The Animated Paul Bush
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 29, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005, 6pm
Paul Bush in person!
UK-based artist Paul Bush is an award-winning experimental filmmaker whose life changed when he discovered animation in the early 1990’s. “Within the animation community there was an understanding of a purely visual language, not one borrowed from the theatre (as in drama) or journalism (as in documentary). Commissioners, distributors and exhibitors of animation were interested in films that explored new forms and suddenly I could earn a living from making experimental films.” This retrospective of his work includes his seminal first animation His Comedy (1994), the racy Busby Berkeley’s Tribute to Mae West (2002), structure imitating story in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2001), a slice of Tokyo in Shinjuku Samurai (2004), and the mescaline dream-like vision of While Darwin Sleeps (2004). Film critic Leslie Dick comments, “What is so extraordinary about this body of work is the passionate clarity of the ideas that fuel it and the formal precision of the narrative and cinematographic structures which allow the viewer in.” 1994-2004, Paul Bush, UK, 86 min, various formats.
Co-presented with the Video Data Bank.
Tags: Animation > Europe > Monographic Shows > Retrospective > Video Data Bank
Islands and Sea in the Blood: Videos by Richard Fung
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 22, 2005
Thursday, September 22, 2005, 6pm
Richard Fung in person!
Video artist and educator Richard Fung is known for bringing criticism and activism to art. A Trinidad-born, Toronto-based video artist and cultural critic, Fung studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design and the University of Toronto, where he runs the Centre for Independent Visual Media and Education. His tapes have been widely screened and collected internationally, and his essays have been published in many books and anthologies. Sea in the Blood (2000) is a personal documentary, a narrative of love and loss set against a background of colonialism in the Caribbean and the reverberations of migration and political change. In Islands (2002), Fung deconstructs the 1957 John Huston film Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison to comment on the Caribbean’s relationship to the cinematic image. Also in the program is a sneak preview of a yet untitled documentary, Fung’s latest project with Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier. Co-presented with the Video Data Bank. 2000-2005, Richard Fung, Canada, ca. 90 min, video.
Tags: Canada > Caribbean > Diary > Monographic Shows > Non-Fiction > Video Data Bank
Shelly Silver’s World
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 15, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005, 6pm
Shelly Silver in person!
Acclaimed photographer and video artist Shelly Silver’s work has been exhibited the whole world over, and indeed a peripatetic existence is essential to her practice, which questions the myths and realities of cultural and national identity. Her work is simultaneously honest and fictional, beautiful and disturbing, cynical and romantic. Tonight Silver shares her latest video What I’m Looking For (2004), a short story about desire, control and the intimacy of portrait photography; a controversial ode to uniformed police officers, 1 (2001); Rooster (2001), an installation based on an 18th century Jewish tale; Small Lies, Big Truth (1999) which deals with morality, voyeurism and the banality of sex in the late 20th century; and excerpts from Silver’s stunning recent experimental feature, Suicide (2003). Silver will also share excerpts from the documentary 37 Stories About Leaving Home (1996) and a trailer from her 1990 feature the Houses That Are Left. Co-presented with the Video Data Bank. 1990-2004, Shelly Silver, USA/Switzerland/Japan, ca. 85 min, video.
Tags: Essay > Experimental > Non-Fiction > Retrospective > USA > Video Data Bank
Urban Rural Wild: Chicagoland Gridded/Revised
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 8, 2005
Thursday, September 8, 2005, 8pm | Curator Tom Comerford in person!
- Kartemquin Films, Now We Live on Clifton (1974). Image courtesy of Kartemquin.
These experimental and non-fiction films and videos, culled from different decades, all examine the urban landscape of Chicago, but each employs different tactics towards observing the landscape and the forces that transform it. James Benning’s Chicago Loop (1976) emphasizes the sequential, gridded nature of the photographic filmstrip with brisk pans and cuts of downtown Chicago and Wrigleyville. The Kartemquin Film collective’s direct cinema-inspired Now We Live On Clifton (1974) follows two Lincoln Park children as they ponder their future in a neighborhood beset by gentrification. Also in the program: Halsted Street (1934, Conrad Friberg aka Conrad Nelson/Film & Photo League of Chicago); White Blight Manifesto (2003, Paul Lloyd Sargent); and The Presence of Absence (2002, Brandon Doherty), among others. This program is a complementary satellite event for the show “Urban Rural Wild,”at the I Space Gallery (230 West Superior Street, www.ispace.uiuc.edu), which opens on Friday, September 9 (Thomas Comerford). 1934-2005, various directors, USA, ca. 70 min, various formats.
Tags: Essay > Experimental > Group Programs > Non-Fiction > SAIC Faculty
The Kids Are All Right & Beyond Disability: The Fe Fe Stories
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 1, 2005
Thursday, September 1, 2005, 6pm | Kerry Richardson, Mike Ervin, Salome Chasnoff & The Empowered Fe Fes in person!
- Kerry Richardson, The Kids Are All Right (2005). Image courtesy of the artist.
Just in time for the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon, this program celebrates disability activism and activists, including former Jerry’s Kids, and a group of kick-ass teenage girls living with disabilities and making media about it, the Empowered Fe Fes (slang for female). Kerry Richardson’s The Kids Are All Right (2005) is a documentary about a renegade Jerry’s Kid named Mike Ervin. A Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) poster child in the 1960’s, today Mike is a disability rights activist who challenges the MDA’s use of pity to raise money in its telethon. In Salome Chasnoff’s Beyond Disability (2004), the Fe Fes talk to folks on the street and get candid interviews regarding people’s reactions to disability when confronted with these young women who are not afraid to talk about anything. Dealing with growing up, sexuality, education and employment, these girls tell it like it is and force us all to reconsider our relationships to physical ability, grappling with discrepancies in their self-perception and the way the world sees them (KJ Mohr). 2004-2005, various directors, USA, ca. 60 min, video.
