PRESS
LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY
Chicago Reader
Nearly wordless and shot in 10-minute takes, this experimental ethnographic film by Chicagoan Ben Russell accompanies two South American descendants of African slaves on a kind of pilgrimage, from the developed north of Suriname, a former Dutch colony, to inland jungles that buffer old tribal villages. A Steadicam records the young brothers as they travel by bus, by boat, and on foot; gridlocked urban traffic gives way to a remote mining site, then trees falling in a rainforest, before they arrive at a hamlet of the Maroon tribe to dance in an archaic ritual masquerade. The hypnotic effect is completed by the final shot, in which the brothers head home via canoe, the receding sound of their oars leaving behind only the mythic image of man as journeyer. 135 min. (Andrea Gronvall)
_____
NEW NIPPON: CONTEMPORARY FILM AND VIDEO FROM JAPAN
Chicago Reader Blog
“New Nippon”
Akino Kondoh’s animation Ladybird’s Requiem, drawn in pencil, pastel, and acrylic, is among the 13 contemporary Japanese shorts screening in New Nippon Thursday 12/3 at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
The films “draw from the country’s rich experimental film and hand-drawn animation traditions—’flip book’ paintings, diary films, and time-based collaborations between avant-garde artists and musicians,” writes SAIC grad student Kelly Shindler, who curated the show for the Film Center’s Thursday night Conversations at the Edge series.
The program also includes Maya Yonesho’s Kyoto Remix, Tomonari Nishikawa’s Sketch Films #3-5, Naoyuki Tsuji’s Zephyr, Wada Atsushi’s Well That’s Glasses, Joji Koyama’s From Nose to Mouth, Hiroshi Kondo’s Live Material 001 and Live Material 002, Ryusuke Ito’s Plate #43-44 (The Forked Tongues), Stom Sogo’s Try, and Makino Takashi’s Still in Cosmos. (Ed M. Koziarski, Dec. 2, 2009)
_____
Flavorpill Chicago
The 80-minute, nine-artist New Nippon is an eclectic and spirited jaunt through contemporary Japanese film and video art. Tomonari Nishikawa’s silent, Super-8 Sketch Films #3-5 reflexively examine filmmaking concepts, explicating the challenges of color projection and depth of field. The film grains and splotches in Hiroshi Kondo’s dazzling Live Material 001 juxtapose against new-wavey geometrics and, in 002, shifting symmetries of Tokyo neon. In Akino Kondoh’s Ladybirds’ Requiem, sparse, black-and-white pencil illustrations react in sublime understatement against morphing After Effects landscapes. The program concludes with Makino Takashi’s 19-minute Still In Cosmos. Featuring a score by Jim O’Rourke, the new film explores how even varying perspectives ultimately yield order from perceived chaos. (Stephen Gossett)
_____
LOOK FOR ME: ANIMATED FILMS BY LAURA HEIT
Chicago Reader
Urban angst and a subversive wit infuse these short works by Laura Heit, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute and a former puppeteer for Redmoon Theater who’s now codirector of experimental animation at California Institute of the Arts. In Parachute (1997) a young woman is almost literally swallowed up by downtown chaos; Look for Me (2005) is a meditative fantasy on invisibility; and the poignant puppet film The Amazing, Mysterious & True Story of Mary Anning and Her Monsters (2003) focuses on an amateur British paleontologist who preceded Charles Darwin. Heit will attend the screening and perform The Matchbox Show, a multimedia piece using live video projection of cutouts and line drawings. (Andrea Gronvall)
_____
Chicago Art Magazine
“Look for Me: Animated Films at the Gene Siskel Film Center”
Many works by SAIC alumnus Laura Heit were screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center last Thursday, November 19th. Four animated films were shown, consisting of stop-motion, hand drawing, and computer animation, along with a miniature “matchbox” puppet show. Heit performed “The Matchbox Shows” with tiny puppets that fit in a matchbox. The matchbox also doubled as a title card and stage set. Overall the works were smart, often humorous, and at times profound
…
Heit’s hand drawn characters have an adolescent immediacy that is at times almost Basquiat-esque. They are rough but perfectly tailored to the narrative. Heit’s world seems to be an adult fascination with childhood and adolescence (what kind of animator or cartoonist wouldn’t be?). From this perspective she pushes humor to a deeper and more profound level. Read More… (Jared Weiss, Nov. 22, 2009)
_____
VARIABLE AREA: HEARING AND SEEING SOUND, 1966-78
Chicago Reader Blog
“Experimental Sound on Film”
We all know how important the soundtrack is to most films, and scores by certain composers—Ennio Morricone, Toru Takemitsu, Bernard Herrmann, Georges Delerue, and John Barry, to name a few—more than stand on their own. Other soundtracks rely heavily on nonmusical material, such as Walter Murch’s brilliant sound design in the Francis Ford Coppola film The Conversation. Though it’s rare for filmmakers to place as much emphasis on sound as they do on what’s on the screen, a program screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Thursday night at 6 PM offers just as much to fans of experimental music and noise as it does to cinephiles.
“Variable Area: Hearing and Seeing Sound, 1966-1978″ is part of the Film Center’s weekly Conversations at the Edge series as well as part of this year’s Outer Ear Festival of Sound, presented by Experimental Sound Studio. (Full disclosure: the program was curated by my girlfriend, Michelle Puetz, but regular readers ought to know that I don’t need to fake an interest in this stuff—nor would I.)
Most of films get their juice from using optical sound, where a transparent strip marked with various lines and waves is printed on the margin of the actual film and read with light. Rather than try to explain this process further, I’ll direct you to this explanation. In any case, most films employ the technique to transmit music, dialogue, sound effects, or whatever we usually hear as we watch. But some of the directors whose work is being screened on Thursday fill that strip with deliberately abstract patterns to create intensely weird and noisy sound. Continue Reading… (Peter Margasak, Nov. 11, 2009)
_____
ALL TOGETHER NOW: VIDEOS BY HARRY DODGE AND STANYA KAHN
Flavorpill Chicago
Infusing video art with the spark of improv performance, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn make short works that are funny and disarming, absurd and oddly touching, like sketch comedy that hasn’t been domesticated or reality TV turned on its head. In last year’s Whitney Biennial standout, a Valkyrie with a bloody nose and a plastic Viking helmet wanders Los Angeles, rambling nutso commentary to the cameraman that trails her. In the pair’s latest, All Together Now, the barren city sprouts a post-collapse social order of hooded tribes and taciturn foragers. Kahn is a captivating performer, while Dodge wields the camera — which becomes another main character of sorts, a silent but evident interlocutor. The artists join us in person for the screening (Karsten Lund)
_____
MARK
Bad at Sports
“Mike Hoolboom’s Mark at the Gene Siskel Film Center”
Presented by the Department of Film Video and New Media at SAIC, the Video Data Bank and the Gene Siskel Film Center, as part of their Conversations at the Edge series, Mark is a video portrait of Mark Karbusicky, created after his suicide in 2007.
