Animal Attraction
Thursday, December 11, 2003, 8pm
Kathy High in person!
Animal Attraction is a documentary about the relationship between people and animals, the way we project our hopes and desires onto our pets and ascribe human qualities and attributes to their gestures. Frustrated by the obnoxious behavior of her cat, Ernie, the video maker contacts Spring Farm CARES, [...]
The Aids Crisis Is Still Beginning: Four Video Works
Thursday, December 4, 2003, 8pm
Curator Gregg Bordowitz in person!
Introduced by SAIC faculty Gregg Bordowitz, who is himself a person with AIDS and leading figure within the AIDS activist media, this program will show a range of video works addressing the now twenty-year-old AIDS crisis. Following the screening, Bordowitz will lead a discussion about the works [...]
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 collaborative [...]
Hyperfictions: Film and Video Work by Abigail Child
Thursday, November 13, 2003, 8pm
Abigail Child in person!
Among the most accomplished filmmakers of the contemporary American avant-garde, Abigail Child has created a body of films and video known as much for their formal rigor as for the challenging subjects she explores. Deeply committed to the continuing possibilities of the art of cine-montage, Child expands upon [...]
old skool revolutionaries
Thursday, November 6, 2003, 8:15pm
First in the United States to offer BA and MFA degrees in Video Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has a critically important place in the history of this vital medium. SAIC instructor and digital systems specialist jonCates has delved into the School’s archive of seminal video works [...]
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 by [...]
Kino Dance: An Evening of Butoh Dance Films
Thursday, October 23, 2003, 8pm
Katsura Kan in person!
Emerging in late 1950’s Japan, the dance style known as Butoh is one of that nation’s key contributions to the avant-garde. The Film Center is proud to host the critically acclaimed Butoh dancer Katsura Kan, who visits from Japan to present a collection of rarely seen Butoh-inspired dance [...]
(Very) Short Films By Kevin Everson
Thursday, October 16, 2003, 8pm
Kevin Everson in person!
The relentlessness of everyday life, as well as its beauty, is the subject of Kevin Everson’s twenty-odd short films made over the past eight years. Focusing on working-class African-Americans, these brief, intense works are fictional, but mimic documentary in their naturalism and attention to the material life, tasks [...]
Mysterial Power: Recent Video by Lana Lin
Thursday, October 9, 2003, 8:15pm
Lana Lin in person!
Translations of all types are the subject of video artist Lana Lin’s recent work. No Power to Push Up The Sky (2001) is structured around an interview with Chinese student activist Chai Ling in the turbulent days before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; Lin asked fifteen Chinese-and-English speakers [...]
Alma
Thursday, October 2, 2003, 8:15pm
Ruth Leitman in person!
“Everyone I’m related to is some weird, comical pervert,” observes Margie Thorpe of Atlanta, and the rest of this edgy, intimate documentary bears her out, sometimes hilariously, sometimes with horror. Take mother Alma for instance – a working class Norma Desmond who spins tall tales out of tragic [...]