Burnt Oranges
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | May 5, 2005
Thursday, May 5, 2005, 8pm
World premiere! Silvia Malagrino in person!
Award winning artist and educator Silvia Malagrino’s career spans over the past 20 years. Conversations At The Edge is proud to present the world premiere of her new documentary, Burnt Oranges. Seeking to unravel the fabric of complex long-term effects and repercussions, personal and social, of her native Argentina’s 1970’s state terrorism, Malagrino travels to Buenos Aires. Juxtaposing an intimate first person witness narration with interviews, documentary and re-created footage dealing with issues of memory, historical time, identity, love, loss and accountability, the doc celebrates the ongoing individual and collective efforts to process, to confront, and to heal the effects of the political violence of the past. In Burnt Oranges, Malagrino explores the intricacies and the conflicts of memory and how the past reverberates in the present (KJ Mohr). 2005, Silvia Malagrino, Argentina/USA, 90 min, video.
Tags: Monographic Shows > Non-Fiction > Political > South America > USA
Lo-Fi Landscapes: Pictures from the New World
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 28, 2005
Thursday, April 28, 2005, 8pm | Thomas Comerford and Bill Brown in person!
- Thomas Comerford, Land Marked/Marquette (2005). Image courtesy of the artist.
Beloved filmmakers (and SAIC faculty and former faculty, respectively) Thomas Comerford and Bill Brown follow-up their 2002 Lo-Fi Landscapes Tour with a new program of films about the space of history and the history of spaces. These films explore how historical text becomes physical texture, and how filmmaking itself is memory recovered from landscape’s amnesia. The program includes Brown’s history of the western expansion Mountain State (2003); Comerford’s Land Marked/Marquette (2005), a series of four films which tell stories of French Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette and various Chicago monuments associated to him; and the collaborative Chicago Detroit Split (2005), a juxtaposition of chance encounters across time and space between these two Midwestern cities (KJ Mohr). 2003-2005, Bill Brown & Thomas Comerford, USA, ca. 60 min, various formats.
Tags: Diary > Essay > Group Programs > Non-Fiction > SAIC Faculty > USA
Lipstick & Dynamite
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 21, 2005
Thursday, April 21, 2005, 8pm
Ruth Leitman in person!
Conversations at the Edge is delighted to present this special screening event with acclaimed documentary filmmaker and FVNM faculty member Ruth Leitman and the SAIC premiere of her celebrated documentary about “the Golden Gals of the Mat,” Lipstick & Dynamite. With the success of her former feature-length docs Wildwood, New Jersey and Alma, it is no surprise that her latest film about “the first ladies of wrestling” has been met with huge success at festivals worldwide and will begin theatrical runs this spring. Blender magazine called Lipstick & Dynamite, “Utterly enthralling…the first film ever to appeal to feminist study groups and Hulk Hogan fans alike.” Full of outstanding archival footage of wrestlers like The Fabulous Moolah and Johnnie Mae Young, Lipstick & Dynamite deals with the lives of hardship and hard work these superstars of the ring created for themselves. With all the sex, money, injuries and intrigue that dominated their lives on the road, the competitive passion these women have for their sport shines through in Leitman’s touching portrait of women who lived hard, and fought even harder. 2005, Ruth Leitman, USA, 83 min, 35mm.
A special SAIC reception to celebrate this applauded faculty member and her latest achievements will precede the screening at 7pm. (KJ Mohr)
The Animated World of Maureen Selwood
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 14, 2005
Thursday, April 14, 2005, 8pm
Maureen Selwood in person!
Revered contemporary animator Maureen Selwood uses distinctive meshes of live footage and hand drawing, blending image and text to create work that is praised for its joyous eroticism and buoyant wit. Tonight’s visual treats include: the experimental reconstructed found-footage narrative Mistaken Identity (2001); lost love humor in Hail Mary (1999); metaphoric allusions drawn from childhood memories in Flying Circus: An Imagined Memoir (1995); the romantic Roman shadows of As You Desire Me (2003); and her newest project, “an exercise to reduce mental conflict,” a Power Point presentation entitled Drawing Lessons (2005) (KJ Mohr). 1995-2005, Maureen Selwood, USA, ca. 55 min, various formats.
Activist Videos by Lina Hoshino
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 7, 2005
Thursday, April 7, 2005, 8:15pm
Lina Hoshino in person!
Lina Hoshino’s award-winning videos, which have screened around the world since 1993, deal directly with grassroots media and art activism. Tonight she shares a diverse group of documentary and animated shorts including: a commentary on Japanese cosmetic aspiration, Beauty and the Crease (1997); Story of Margo (1997), a compelling doc about a sex worker; A Mighty Fortress (2000) a humorous animation which subtly critiques the World Bank; the story of the human cost in the building the Guatemalan Chixoy Dam (2000); the new experimental video Hideko (2005), the fascinating story of the artist’s mother; and her latest doc, Caught In Between (2004), which revisits the dark days of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, in light of post-9/11 repression that Muslim and South Asian communities face (KJ Mohr). 1997-2005, Lina Hoshino, Japan/USA, ca. 65 min, video.
« go back — keep looking »About
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.