Director Mike Hoolboom began his opening remarks by stating that there was a time in his life when all the good things happened in a movie theater, until a day in 2007 when he found out that his friend and collaborator of six years Mark had killed himself, which he was told right before a movie began. Yikes.
The film reads less like a documentary and more like a moving collage of stock footage, childhood portraits and relics, as well as interviews with his friends and family. Beginning with his oldest childhood friend, the film traces the life of a man you end up knowing less about in the end than you did to begin with. It is an odd portrait in that it seems to capture more the periphery of his life than actually attempting to memorialize the man himself. Or perhaps documenting the margins of his life, his politics, odd moments in home videos, Hoolboom was attempting to achieve a more genuine view of Mark as a person.
Created mostly of footage taken by his partner (who happens to be transsexual, although this is actually irrelevant), of her own performances and activism, Mark by default seems to be the supporting character in his own life memorium. Mark was clearly a tortured person. Deeply invested in animal rights, queer politics, and helping others with mental illness, a lot of attention was focused on how little he cared about himself and put all others before him. Hoolboom spoke after the screening about how the film was created in the space between the way things were before Mark had died and before things had settled into the way they would be after his death. The rawness of this period is apparent especially in the interviews, which were all done within the year after his death.
The film is edited to create an intense amount of tension. Many pieces of footage are overlapped, the hand-heldness is emphasized in upside down and shaky camera work, and shots seems to be just too short, or just too long or just too out of focus for one to feel comfortable. In an interview with one of Mark’s friend and coworker, the camera is at table height, and the woman is half obscured by a large candle holder. The focus goes in and out as she tells this heartwrenching rendition of their final interaction. After the screening, Hoolboom explains that he wanted to give his interviewees physical space, and referenced this shot in particular to demonstrate how he wanted the candle to mediate the space between her and the camera. Although I acknowledge the gesture after he spoke about it, during the shot I felt myself wanting to peer around the obstacle and actually see her face. Another shot I thought was more successful was that of Mark’s partner Mirha-Soleil Ross; the camera was focused on the deep red wall of their apartment, you could see a bookcase and a plant, and she walked almost around the frame while she spoke about her recurring dreams during their ten year relationship that he had left her. Her body was just present enough to give you a sense of agency, but the lack of her presence really caused you to focus on her words and storytelling.
I wish the voiceover was left out. Hoolboom in person is charming and eloquent and gesticulates beautifully; on screen his voice seems affected and melodramatic. I think the subtly is lost when documentarians feel the need to describe what has happened instead of letting moods come across through images.
The film was successful in that it felt vast and encompassing, through the use of stock footage that spanned decades, Mark’s own home videos and photos as well as different people speaking about him. It did not feel like the entire momentum of the piece lead up to a dramatic revelation of how he killed himself, which was refreshing. Hoolboom said that his death was not the most important thing that happened in his life, and I think the film reflected this sentiment. (Lauren Vallone, October 22, 2009)
_____
Vision in Motion: Filmmaking at the Institute of Design
Eight Forty-Eight, Chicago Public Radio
“Vision in Motion Series Brings New Light to Old Films” STREAM DOWNLOAD
When you think film, Hollywood may come to mind. But think again. One of the first American film and photography schools started right here in Chicago. The Institute of Design produced some of the most influential works of its time. See some of those films in the Gene Siskel Film Center’s two-part series Vision in Motion: Filmmaking at the Institute of Design, 1944-70. For a sense of what you’ll see, Eight Forty-Eight’s Film Critic Jonathan Miller has this review. 
(October 1, 2009)
_____
Chicago Journal
“Glimpses of Chicago past: Siskel Center explores groundbreaking early film”
The Gene Siskel Film Center’s early October program, Vision in Motion: Filmmaking at the Institute of Design, 1944-70, examines one of the first art-film programs in the United States. Now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Bauhaus-inspired Institute of Design offered film classes in Chicago as early as 1942.
The Institute positioned film as an extension of photography, design and other fine arts fields. Emphasis was placed on experimentation, with results skewing towards the avant garde rather than traditional cinema.
The Siskel’s two-day-long, thirteen-film program presents a fascinating glimpse into this phase of scholastic filmmaking. An energetic air runs through the shorts — the byproduct of excited youth brimming with ideas in the face of a “new” artistic pursuit.
Do Not Disturb, produced by Institute of Design head Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and his students in 1945, is the perfect encapsulation of this brio. Jealousies and tensions amongst young lovers are projected using every trick of the trade: multiple exposures, reverse motion, handheld camerawork, split screen, prism lenses, rapid motion, distortions and more.
Motions, directed by Harry Callahan from 1948-49, furthers this momentum. Again, camera trick upon camera trick is thrown into the pot. But this time, they are deployed to emphasize the intersections of man, machine and nature in motion. The overboard accumulation is saved by pristine imagery — the play of light on running water, cars superimposed upon each other as they race up and down Lake Shore Drive.
The documentary quality of these films is invaluable, capturing mid-20th century Chicago in all of their gritty beauty. Three films in particular are essential.
Chicago Morning, produced by Boris Yakovleff and eleven students in 1952, charts the early morning hours, when humanity rushes into the quiet Loop, lakefront and South Side stockyards. Studs Terkel poetically narrates this rise to life, his gravel voice adding authenticity.
The Church on Maxwell Street, directed by Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Marvin Newman in 1951, heads to the heart of the Chicago blues, translating the religious ecstasy of a raw street-side church revival into a series of beautifully framed images.
A perfect encapsulation of Vision in Motion’s documentary and experimental sides is found in Ken Josephson’s 1962 short, 33rd and LaSalle. The premise is simple: detail the demolition of an apartment building located on a South Side street corner. Josephson finds sophistication in the simplicity, however.
Remnants of lives long gone haunt the urban decay via lone shoes, discarded calendars and newspapers strewn everywhere. When the destruction begins, a movie poster for the Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida vehicle, Solomon & Sheba, adorning an exterior wall becomes a target for the wrecking ball. The metaphor is obvious and brilliant. (Phil Morehart, September 23, 2009)
_____
The Films of Bruce Conner – Thursday, April 16 and Friday, April 17, 2009
Flavorpill Chicago
Artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner announced his own death on two occasions, but the real thing had to come eventually (and so it did last summer.) Over consecutive evenings, the Siskel Film Center celebrates the late innovator with a survey of his films, spanning 50 years. Looking at visual culture today, Conner’s influence can be felt all over. His 1958 film A Movie, assembled entirely out of scavenged footage, launched a creative method that lives on in recent art and YouTube’s remix fever, and in setting his films to a pop music soundtrack he anticipated MTV. Not to be forgotten are Conner’s collaborations with musicians like Brian Eno and David Byrne, one of which screens on Thursday. (Karsten Lund, April 16, 2009)
_____
Chicago Reader
The first of two programs surveying the 50-year career of found-footage filmmaker Bill Conner. Among the eight shorts screening in this installment are A Movie (1958), The White Rose (1967), Looking for Mushrooms (1996), and Easter Morning (2008). 75 min. Michelle Silva, a representative of the Conner Family Trust, will attend the screening, a mix of 16-millimeter and projected video. A second program follows on Friday, April 17. (April 10-16, 2009)
Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the U.S. – Thursday, April 9, 2009
Time Out Chicago
“Bank Holiday: Video Data Bank opens the vault”
When Lyn Blumenthal and Kate Horsfield founded the Video Data Bank (VDB) in 1976, the two School of the Art Institute of Chicago grad students hoped to preserve the neglected work of women artists. Over the decades since, the VDB has amassed the best library of videos by and about contemporary artists in the United States.
