Films by Jim Duesing
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | March 31, 2005
Thursday, March 31, 2005, 8pm | Jim Duesing in person!
- James Duesing, Tender Bodies (2003).
Computer animator and video artist James Duesing’s work has been exhibited around the world in venues as diverse as Sundance, PBS, The Berlin Video Festival, MTV, Shanghai Animation Festival, Film Forum and the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. Tonight he shares a program of work including: Impetigo (1983), a story of passion and possession in a steamy nocturnal landscape; a painful look at modern realities, Tugging the Worm (1987); the apocalyptic Maxwell’s Demon (1990); Law of (1996), which takes place in a lush garden where lovers meet and an addictive interactive theater called Big Ghost; and Tender Bodies (2003), a sinister yet humorous story that imagines a time when genetic experiments become an elite hobby. A discussion with the artist will follow the screening (KJ Mohr). 1983-2003, Jim Duesing, USA, ca. 60 min, various formats.
Sisters in Cinema
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | March 24, 2005
Thursday, March 24, 2005, 8pm
Yvonne Welbon in person!
Yvonne Welbon’s films and videos work to create a stronger media presence for African-American women. Her award-winning biographical (Living with Pride: Ruth Ellis @ 100), autobiographical (Remembering Wei Yi Fang, Remembering Myself…) and narrative (Taste of Dirt) films have been screened on cable, public television, at universities and community centers, and in film and video festivals around the world. Sisters In Cinema is the much anticipated video companion to her print resource guide for and about African-American women feature filmmakers, offering an overview of the lives and the films of African-American women feature film directors from the early part of the century to today. Not finding her cinematic sisters in Hollywood, Welbon set out to find them outside of the system. This documentary profiles that history from Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic films in the 1920’s to contemporary makers such as Euzhan Palcy, Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye & Maya Angelou. In addition to her production and research work, Welbon has successfully self-distributed all her films, becoming a noted resource on the subject. The Department of Film, Video & New Media is delighted to welcome this alumna to Conversations at the Edge www.sistersincinema.com (KJ Mohr). 2003, Yvonne Welbon, USA, 62 min, video.
Living Megastructures
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | March 17, 2005
Thursday, March 17, 2005, 8pm
Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber in person!
Austrian artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber have been working in tandem since 1993 on projects addressing urban geographies, architectural representations and related visual politics. Their projects have included “Caracas, Hecho En Venezuela”, “Live like this!” and “CITYtransformer”, most recently, they mounted a billboard entitled “SuperCitizen” in Los Angeles. Bitter & Weber engage with moments and sites of globalization, as they are materialized in architecture and mediated through photography, video and new media technologies. They have participated in Johannesburg and São Paulo Biennale, and have mounted projects all over Europe, as well as the Americas. In their 2003-4 project Living Megastructures they interviewed people in Caracas, Venezuela, investigating the limits of appropriation and the effect of architecture on social and spatial relations. Tonight they will share that tape and discuss their prolific body of contemporary media work. In Spanish with English subtitles www.lot.at (KJ Mohr). 2003-2004, Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber, Austria/Germany/Venezuela, 25 min, various formats.
Tags: Europe > Monographic Shows > New Media > Non-Fiction > South America
Brother to Brother
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | March 10, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005, 8:15pm
Rodney Evans in person!
Rodney Evans worked as a screenwriter and editor on numerous indie successes and made his autobiographical festival hit film, Close to Home, before writing and directing this award-winning feature. Brother To Brother, encountered popular and critical acclaim as it hit festivals last year and is enjoying theatrical runs worldwide. The story of a young gay man’s coming of age in the Harlem Renaissance, Brother To Brother, premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize for passion of subject. The film had its European premiere at The Berlin International Film Festival in February, 2004 and was recently nominated for 4 IFP Spirit Awards including Best First Film and Best First Screenplay. This dramatic narrative film invokes the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance through the memories of Bruce Nugent, who co-founded the revolutionary literary journal Fire!! with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman. As an elderly man, Nugent meets a young black gay artist struggling to find his voice and together they embark on a surreal narrative journey through his inspiring past. www.brothertobrotherthemovie.com (KJ Mohr). 2004, Rodney Evans, USA, 90 min, 35mm. With Anthony Mackie, Larry Gilliard Jr.
Films by Stephanie Barber
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | March 3, 2005
Thursday, March 3, 2005, 8:15pm
Stephanie Barber in person!
