Deborah Stratman and Thomas Comerford
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | December 5, 2002
Thursday, December 5, 2002, 8pm
1994—2002, USA, ca. 70 min, various formats.
Filmmakers in person!
Independent film/video makers Deborah Stratman and Thomas Comerford are both instructors in the SAIC Department of Film, Video and New Media. Stratman will present In Order Not To Be Here (2002), a stunning look at security-obsessed suburbia; Untied (2001), about breaking free from abusive cycles; and Waking (1994), a video in two halves about two states (asleep and awake). Comerford will present Figures in the Landscape (2002), a pinhole film examining the relationship of the human figure to the suburban landscape of Schaumberg, Illinois; Illa Camera Obscvra (2001), a pinhole film examining the “camera obscura” (dark room) as metaphor for cinema; and Pass Over Land Without Touching It (2001), an unslit 8mm film offering views through windows, from great heights, and across vast distances.
Science Is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painlevé
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 21, 2002
Thursday, November 21, 2002, 8pm
1934—1976, Jean Painlevé, France, ca. 71 min, 35mm
The director of more than 200 nature films, Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) scandalized the scientific world with a cinema designed to entertain as well as edify. Advocating the credo “science is fiction,” he endowed seahorses, vampire bats, and fanworms with human traits — erotic, comical, savage. His work was admired by Surrealists and Avant-Gardists such as Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Vigo and Luis Buñuel, and the composers who scored his films include Darius Milhaud, Pierre Jansen and Pierre Henry. The program includes: The Sea Horse (1934), How Jellyfishes Are Born (1960), The Sea Urchins (1954), Acera or The Witches (1972), The Lovelife of the Octopus (1965), Liquid Crystals (1976). (Description courtesy of American Cinematheque)
6 Easy Pieces
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 14, 2002
Thursday, November 14, 2002, 8pm
2001, Jon Jost, USA, 68 mins, video
Jon Jost in person!
Jon Jost numbers among the first and most adventurous of American independent filmmakers to explore non-film methods of production. He is in the forefront of the movement to create a new aesthetic and a new visual vocabulary for the electronic image-making medium. Based in Europe for the past several years, this former Chicagoan shot 6 Easy Pieces in Portugal and Italy, using visual perceptions, street images and a wide range of motions to create an engaging piece that is part narrative, part abstraction. Presented with the Department of Film, Video, and New Media of the School of the Art Institute. Video. (Barbara Scharres)
Film and Video by Eleanor Antin
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 7, 2002
Thursday, November 7, 2002, 8pm
1972—1989, Eleanor Antin, USA, ca. 90 min, various formats
Eleanor Antin in person!
The career of pioneering multimedia artist Eleanor Antin spans four decades of film, video, photography, writing, performance and installation. Exploring what she calls “the slippery nature of the self,” Antin invents a unique mixture of real and imagined autobiography, recreations of lost worlds and other luminous moments in the history of art and politics. The program includes The Last Night of Rasputin (1989), a speculation on the mad monk’s final orgy; From the Archives of Modern Art (1987), a compilation of the “lost” films of a black ballerina in Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe; and excerpts from the early video works The King (1972) and The Adventures of a Nurse (1976). (Jeffrey Skoller)
Magick, Darkness and Devils
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 31, 2002
Thursday, October 31, 2002, 8:15pm
1903—2002, various directors, France/Germany/Spain/USA, ca. 116 min, 16mm
Kenneth Anger in person!
For Halloween, we present an evening of films from the avant-garde that explore the space between film and the supernatural. The program includes Georges Melies’ The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903), Ferdinand Zeca’s El Espectro Rojo (1903), Hans Richter’s Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928); and James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber’s Fall of the House of Usher (1928). The evening concludes with three films by Kenneth Anger: Scorpio Rising (1963), Lucifer Rising (1980); and the Midwest premiere of Anger’s first film in 22 years, The Man We Want to Hang (2002), a tribute to occultist Aleister Crowley. (Daniel Eisenberg)
Myths, Legends and Lies
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 24, 2002
Thursday, October 24, 2002, 8pm
1925—2002, various directors, USA/Hungary, ca. 105 min, 16mm
The mythic imagination runs amok in this program of a dozen animated and live-action films programmed by Jim Trainor, animator and professor of film at the School of the Art Institute. Includes: Aristophanes on Broadway (1991, Zack Stiglicz), Daumë (2001, Ben Russell), Everready (ca. 1925, Anonymous), Evil of Dracula (1997, Martha Colburn), God the Pugilist (1996, Zack Stiglicz), Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1994, Chris Sullivan), Peace on Earth (1939, Hugh Harmon), Pony Glass (1997, Lewis Klahr), Riverbody (1970, Anne Severson), Syrinx (1964, Ryan Larkin), Sisyphus (1975, Marcell Jankovics), Terra Incognita (2002, Ben Russell). (Jim Trainor)
Careful
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 17, 2002
Thursday, October 17, 2002, 8pm
1992, Guy Maddin, Canada, 100 min, 35mm
Guy Maddin in person!