The VDB’s 2,500-plus videos include works from 1968 through the present, by artists including Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, Miranda July and Paul Chan. Anyone can watch these videos at the nonprofit’s SAIC headquarters—for free.
In 1995, the VDB produced Surveying the First Decade: Video Art & Alternative Media in the U.S., 1968–1980, a massive anthology of its early holdings that was curated by Chris Hill. In conjunction with the anthology’s recent release on DVD, Hill presents a 75-minute sampling of Surveying the First Decade at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Thursday 9 at 6pm, as part of the SAIC’s Conversations at the Edge series.
But we know a mere 75 minutes can’t satisfy our thirst for the groundbreaking video art of Martha Rosler, Bruce Nauman and Nam June Paik. So over the next several weeks at timeoutchicago.com/blog, we’ll recap all 16 hours and 26 minutes of Surveying the First Decade. We expect the box set to feature less torture than 24 but more William Wegman. (Lauren Weinberg, Issue 215, April 9–15, 2009)
_____
Time Out Chicago blog
“5 Things to Do Today”
Chicago’s famous Video Data Bank offers a taste of its 16-hour anthology of 1970s video art—finally available on DVD—with the compilation’s original curator, Chris Hill. (April 9, 2009)
_____
New City
“Art Break: Blast from the Past”
When video-recording equipment became commercially available in the 1960s, a new art medium was born. Perhaps television and cinema are the best and most interesting expressions of recorded imagery, with screenwriters and directors being some of the most compelling, if not the most popular, artists of the twentieth century, but other artists—those who went to art school and showed their work in galleries—adopted film and video with equal energy. In 1973 Richard Serra and Carlotta Fay Schoolman’s bought some airtime and broadcast Television Delivers People, a scrolling set of truisms that derided the viewing public as a bunch of complacent nitwits. “You are the product of t.v.” ran one criticism, coupled with ironically chipper public-service-announcement music. Such reactionary work ran counter to the massively popular dramas and sitcoms broadcast each evening, but it’s no wonder since contemporary academic art of the time was in the throes of being challenging, critical and “conceptual.” Video was quickly folded into the avant-garde regime at a time when painting was deemed too conventional. Continue reading… (Jason Foumberg, April 6, 2009)
_____
Former video curator at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo and administrator of the public access TV station there, Hill was a media arts professor at my alma mater Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio until the school was shut down last year by the umbrella Antioch University. Now, along with most of the Antioch College faculty, Hill soldiers on as a professor and administrator at the experimental Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute, which is fighting for its continued existence amid efforts to reopen Antioch College independent from the university.
Surveying the First Decade screens Thursday at 6PM at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Hill will speak afterward. (April 8, 2009)
_____
Eight Forty-Eight
“Video’s First Decade” STREAM DOWNLOAD
Film on video is turning 40. In the mid-’70s, the Video Data Bank was formed to archive videos by or about artists. Located right here in Chicago, the VDB is now the leading source in the United States for contemporary video work. In 1995, the group put together a 16-hour collection documenting the first ten years of video.
The collection has just been reissued, and some of the works screen tonight at the Gene Siskel Film Center, as part of its Conversations at the Edge series. Eight Forty-Eight’s film critic Jonathan Miller explains what you can expect to see. (April 9, 2009)
_____
One-Way Street
“Video: The First Decade”
Tonight Chris Hill of the Video Data Bank will host screenings from the VDB’s collection of experimental and activist videos from the 1970s at the Gene Siskel Film Center as part of its series Conversations at the Edge. Video from this period may seem crude compared to contemporary digital multimedia texts, but the decade was a critical point in the history of visual media. The dominant medium of the century was supposed to be visual technologies–first cinema, then television–but by the 1970s film and TV had neither penetrated the culture to the extent analysts thought they would, and both were in something of a creative funk. Modernism in film had run its course, and high production value television fattened corporate coffers while doing little to create anything genuinely new. The 1970s were also a period when philosophers and cultural theorists recognized that language–old-fashioned words–were at the center of everything.
This tension between a supposedly dominant media technologies floundering and the centrality of written and spoken language can be seen in Vito Acconci’s The Red Tapes (1976). The video is boring and language-centric. It recreates the boredom of watching the whole flow of television by stripping out the mesmerizing images and leaving words just floating out there, as incantatory by themselves as television images. (April 9, 2009)
_____
A World Rattled of Habit: Films by Ben Rivers – Thursday, April 2, 2009
Flavorpill Chicago
In his self-made short films, Britain’s Ben Rivers hovers along the fringes of contemporary society, creating expressive portraits of hermetic worlds and the people who inhabit them. Reflecting his creative use of the hand-wound Bolex camera, which limits the length of his shots to 30 seconds, each film unfolds as a rich series of visual fragments. Whether he’s examining the remnants of abandoned houses or passing time with a family living in the wilderness, Rivers’ productions are more poetic proposals or evocative sketches than complete stories where everything is spelled out. For tonight’s screening, Rivers presents a selection of his films — including a sneak peek at one in progress — along with works by three other filmmakers. (Karsten Lund, Issue 237, March 31 – April 6, 2009)
_____
Cory Arcangel – Thursday, March 19, 2009
Time Out Chicago blog
“Five Things to Do Today”
The Brooklyn-based artist tweaks pop culture through sound, performance and online projects including his Super Mario Bros. movies and Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum. (March 19, 2009)
_____
Double Underscore
“Thoughts on Cory”
Cory Arcangel was in Chicago at Conversations at the Edge this past week and I had a chance to talk to him in jonCate’s class the following day. I guess it’s obvious that I would be familiar with Cory’s work, but I have to say hearing where he’s coming from really changed my perception of his work. I felt as though he doesn’t typically have the opportunity to discuss his work in an academic environment often, and his reluctance to get too specifically historical/academic during these conversations seemed evidence of this fact. I assume that Cory’s work is interpreted as being highly nostaglic or otherwise vested in hyper-aware irony. Although, I do think that Cory agrees with this kind of reception of the work, he seemed to have more acute intentions in mind.
