James Benning: Twenty Cigarettes
April 19, 6:00 p.m. | James Benning in person! James Benning, Twenty Cigarettes (2011). Courtesy the artist. Celebrated for his minimal, monumental landscape studies, James Benning turns to the intimacy of the portrait in his latest film, Twenty Cigarettes. Referencing Warhol’s screen tests, 1930’s Hollywood glamour, and the disappearing cigarette break, the film captures 20 […]
Yvonne Rainer: Lives of Performers
April 12, 6:00 p.m. | Yvonne Rainer in person! Yvonne Rainer, Lives of Performers (1972). Courtesy Zeitgeist Films. Join us for an evening with filmmaker, choreographer, and poet Yvonne Rainer and a rare screening of her acclaimed first feature, Lives of Performers, shown from a pristine new print. Embodying Rainer’s aesthetic rigor and wit, the film […]
Brent Green: Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then
March 29, 6:00 p.m. & March 31, 12:30 p.m. | Brent Green in person! Brent Green, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then (2010). Courtesy the artist. Brent Green’s folk-punk films interweave drawing, puppets, hand-built sets, and stop-motion animation to spin tales of transformation and loss. For two appearances Green presents his acclaimed animated feature Gravity Was […]
Tomonari Nishikawa & Small-Gauge Japan
March 8, 6pm | Tomonari Nishikawa in person Tomonari Nishikawa, Tokyo-Ebisu (2010). Courtesy the artist. Working in formats ranging from Super 8 to 35mm still photographic film, Tomonari Nishikawa constructs his films through precise single-frame shooting, elaborate masking, superimposition, and in-camera editing. He transforms the elements of urban life into multilayered abstractions of light, movement, […]
George Kuchar: HotSpell
Thursday, February 23, 6:00 p.m. | Introduced by Abina Manning, Executive Director of the Video Data Bank George Kuchar, HotSpell (2011). Courtesy the Video Data Bank. “Desire and death are in the air, along with some aromatic wisps of ethnic edibles, so be sure to sniff it all.” —George Kuchar George Kuchar became a legend […]
Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area /// New Prints/New Preservation
February 16, 6:00 p.m. | Introduced by Steve Anker, curator and Dean of the School of Film/Video at CalArts Image from Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue (Leslie Thornton, 1984). Courtesy the Pacific Film Archive Library. Since the 1940s, San Francisco has been both a haven and inspiration for an influential constellation of moving […]
GREGORY MARKOPOULOS: ENIAIOS II
Thursday, November 3, 6:00 pm | Archival print! Introduced by film historian Bruce Jenkins and followed by audience Q&A with Jenkins and avant-garde film scholar P. Adams Sitney (who will join us via Skype). Image from ENIAIOS II (Gregory Markopoulos, 1949-1991). Courtesy the Temenos Archive and the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna. Remembered as the “supreme […]
REBECCA MEYERS: BLUE MANTLE
Thursday, October 20, 6:00 pm | Rebecca Meyers in person! Image from blue mantle (Rebecca Meyers, 2010). Courtesy the artist. In her nimble, intimately-observed films, Cambridge-based filmmaker Rebecca Meyers illuminates the uncanny and exquisite in the everyday. lions and tigers and bears (2006) seeks out urban wildlife–from spiders and pigeons to bronze lions and chrome-plated […]
STEINA!
Thursday, October 13, 6:00 pm | Steina Vasulka in person! Live performance! Image from Violin Power (Steina, 1974-78). Courtesy the artist. A major figure in the histories of video and electronic art, Steina Vasulka has continually expanded the possibilities of multimedia with her groundbreaking innovations. Trained as a classical violinist in Iceland, Steina turned to […]
LANDSCAPE AS ARCHIVE
Thursday, October 6, 6:00 pm | Filmmakers Bill Brown and Lee Anne Schmitt in person! Image from Bowers Cave (Lee Lynch and Lee Anne Schmitt, 2010). Image courtesy the artists. In recent years, a number of artists have turned to the landscape itself–using everything from iPhone apps to walking tours–to examine the ways in which […]
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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.
