discussions, student initiated projects and a conference. [FRAY] traces intersecting hyperthreads of time, screen and code-based experimental New Media art hosted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Film, Video, and New Media.
Tags: Animation > Canada > Early Video Art > Group Programs > New Media
The Memo Book: The Films and Videos of Matthias Müller
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 27, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006, 6pm
Curator Stefanie Schulte Strathaus in person!
“Müller’s deeply felt and elegantly constructed work marks him as one of the most important filmmakers of his generation.” (Mike Hoolboom)
Matthias Müller’s work can be read as the unwritten history of German experimental film. At once moving and smart, his lush, image-rich films and videos draw on the broad iconography of Hollywood melodrama (and its reflection in the queer avant-garde), Super 8 home-movie fragments, brooding Expressionist themes, and structuralist rigor to reflect a deep engagement with history, media, and memory. Tonight’s program is the second evening in a three-part retrospective of Müller’s work curated by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, artistic director of the Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek in Berlin and co-presented by the Experimental Film Club at the University of Chicago and Block Cinema and includes his 1989 masterpiece Aus Der Ferne – The Memo Book along with: Sleepy Haven (1993); Sternenschauer – Scattering (1994); Home Stories (1990); and Alpsee (1994). Part one screens Wednesday, April 26 at Block Cinema. Part three screens Friday, April 28 at the EFC. 1989-1994, Matthias Müller, Germany, ca. 65 min, 16mm.
The Time We Killed
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 20, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006, 6pm
Jennifer Reeves in person!
Set in the unhinged months that stretched from 9-11 to the invasion of Iraq, Jennifer Reeves’ award-winning feature debut achieves a quiet power through rough-edged, handcrafted means. Best known as an accomplished abstract filmmaker, Reeves wrings bitter truth, confused paranoia, and impotent rage from those days, infusing them into the story of an agoraphobic poet, Robyn (real-life poet Lisa Jarnot). Robyn sequesters herself in a small Brooklyn apartment as global events unravel; a day without leaving becomes a week, then blurs into months. But the outside nevertheless intrudes: Bush calls for war on TV, concerned friends leave messages, neighbors’ arguments seep through the walls. Robyn’s verbal and visual stream of consciousness provides an internal narrative in more ways than one, as her observations blend into a lyrical swirl of sunny reverie, muted trauma, and inescapable reality. (Ed Halter, Village Voice). 2005, Jennifer Reeves, USA, 94 min, 16mm.
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Conversations at the Edge is a weekly series of screenings, performances, and talks by groundbreaking media artists.
CATE is organized by SAIC's Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center and SAIC's Video Data Bank.
Programs take place at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State / Chicago, IL / 312.846.2600), unless otherwise noted.