He spoke often about his work being an equivalent to a time capsule, citing not knowing any of the cover artists from old Art Forum’s of the 80s (which Cory is on the cover of, which jonCates has talked about here). He seemed to be dedicating himself to the transient principles/nature of the newMedia Art; focusing on how media objects/installations can be testaments to future obsolescence. Questions about his practice lead him to admit that often times his presentations/talks were used to test new materials out on an audience. In doing so, the new material that he showed seemed to be veering into more calculated approaches to working with transient/ephemeral forms (youtube vs. white cube, internet vs. hardware hacks). The cultural ambiguity of these projects seemed to be the central issue of this work – how can he equally affect Art aficionados and grandmothers that love videos of cats – as opposed to irony being the primary issue. (Nicholas O’Brien, March 22, 2009)
_____
Letters, Notes: Films by David Gatten – Thursday, March 5, 2009
Double Underscore
“In Progress + Gatten’s Traces”
…I want to take a brief moment to reflect on the recent screening of films by David Gatten at the Siskel Center as part of the Conversations at the Edge series that SAIC’s Film, Video, and New Media department puts together (very brilliantly crafted/organized by Amy Beste). The screening consisted of aprox. 80 mostly silent minuets of films from a substantial body of work deeply invested in the personal cartographic/literary life of William Byrd II. The yet to be finished series of films followed a interwoven history between Byrd, his daughter, his daughter’s secret lover/suitor, Thomas Jefferson, and the (secret) history of demarcating space.
The most captivating piece for me was the final film in the screening: Film for Invisible Ink Case No. 142: Abbreviation for Dead Winter [Diminished by 1,794] (dedicated to Philip Solomon). This piece was a series of optically printed intricate rack focuses of blots of ink. The magnification process that the film made transformed these spills into oceans of black splashed with dark tributaries that would only be sharply depicted momentarily before fading away into the milky reservoir from which they emerged. The metaphor here of the disappearing ink, both faded through time and memory, is executed in such a poetically technical manner; treating these streaks as ripples from a distant seas of diary scratchings, or hasty scrawls of passion.
Amy introduced Gatten’s work as being heavily invested in “the trace.” Although I didn’t think that this was necessarily true during the screening, I’ve come back to this association many times since. I find myself questioning the trace that the history of these tangled relationships left upon the land in which the Byrd’s owned, as well as the boundaries which Byrd himself drafted (specifically the border between Virginia and North Carolina). Continue reading…(Nicholas O’Brien, March 12, 2009)
_____
DDR/DDR – Thursday, February 26, 2009
Chicago Sun-Times
“Arthouse Films”
Amie Siegel charts anxiety and architecture in her analytical films. Surveillance cameras and psychoanalysts’ couches are recurring motifs in her uncanny essay films. Her first two works—Sleeper and Empathy—were shot in her hometown of Chicago. DDR/DDR is about the former East Germany, a k a DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), and made during her recent sojourn in Berlin.
Siegel plumbs the psychic aftermath of the 1989 reunification of East and West Germany. Her polymathic style recalls Countdown (1990), Berlin filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger’s account of the two Germanys uniting their currencies. DDR/DDR also evokes Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil (1968), a provocative essay mixing a Rolling Stones session, Black Panther rhetoric and Native Americans.
Siegel interviews therapists and secret police operatives from infamous Stasi, the DDR’s largest employer. She deconstructs Stasi footage and samples the anti-imperialist Westerns once made by DDR film studios. She also visits a tepee encampment of enthusiasts who dress up in Native American garb to identify with their oppression.
Siegel breaks the frame on occasion. In one scene, she reclines on a day bed in the inner sanctum of former Stasi director Erich Mielke. It looks like it’s there for trysts or therapy, she says. Addressing the lens in an odalisque-like pose, she looks like comic Sarah Silverman as she recites her film’s precis: “psychoanalyst as Stasi, Stasi as psychoanalyst, filmmaker as psychoanalyst, filmmaker as Stasi, Stasi as filmmaker.” DDR/DDR is an alluring and allusive dossier. (Bill Stamets, February 20, 2009)
_____
Eight Forty-Eight
“East Germany and Krypton Come to Chicago” STREAM DOWNLOAD
The documentary film DDR/DDR by Chicago native Amie Siegel examines the reactions of ordinary East Germans to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Film critic Jonathan Miller discusses Siegel’s approach, as well as that of Ken Jacobs in his film Krypton is Doomed. (February 26, 2009)
_____
Le Chicago Art Blog
“DDR/DDR screening at Conversations at the Edge, Gene Siskel Center”
Amie Siegel’s 2008 film DDR/DDR weaves together strange tales of individuals living in East Germany after the fall of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). Not strictly a film about the people living in the DDR, the networks explored in this film consists of the technologies – in particular, the types of camera and recording technology used – architectural spaces, and even the fate of psychoanalysis during these years. Siegel positions hereself as an artist performing as psychoanalyst, mining the archives of the Stasi’s films – a tremendous feat – and the spaces occupied by them. What has survived the approximately 20 years since die Wende has been shaped by the films of the DDR – a technophile’s dream! Scenes of present-day German “Indian Hobbyists” discussing the East German films based on the American Western genre, filled with cowboys and “Indians,” are novel and disturbing to my Chicagoan eyes, but if I wasn’t so affected, then this film would be just another type of effort at multi-culturalism. (March 1, 2009)
_____
Chicago Reader
This intriguing 2008 documentary on life in communist East Germany rambles a bit, but its focus on state surveillance is all too relevant today. The secret police used cameras with custom lenses, while citizens were recruited to spy on each other and psychiatrists were sometimes enlisted to drive their patients insane. Director Amie Siegel provides some counterbalance by interviewing Germans who fondly recall the job security of the communist system (there was no “existential fear,” says one). A fascinating interlude shows westerns produced by East German moviemakers that portrayed Indians as good communists and whites as dishonest capitalists–images with a grain of truth. 135 min. (Fred Camper)
_____
The Dance Camera: Locked & Loaded - Thursday, February 19, 2009
Chicago Reader
Curated by Daniele Wilmouth, these eight shorts showcase dance in provocative ways–from Switzerland, Elodie Pong’s Je Suis une Bombe (2006) includes the startling image of a young woman pole dancing in a panda suit. In Miranda Pennell and John Smith’s UK short You Made Me Love You (2005) students scramble to stay in close-up during a tracking shot, as if they know their careers will be brief. In Pennell’s Tattoo (2001) military dress parades on Salisbury Plain resemble precision chorus lines, suggesting a connection between popular dance and war dances. The most charged piece, Benoit Dervaux’s French-Algerian-Nigerian Black Spring (2002), raises questions of cultural appropriation when an African dancer halts in the middle of a performance to demand payment. 78 min. (Andrea Gronvall)
_____
Through the Looking Glass: Videos by Cecelia Condit – Thursday, February 12, 2009
Eight Forty-Eight
“Wendy and Lucy arrive at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre” STREAM DOWNLOAD
Film critic Jonathan Miller discusses the Kelly Reichardt film Wendy and Lucy. The film stars Michelle Williams as Wendy – a woman on a journey across the United States in the company of her dog Lucy. It opens tonight at the Music Box Theatre. And, the next installment of the Conversations at the Edge film series kicks up at the Gene Siskel Film Center. (January 30, 2009)
_____
Chicago Reader
Cecelia Condit, who teaches film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, presents a career-spanning program of her videos, which have aspects of the horror movie, fairy tale, avant-garde film, and Hollywood musical. She’s written that they “explore the dark side of female subjectivity,” but what most engages me is how, with characters breaking into song at the most unpredictable moments, they can seem unclassifiable, even charmingly goofy. The lyrics are often the most meaningful element, but meaning is highly provisional here, as the chaotic forces of the id escape. In the earliest short, Possibly in Michigan (1983), a wolfman pursues two women in a shopping mall, but not every woman is a victim (we hear of one who microwaved her poodle). Both childhood (for its free imagination) and old age (for its sense of limits) are frequent subjects. (Fred Camper)
_____
Sight & Sound Flingco Sound System — Thursday, February 5, 2009
The Wire
“Haptic + Interbellum”
If we’re living at the end of the music business’s Cretaceous period, Chicago’s Flingco Sound System label may be one of the small, adaptable mammals that will inherit the Earth after the dinosaurs keel over. Determined to remain unencumbered by an unmovable inventory of CDs, it has turned to a mix of old and new media, releasing music in cheap download and premium vinyl formats. Label boss Bruce Adams further tinkered with the formula by pairing three Flingco acts with experimental filmmakers and presenting the results in a movie theatre instead of a bar. Too often the union between sound and vision is hierarchical, with one of the other dominating; the audio supports the video, or the video sells the audio. While two of tonight’s performers failed to transform the relationship, one offered a rare glimpse of the two media on equal footing.
