An Animated Valentine
Thursday, February 17, 2005, 8pm 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 […]
Diverse Works by Matt Hulse
Thursday, October 28, 2004, 8pm Matt Hulse in person! Matt Hulse was born upside-down in 1873. He trained at the Court of King James the Awkward in the art of crystal shoe making. He later founded the College of Wax working in Krakow, Poland, the site of which was the inspiration for Renais’ Last Year […]
Onion City Festival Opening Night Program
Thursday, September 23, 2004, 8pm The Opening Night Program of the 16th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, a production of Chicago Filmmakers, features an exciting selection of new works by celebrated avant-garde artists. In Gunvor Nelson’s Trace Elements (2004), lush digital images, an intricate soundscape, and a constantly searching camera create a work […]
Puppet Animations by Lisa Barcy
Thursday, May 6, 2004, 8:15pm Lisa Barcy in person! Escape is at the center of Lisa Barcy’s dark, if playful, animations. Always looking for the closest exit, her neurotic protagonists – paper cutouts, 3-D puppets, or lumps of moving clay – are prone to leaping without looking first, inviting disaster into their dreamlike worlds. Like […]
Recent Work by Nancy Andrews: Monkeys and Lumps & The Dreamless Sleep
Thursday, April 15, 2004, 8pm Nancy Andrews in person! A tender fascination with the world informs the puppet animations of Nancy Andrews, who appears tonight with the first two films of a projected trilogy. Wryly old-fashioned in style, her black-and-white films mix invented characters with historical personages as they poke around in dim corners of […]
Heaven and Earth Magic
Thursday, February 12, 2004, 8pm A magician dismembers a woman and tries to put her back together. Such is the plot of this unique feature-length animation, created with 19th-century engravings and compulsive single-mindedness by Harry Smith (1923-1991), beatnik musicologist and one of cinema’s greatest outsiders. As its cutout protagonists undertake mystical journeys of uncertain purpose, […]
Bad Ideas for Paradise: Videos by Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby
Thursday, November 20, 2003, 8pm Something funny is going on in the world of Duke and Battersby, the Canadian video artists who put themselves at the center of their collage-like explorations, which, nevertheless, are only marginally autobiographical. Speaking shifty aphorisms, singing doleful folksongs and mingling with psycho-babbling and straight-talking cartoon animals, this self-described “sexually compatible […]
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 […]
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, […]
Jennet Thomas and Exploding Cinema Showcase
Thursday, March 20, 2003, 8:15 pm Jennet Thomas in person! Originating from the lively underground film scene of London in the early 1990’s, Jennet Thomas’s work has become renowned worldwide. Her films and videos come from an eclectic and multiply discursive history, as well as a curiosity about animating matter and images through time. Regardless of […]
« 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.