Prolific Milwaukee-based filmmaker and artist Stephanie Barber has been featured in solo shows at the New York Film Festival’s Views From the Avant-Garde and the Museum of Modern Art’s Cineprobe series and has established herself over the past decade as an extraordinary and singular filmmaker, winning awards and acclaim at festivals and venues all over the world. Tonight Barber brings us a diverse selection of her work, including: her classic, Flower, The Boy, The Librarian (1997); the love-it-or-hate-it world of a talking bag-puppets in Dogs (2000); Metronome (1998), a film about the loss of love; the necessarily participatory Total Power Dead Dead Dead (2005); Shipfilm (1998); Letters, Notes (2000); and the world premiere of Barber’s latest creation, Catalog (2005). Barber will discuss her films throughout the presentation (KJ Mohr). 1997-2005, Stephanie Barber, USA, ca. 57 min, 16mm.
An Evening with Steve Reinke
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 24, 2005
Thursday, February 24, 2005, 8pm
Steve Reinke in person!
“Like being splashed in the puss with a BEDPAN of PLENTY!” — George Kuchar
This evening’s screening will celebrate the release of acclaimed and controversial filmmaker Steve Reinke’s book Everybody Loves Nothing: Video 1996-2004. Reinke will present selections from his video work including: Painter, the reconstruction of an audio-letter from a newly-married military wife to her in-laws in 1968; the gracious reduction of an emotionally distraught monologue, J.-P. (A Remis of “Tuesday & I” by Jean-Paul Kelly (2003); a contemporary reworking of Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music,” Anthology of American Folk Song (2004); and the premiere of 14 Introductory Statements and a Concluding Reconstructed Walk (KJ Mohr). 1989-2005, Steve Reinke, Canada/USA, ca. 73 min, video.
An Animated Valentine
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 17, 2005
Thursday, February 17, 2005, 8pm
Stephanie Barber, still from "Letters, Notes" (2000)
Curator Jim Trainor in person!
In the afterglow of Valentine’s Day, or its aftermath, we present ten animated films to tickle your spirits, or further crush them. Love is the subject, and many are the splendors, from Chuck Jones’ interspecies tearjerker Feed the Kitty (1952) to the excruciating first date of Don Herzfeldt’s Lily and Jim (1997). A forgotten masterpiece, Joie de vivre (1934, Hector Hoppin & Anthony Gross) is an erotic Art-Deco bookplate come to life, while an eerie sort of tenderness suffuses Suzan Pitt’s primal-scene drama Crocus (1971). Also on the program: Her Fragrant Emulsion (1987, Lewis Klahr); Letters, Notes (2000, Stephanie Barber); Love Story (1998, Signe Baumane); Milk (2002, Cat Solen); the Moschops (2001, Jim Trainor); Windy Day (1967, John & Faith Hubley) (Jim Trainor). 1934-2002, various directors, France/USA, ca. 85 min, various formats.
Empathy
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 10, 2005
Thursday, February 10, 2005, 8pm
Amie Siegel in person!
Native Chicagoan poet, filmmaker and media artist Amie Siegel has garnered recognition worldwide for her subversive and provocative style in her filmic explorations of voyeurism. Tonight she brings us Empathy, a feature that investigates the tricky intimacy between psychoanalysts and their patients, combining a mosaic of genres including narrative fiction, documentary, screen tests and TV parody. Empathy has been praised by critics internationally as “Funny! Amazing! Fascinating!” (Die Welt), “Humorous and Illuminating” (Indianite) and “Seriously playful! Shrink verity!” (Village Voice) in its exploration of performance and identity, authority and gender, voyeurism, sexual exploitation, disclosure, and the boundaries between truth and fiction. The Department of Film, Video and New Media is proud to welcome home this alumna (KJ Mohr). 2003, Amie Siegel, USA, 92 min, 35mm.
The Aids Crisis Is Ridiculous: An Evening with Gregg Bordowitz
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | December 9, 2004
Thursday, December 9, 2004, 8pm
Gregg Bordowitz in person!
The Department of Film, Video and New Media gathers to celebrate the release of Gregg Bordowitz’s new book, The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (published by MIT Press, edited by James Meyer with a forward by Douglas Crimp). Bordowitz and invited guests will read selections from the book, interspersed with selections from his films and videos. Afterwards we will host a public conversation between Gregg Bordowitz and the editor of the book, James Meyer.
Something More Than Night
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | December 2, 2004
Thursday, December 2, 2004, 8pm
Screening in memory of George Roeder
Daniel Eisenberg in person!
Shot in Chicago’s public spaces; airports, train stations, malls, downtown offices, industrial zones and the many ethnic neighborhood that make the city, Something More Than Night articulates the daily nocturnal experience of a large international urban center, while creating through slow time, a composite portrait of contemporary urban life and our present time of multiple dislocations (Daniel Eisenberg). 2003, Daniel Eisenberg, Germany/USA, 77 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.