Pianist and sampler player Brendan Burke’s Interbellum, which also features cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, simply played their music while Annie Feldmeier Adams’s amalgam of recently shot and found footage ran onscreen. Since the cellist faced the audience and Burke’s piano abutted the wall where the screen hung, it was impossible for either player to see much of the video, let alone interact with it. Even so, the set was a success; while it broke no new ground, the mix of sound and vision was complementary. The music’s persistently wistful mood provided an affective baseline for the images, which jumped from wintry lakescapes, to sadly ironic footage crowing about the safety of New Orleans’s spillway system, to parade sequences populated by creepy and comic clowns. Interbellum didn’t play anything from their new record, which may be as well; the meandering, piano-led pieces on Over All Of Spain The Sky Is Clear too often smudges the line between melancholy and maudlin. Recently Burke has discovered Just Intonation, and his new music rebalances the record’s mix so that his piano sketches sparse melodies upon a surface of looped samples and keening strings rather than loom over them. All-electronic trio Cristal opted for a gambit that made sense in the current economic climate, but was equally traditional. Rather than treck from Virginia to Illinois, they gave a track from their LP Re-Ups to video maker Clayton Flynn. Its measured, electrical pulse functioned purely as backdrop for his barrage of colour-enhanced astrological and geographical stills.
Haptic’s appearance with Lisa Slodki offered much more. Haptic comprise Adam Sonderberg, Joseph Mills, and Steven Hess; all three wield electronics, and Hess also plays a conventional drum kit. They usually include a different guest fourth member for every concert; film maker Lisa Slodki broke that rule by playing with them for the second time tonight. Working behind a bank of VHS tape players, she superimposed loops of children’s faces and light reflecting off water. Haptic’s first sound closely resembled the machine clatter of an old film projector; ironically, Mills’s oscillator looked like one that had had its reels removed. The trio’s engine-like hums and high sine tones seemed to insinuate themselves into the theatre, keyed to the moment-to-moment shifts of onscreen light. The musicians and projectionist made real-time changes in response to each other’s input, sometimes recreating one medium’s effect in another. This was not simply music plus video, but an interactive performance. (Bill Meyer, May 2009)
_____
Bloodlust!
“Haptic + Noise Crush, Last Night ”
I attended the Conversations at the Edge / Sight & Sound: Flingco Sound System event last night at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Interesting stuff all around but I was utterly blown away by what Lisa and Haptic presented. Of course, it was nice to watch one of Lisa’s video pieces unfold when I was not in the middle of muddling through some guitar and synth work, myself. And my simmering jealousy of Haptic stealing Noise Crush away from The Fortieth Day was at least partially soothed by Lisa’s use of human beings throughout much of her program. Her signature style and feel were there, but it was quite different, overall, as it was not primarily abstract. But it was definitely a beautiful and melancholy presentation, projected on a really large screen, as deserved. And she was actually performing under her own name, after all. Haptic built a much more complex soundscape than on their recent BloodLust! cassette, and their sound really locked in nicely with the video. They showed great restraint, whether with electronic frequencies or the bass-enhancing percussion — lending a still-minimal feel to their set, even if there were several layers of sound happening. And at the right moment, there were some glorious feedback-esque pure frequencies that probably jolted people back to attention, were they drifting off due to the mesmerizing video and sound. A nice full house turned out for this and it was good to see some familiar faces… (Mark Solotroff, February 6, 2009)
_____
Semiconductor – Thursday, October 30, 2008
Eight Forty-Eight
“Semiconductor Joins Art and Science” STREAM DOWNLOAD
What is the theory of everything? Are art and science disciplines that cannot coexist in the same space? For answers to those questions – and a tip on an interesting film collaboration screening tonight at the Gene Siskel Film Center, we turn to Eight Forty-Eight’s film critic, Jonathan Miller.
A quick lesson in electronics: the term “semiconductor” typically refers to a computer chip. But it also refers to a material through which an electric current passes. These materials possess intriguing properties. When a substance is a semiconductor, it can both impede and permit the flow of electrons. UK filmmaking team Joe Gerhardt and Ruth Jarman have aptly chosen the name Semiconductor for their collaboration. Their work shuttles betwixt and between the poles of art and science.
When scientists investigate the physical world, their work often takes them to realms beyond the reach of the human eye. Akin to scientists, artists make things visible, and they often shine light on unforeseen or overlooked phenomenon. Jarman and Gerhardt’s work make it clear how much the two endeavors have in common. (October 30, 2008)
_____
Joanie 4 Jackie: The Lady Glitterati of the New Movie Uprising – Thursday, October 16, 2008
Time Out Chicago
“Chain Gang”
Miranda July’s “video chain letters” for women filmmakers get some respect at the Siskel.
Given the success of her 2005 film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, and her 2007 book of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July has become a recognizable name in the arts. But long before she even began working on such successes, July founded Joanie 4 Jackie, an alternative distribution company turned supportive community for women in filmmaking.
The way the organization worked was simple: A filmmaker would send in a copy of a film she’d made and, in return, receive what was called a “chain-letter tape” consisting of bits of others’ video projects or films. Occasionally, July would organize screenings of the films she collected. This started in 1995, before the Internet and social media made it so easy to share work and create any sense of community for budding filmmakers outside of New York or Los Angeles.
Although July’s current involvement in Joanie 4 Jackie is that of “almost consulting,” as she says, she’s glad it’s still going strong and getting attention in the form of exhibits and screenings, including an upcoming series at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
“When I first started gathering the movies, having screenings seemed to be the only way the women could see each other’s work,” July says. “It felt like the more people became aware, the more they’d come together. It was really a whole different world, where the only way to show and see work was really by coming together.”