Like Edward Gorey’s mysterious books, Guy Maddin’s films are weirdly, unnervingly funny; one senses a deadly parody even if it is not clear exactly what is being made fun of. In Careful, set in some bogus European mountain country, characters tiptoe around a paper-maché landscape, as terrified of setting off avalanches as they are of their own incestuous desires. It is a quality of Maddin’s perversity to cast the stalwart brothers with actors barely younger than their chilly but voluptuous mother. (Jim Trainor)
Film and Video by Elisabeth Subrin
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 10, 2002
Thursday, October 10, 2002, 8:15pm
Elisabeth Subrin in person!
Subrin’s films and videos examine the intersections of history and subjectivity within female biography. Engaging conventions of documentary and personal narrative, the works strategically undermine their own forms, shifting historical periods, genres and characters to explore the residual impact of the 1960s and the hazy boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. The program includes The Fancy (2000), the life of photographer Francesca Woodman as seen through catalogues of her work; the anorexia-themed Swallow (1995); Shulie (1997), a film within a film about radical feminist Shulamith Firestone; and Well, Well, Well (2002), which uses an MTV aesthetic to unpack the hidden erotics of office supplies. Presented in cooperation with the Video Data Bank. 1995—2002, Elisabeth Subrin, USA, ca. 105 min, various formats.
Tags: Monographic Shows > Portrait > SAIC Alumni > USA > Video Data Bank
Celebrating Stan Brakhage: A Sampler
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 25, 2002
Thursday April 25, 2002, 8pm
We honor a living master of the cinema on the occasion of the publication of the Chicago Review’s current issue devoted to Stan Brakhage. This program is part of a three-evening series in conjunction with programs at Chicago Filmmakers (April 26) and the University of Chicago’s Experimental Film Club (April 27). Tonight’s screening is a mixture of early/late, classic/obscure, photographic/hand-painted works, presented in three movements: (1) Dog Star Man: Prelude (1961), Yggdrasill Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind (1997). (2) Murder Psalm (1981), Visions in Meditation #2 Mesa Verde (1989). (3) Interpolations (1992, 35mm), The Lion and the Zebra Make God’s Raw Jewels (1999) (Daniel Eisenberg). 1961-1999, Stan Brakhage, USA, ca. 93 min, 16mm except as noted.
Contemporary Artist – The Videos of Ximena Cuevas
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 18, 2002
Thursday. April 18, 2002, 6pm
Ximena Cuevas in person!
“Ximena Cuevas, Mexico’s video artist extraordinaire: half magician, half mermaid, master of all she surveys.” — B. Ruby Rich
“Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas is a poet of everyday life, a master of self-portraits and the fairy godmother of a new melodrama. Boldly defying taboo subjects with lightness and a self-conscious sense of humor that is changing the shape of Mexican film and video history, her hyper-layered, exquisitely scored, and intensely personal videos are ferociously surprising and imaginative.” — Sergio de la Mora, Senses of Cinema
Ximena Cuevas will introduce many of her short videos and current work in progress including: Turistas (work in progress) (2002), Staying Alive (2001); Televisión (1983-99); Las Tres Muertes de Lupe (1984); Cuerpos de Papel (1997); Contemporary Artist (1999); El Diablo en la Piel (1997); La Puerta (2000); Cama (1998); A La manera de W. Disney (1992); Almas Gemelas (1983-99); Baba de Perico (1999); Estamos Para Servile (1999); Natural Instincts (1999); Destino (1999); Hawaii (1999); Help (1999); La Tombola (2001); Calzada de Kansas (1999); Colchones Individuales (2002). Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. 1983-2002, Ximena Cuevas, Mexico, ca. 85 min, video.
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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.