The network July launched and the subsequent archive of films by hundreds of women will be highlighted on October 16 at “Joanie 4 Jackie: The Lady Glitterati of the New Movie Uprising,” at Conversations at the Edge, the weekly series put on by the School of the Art Institute. Though July won’t be present for the screening, her influence will be felt in the films. Continue reading…(Jamie Murnane, Issue 189, October 9–15, 2008)
_____
Films by Robert Breer, 1957-86 – Thursday, September 11, 2008
Chicago Reader
Ten shorts by the experimental animator, restored and blown up to 35-millimeter. Reviewing a similar retrospective, Fred Camper wrote, “Breer builds sequences out of tiny bits of intercut imagery–mostly only a few frames long, some abstract and some representational–to produce a flicker that both reflects the rhythm of film projection and keeps the viewer on edge. At the very moment you think you understand the organizing principles of a sequence, Breer will introduce a live-action shot of, say, a toy telephone prancing across the floor on little plastic feet. . . . Breer’s short films are surprisingly varied in feeling and tempo, moving from energized, almost electric movement to brief meditative silences, from intimations of sadness to humor–a humor that allows Breer to confront doubt and loss without ever becoming portentous.” Screening are A Man and His Dog Out for Air (1957), Eyewash (1959), Blazes (1961), Fist Fight (1964), 66 (1966), 69 (1968), 77 (1970), Fuji (1974), Swiss Army Knife With Rats and Pigeons (1981), and Bang! (1986). (J.R. Jones)
_____
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind – Thursday, September 4, 2008
Chicago Reader Critics’ Choice!
Inspired by Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, this beautiful documentary by John Gianvito (The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein) documents not only graves and memorials across the U.S. for people (both famous and unknown) who died in political struggles but also the surrounding landscapes that nestle and sometimes hide these largely unremarked sites. The casual way Gianvito introduces us to these settings via sound and image, the varying cinematic means employed (including stretches of animation), and the powerful maximal effects he achieves from his supposedly minimalist agenda are all essential elements of the film’s haunting poetry. Named best experimental film of 2007 by the National Society of Film Critics, it displays a strong passion for history–including film history, from Griffith, Stroheim, and Dovzhenko to Straub-Huillet. (Jonathan Rosenbaum, August 29-September 4, 2008)
_____
Films of Gordon Matta Clark – Thursday, March 13, 2008
Eight Forty-Eight
“Three to See: Matt’s Guilty Pleasure” STREAM DOWNLOAD
Each week Chicago Public Radio’s Matt Cunningham brings us three opportunities to add to our culture calendar.
From a photographer’s conversation on human intimacy, to Conversations at the Edge, stop Three of our Three to See are three films by artist Gordon Matta-Clark. Matta-Clark cut through dilapidated structures, bringing light and perspective to these dark spaces.
Besides the short film Clockshower, which is also on view as part of the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, two other films are being featured. City Slivers is a 9 ½ minute silent film that only lets you see a sliver of the cityscape through the lens. Office Baroque, is a documentary about Matta-Clarks dissection of a 5-story office building in Antwerp, Belgium. Amy Beste coordinates the series.
BESTE: Office Barogue contains a number of really really beautiful, interesting and beautiful revealing interviews with Matta-Clark. But also some really gorgeous images of the actually cutting really gives a sense of the way it moves through the building. This particular cutting was so large that you couldn’t take it all in, in one go.
As part of the conversation, his widow, Jane Crawford will be there to share personal perspectives on his work. (March 7, 2008)
_____
Prisoners of War – Thursday, February 28, 2008
Chicago Reader Critics’ Choice!
Starting with From the Pole to the Equator (1987), the Milan-based couple Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi have excelled at compiling silent archival footage, encouraging the material to speak, both historically and poetically, through masterful use of music, tinting, and variable speeds. (Their mystical reverence for the footage is reflected in how they commune with it by keeping film cans around the house before opening them.) Drawn from many war museums, this 1995 work is the first part of a World War I trilogy, and it’s a spellbinder, alternately beautiful and horrifying. It concentrates on POWs in prerevolutionary Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but there’s also some extraordinary combat footage. The few Italian intertitles, most of them identifying dates and locations, are unsubtitled. (Jonathan Rosenbaum, February 22-28, 2008)
_____
I Love Presets – Thursday, February 21, 2008
Flavorpill Chicago
I Love Presets, the local audio/video art conglomerate of Jon Satrom, Jason Soliday, and Rob Ray, presents its work for this week’s Conversations at the Edge series at the Siskel Center. The trio chops up and recontextualizes bits of digital ephemera into new processes, sounds, and even games; it may sound a bit techy, but one look at Ray’s ultra-provocative Guilty Party installation or ILP’s labyrinthine website, and it becomes clear that the gadgetry’s impressive, but the concepts are just as fully formed. (Issue 179, February 21, 2008)
_____
Conversations at the Edge, 2007 Season Overview
Eight Forty-Eight
“Jonathan Miller at the Edge” STREAM DOWNLOAD
Now don’t get us wrong—we watch our share of Hollywood blockbusters and romantic comedies. But isn’t it sometimes a little more entertaining to find films on the edge? Who better to answer that question than our own edgy film critic Jonathan Miller? He tells Eight Forty-Eight’s Alison Cuddy about a homegrown program of new film, video and other media works called Conversations at the Edge, or CATE for short. (September 28, 2007)
_____
Peggy Ahwesh: Pistolary! – Thursday, April 26, 2007
Flavorpill Chicago
Peggy Ahwesh’s experimental videos investigate sexual pleasure, gender, and cultural identity. Tonight’s screening marks more than 20 years of artistic production and the concurrent Video Data Bank release of Pistolary!, a three-disc DVD compilation of her work. (Issue 136, April 24-30, 2007)
_____
Eight Forty-Eight
“Experimental Filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh” STREAM DOWNLOAD
American experimental filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh developed her sensibility in the punk rock 70s and early 80s making super-8 films of friends and bands in Philadelphia. The transgressive impulses, countercultural energies and do-it-yourself aesthetic strategies of the era have continued to inform her work. Horror films and low-budget exploitation films, as well as the work of other underground filmmakers, also provide points of departure for Ahwesh.
Martina’s Playhouse is a work from 1989 that offers a deceptively casual and ultimately complex investigation of feminine identity. Ahwesh focuses her camera on a young girl named Martina. At first it seems she wants to document the child’s everyday behavior. Martina eats and plays. Then, Martina reads French psychoanalytic theory aloud. She exhibits need and then independence. The playhouse of the title is a reference to the popular television show Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Ahwesh’s version of a playhouse shows the construction of identity at work in the interplay between child and adult, filmmaker and subject. Diverse and disparate scenes involve Martina and her mother but also the filmmaker and her protege, Jennifer Montgomery. A multi-faceted interaction unfolds between the elements of the film. The filmmaker’s camera functions as an instrument of investigation but also seduction. Mother and daughter switch roles with the grown-up cast in role of a suckling baby. Martina becomes the boss, protege becomes mentor. Ahwesh wields the camera as epistemological scalpel, slicing the skin of what we see to reveal how it makes the layers of what we know and who we are…Throughout her work, with its dead men and lively women, Ahwesh charts the circuits and interruptions of desire, its exuberant ceaseless flow. She confronts her viewer with a manifold task: to interrogate who we are, how we became that way and how we can become more alive, more fully human. Continue reading…(Jonathan Miller, April 26, 2007)
____
Conversations at the Edge and the Gene Siskel Film Center
“Act 1: Chicago’s Cinema” STREAM DOWNLOAD
Edward talks with Jean de St. Aubin about one of Chicago’s premier cinematic venues: the Gene Siskel Film Center. The film center is currently hosting the 10th Annual European Union Film Festival, but also plays host to a wealth of independent and experimental films from Chicago and the world. (March 4, 2007)
_____
Notes on the Death of Kodachrome – Thursday, April 12, 2007
Flavorpill Chicago
Sure, a documentary about Kodachrome, the discontinued Super 8 film stock, doesn’t sound exciting, but this beloved filmmaking medium serves as a nice catalyst for delving into more personal subjects in “Notes on the Death of Kodachrome.” Director Jennifer Montgomery tracks down three old friends — writer Joe Westmoreland and directors Lisa Cholodenko and Todd Haynes — who borrowed but never returned her equipment. As the story unfolds, the character of the filmmaking and the director’s own personal reckoning are both revealed. Montgomery is on hand for the screening, which includes Age 12: Love with a Little L (1990), an adolescent account of sexuality and lesbian identity. (Issue 134, April 10-16, 2007)
_____
Copy-It-Right! Selections From The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive – Thursday, February 15, 2007
Chicago Reader
“And Now for Another Perspective . . .”
“It’s OK to copy!” was the rallying cry of video artist and wild man Phil Morton, who joined the faculty of the School of the Art Institute in 1969 and created what would become SAIC’s Department of Film, Video, and New Media as well as the nation’s first BA and MFA programs in video studies. “Believe in the process of copying . . . with all your heart,” he wrote. “Copying is as good as any other way of getting ‘there.’” In the early 1970s Morton hooked up with UIC physicist and artist Dan Sandin, creator of the Sandin Image Processor (a sort of Moog synthesizer for video), in the promulgation of the Distribution Religion, a philosophy of sharing that was a precursor to today’s open-source movement. Sandin made the plans for his processor available to anyone who would pledge to keep any improvement they made on it free as well, and Morton promoted a general anticopyright ethic he called “Copy-It-Right,” the granddaddy of efforts like Copy Left and Creative Commons. Morton died in 2003, but professor Jon Cates has brought his work back to SAIC in the newly established Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive. In celebration of its opening, Cates will present a selection of Morton’s work Thursday, February 15, at the Siskel Center. (Deanna Sirlin, February 2, 2007)
_____
Michael Snow – February 8, 9, and 17, 2007
Eight Forty-Eight
“Experimental Artist and Filmmaker Michael Snow” STREAM DOWNLOAD
Canadian artist Michael Snow has been a prolific experimental filmmaker for more than 50 years. His acclaimed 1966 film, Wavelength, has been simultaneously described as the Citizen Kane of avant-garde film, and as an event signaling the eminent passing of the film era. This month, the Gene Siskel Film Center is hosting a tribute to Snow, including screenings of some of his earliest films, some of his more recent digital video works, and a survey of his sound work. He recently spoke with Chicago Public Radio’s Alison Cuddy. (February 9, 2007)
_____
Chicago Reader blog
“Snow Storm”
Canada’s Michael Snow is generally regarded as one of the two or three most important experimental filmmakers in the history of the form, and while his talent as an improvising musician is hardly secret, it’s usually overshadowed by his cinematic reputation. (He’s known best to music fans for his 1964 film New York Eye & Ear Control, which featured a bracing soundtrack by free jazz heavies like Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, and Don Cherry.) Snow arrives in town this week for two evenings of screenings at the Gene Siskel Film Center, as part of the Conversations at the Edge series.
On Thursday, February 8, Snow will present Wavelength and Back and Forth, followed on Friday night by a new video piece called Reverberlin, with sound by his long running improv group CCMC (Canadian Creative Music Collective), which these days includes John Oswald and Paul Dutton. This assemblage has a long if obscure history, releasing a slew of hard-to-find records during the 70s. But Snow has spent five decades traveling all over the musical map, and the pianist was initially taken by straight-ahead jazz. A fascinating track on the compilation Eye & Ear—assembled in conjunction with a show at Corbett Vs. Dempsey a couple years back—found him playing with the legendary clarinetist Pee Wee Russell. During Friday’s program Snow will offer a survey of his musical endeavors and discuss various aspects of his work. Snow’s La Region Centrale will also screen on Saturday, February 12 at 2 PM, although the filmmaker won’t be in attendance. (Peter Margasak, February 7, 2008)
_____
The Wave: New Experimental Films from China – Thursday, February 1, 2007
Flavorpill Chicago
Curator Li Zhenhua’s collection of recent experimental films from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou leaps across the ocean with startling clarity. Included are 14 artists who discuss and react to a rapidly modernizing China. Highlights contain Yang Fudong’s Backyard—Hey, Sun Is Rising!, a staged video revealing how Old World rituals are quickly becoming extinct, and Zheng Yunhan’s Sing with Me, a documentary-style piece that records the changing lives of miners in the small northeastern Chinese town of Dongbei from the past to the present. As China becomes a major contender in international culture, all eyes turn to its artists. (Issue 124, January 30-February 5, 2007)
_____
Daylight Moon & the Sunset Strip: Recent Films by Lewis Klahr – Thursday, November 30, 2006
Flavorpill Chicago
Avant-garde filmmaker Lewis Klahr uses collage imagery and old-school animation to create hauntingly poetic, visually arresting surrealist films that imbue discarded bits of cultural ephemera with sensuality and archetypal meaning. Fascinated with “the pastness of the present” since he began making films in the ’70s, Klahr reconfigures memories by lovingly coaxing metaphor from found photographs, old medical books, postcards, and other forgotten pop-culture imagery. Klahr appears tonight to present two of his recent films: the otherworldly, richly colored Daylight Moon (A Quartet) and the abstract crime narrative Three Minutes to Zero Trilogy. (Issue 115, November 28-December 4, 2006)
_____
Chicago Reader Critics’ Choice!
For two decades Lewis Klahr has been developing a deeply emotional cinema based on cutout animation. His technique is now masterful: jittery movements and frequent focus changes heighten the fragility of his image fragments and of the memories and dreams they evoke. The bank robbery in Three Minutes to Zero Trilogy isn’t presented linearly: an image of scattered money keeps recurring, suggesting that it’s a memory. The images in Daylight Moon (A Quartet) tend toward the spectacular—a steering wheel seems to guide us through the stars—while the narrative is obscure. But here too evocativeness is what counts, as Klahr creates a multileveled nostalgia that’s mirrored in songs on the sound track. (Fred Camper, November 24-30, 2006)
_____
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Worldly Desires – Thursday, October 12, 2006
Chicago Reader Critics’ Choice!
Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady, Blissfully Yours), who studied at the School of the Art Institute, ranks as one of the most creative and unpredictable film artists working anywhere. With a few notable exceptions, all his work is experimental, though these seven lovely shorts, made between 1994 and 2003, are experimental in the classic sense of being painterly, musical, and nonnarrative. The stories that do surface come from such sources as a comic book (Malee and the Boy), a radio play (Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves), and an offscreen conversation (Thirdworld). (Jonathan Rosenbaum, October 6-12, 2006)
_____
JODI: Max Payne Cheats Only – Thursday, October 5, 2006
Flavorpill Chicago
Each week the Gene Siskel Film Center hosts Conversations at the Edge, a series highlighting unique works in new media. Tonight, Netherlands-based artist duo JODI (aka Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) shows the crowd how it likes to play with video games. Brimming with curiosity, technological know-how, and an artistic temperament, the pair tweaks the programming of its favorite games, creating an unsettling, almost Warholian distortion of an everyday phenomenon. A Q&A session follows a live demonstration of JODI’s versions of death-and-destruction game Max Payne and Wolfenstein 3D, and forgotten 1984 treasure Jet Set Willy. (Issue 107, October 3-9, 2006)
_____
Old Joy — Thursday, September 28, 2006
Chicago Reader Critics’ Choice!
“Into the Woods with Will”
Kelly Reichardt’s new film, Old Joy, stars Will Oldham and Daniel London as estranged friends trying to reconnect on a camping trip in the Pacific Northwest. This is the Chicago premiere of the film, which features a soundtrack by Yo La Tengo. Reichardt will attend. (September 22, 2006)
____
In Between Days – Thursday, September 21, 2006
Eight Forty-Eight
“In Between Days” STREAM DOWNLOAD
The distinctive sound of the crisp crunch of powdery snow underfoot begins In Between Days, Director So Yong Kim’s debut feature. A wintry atmosphere comes to life as the sound intensifies: a teenage girl trudges across an urban nowhere in a grainy blue twilight. Aimee is a young Korean girl who has recently immigrated to a city somewhere in North America. She lives with her single mom and writes letters in her head to her Dad. No answers come.
Aimee takes English classes and hangs out with a guy named Tran. Tran keeps a wool cap on all the time, slung low over his brow, framing his handsome young face. Tran helps Aimie study, but she has no knack or drive and would rather doodle and daydream. They pass time together playing video games, walking places, eating. They trace a wobbly arc between friendship and something more. At least Aimee seems to have more serious feelings for Tran than he does for her. Still, in Kim’s film, everything is in between.
The capacity to render the unspoken complexities of human relationships is not a skill endowed to many filmmakers: Kim has it. It takes patience: the patience to hold an actor in frame, often doing so little that it seems to be nothing, and to hold the actor there long enough for that little to become quite a lot. As all the pieces fall into place, duration and behavior add up to something so familiar and understandable that we believe that the ebb and flow of life is on screen.
Kim composes her film with a predominance of close-ups, bringing us into an intimate relationship with her main character. Actress Jiseon Kim who plays Aimie has the perfect face for the role. Its changing looks are well captured by the film’s talented cinematographer Sarah Levy. The young actress looks at times like a pouty baby, at other times like a grown woman who knows the ways of the world. And most of the time, she looks like a typical teen whose feelings flash across her face, mercurial updates coming minute to minute. (September 10, 2007)
_____
Calculations: Pioneers of Computer Animation – Thursday, May 4, 2006
Flavorpill Chicago
Decades before companies such as Pixar and JibJab made dazzling, must-see films and shorts, computer animation was simple, unsophisticated, and crude — even by South Park standards. It took the work of the eight filmmakers celebrated in “Calculations: Pioneers of Computer Animation” to repurpose old technology and develop mechanically produced visuals that leapt off the screen. Artists such as John Whitney, a former airplane factory worker during WWII, used existing devices (in his case, targeting elements in weapons) to create constantly mutating, complex kinetic visuals. Not surprisingly, some of these experimental films became psychedelic classics. (Issue 85, May 2-8, 2006)
_____
The Time We Killed – Thursday, April 20, 2006
Flavorpill Chicago
Avant-garde director Jennifer Todd Reeves’ feature debut The Time We Killed is a black-and-white experimental narrative that follows a writer who holes up in her Brooklyn apartment after September 11th, immersing herself in television and self-exploration. (Issue 83, April 18-24, 2006)
Gapers Block
“Slowdown” (Pick of the Day)
As part of the Conversations on the Edge series, avant-garde filmmaker Jennifer Reeves presents her first feature, a fiction film about a Brooklyn agoraphobic after 9-11. (April 20, 2006)
_____
Image X Sound: The Short Films of Tatsu Aoki – Thursday, April 13, 2006
Flavorpill Chicago
Tatsu Aoki is a bassist, composer, and producer, as well as director of the Asian American Jazz Festival, president of Asian Improv Records — and an avant-garde filmmaker. Tonight, he screens several of his short films and premieres his latest work, Traveling Spirits. (Issue 82, April 11-16, 2006)
_____
Media City 2006 – Thursday, April 6, 2006
Gapers Block
“Slowdown” (Pick of the Day)
As part of the Conversations on the Edge series, Media City program director David Dinnell curates tonight’s selections from Windsor’s experimental film and video festival. (April 6, 2006)
_____
Phil Collins – Thursday, March 16, 2006
Gapers Block
“Slowdown” (Pick of the Day)
No, not that Phil Collins; this Phil Collins. As part of the Conversations at the Edge series, Collins screens a selection of his videos, which juxtapose Western pop music and pop culture with people living in extremity. Young Palestinians compete in a disco marathon; Turkish participants in reality television shows discuss their experiences; Colombians sing karaoke-style along with the Smiths’ “The World Won’t Listen.” (March 16, 2006)
_____
Alexandra Juhasz, Video Remains – Thursday, December 1, 2005
Eight Forty-Eight
“Video Remains” STREAM DOWNLOAD
Documentary filmmaker Alexandra Juhasz recounts the story of her best friend Jim, who died of AIDS in 1993, in the movie Video Remains. (December 1, 2005)
_____
Burnt Oranges – Thursday, May 5, 2005
Eight Forty-Eight
“Burnt Oranges” STREAM
Silvia Malagrino—Associate Professor, School of Art and Design; College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois, Chicago. A look at the origins and consequences of state-sponsored terrorism in 1970s Argentina, the film, Burnt Oranges, is also a personal and poetic search for truth, memory, and justice for Chicago artist and Argentine native Silvia Malagrino. (May 4, 2005)
