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THE VISUAL HAIKUS OF HITOSHI TOYODA
Beyond Borders program II
SEPTEMBER 4 & 5 [8:30 PM] [outside @ THE WORKS, 531 SE 14th Ave] FREE
Supported in part by the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition
Co-presented with PICAís TBA Festival Self-taught photographer Hitoshi Toyoda has worked in the medium of slide shows for the past ten years. Of this choice he writes, ìI am trying to bind three dimensions of time together with delicate thread: the time, or the period in my life I photographed, the time passing inside of me while looking back at it, and the time the audience experiences while watching the images in the venue.î Cinema Project welcomes Toyoda from Japan to Portland to present two of his live improvised slide shows. Working in this analog medium, Toyodaís images of everyday life, the streets and faces he encounters in his trips between New York and Japan, delicately confront issues of memory and temporality and the liminal spaces between them.
Artist-in-Attendance
September 4
NAZUNA [2003/2004, 580 35mm slides, silent, 90 min.]
September 5
spoonfulriver [2006/2007, 510 35mm slides, silent, 80 min.]
For more information on TBA go to www.pica.org |
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EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY:
performed by Daniel Barrow
Beyond Borders program III co-curated by Pablo de Ocampo
[NWFC WHITSELL AUDITORIUM | 1219 SW PARK AVE] $10/$15 SEPTEMBER 7 + 8 [8:30PM] SEPTEMBER 9 [6:30PM]
Co-presented with the Northwest Film Center &
PICAís TBA Festival
A collector of sorts, Winnipeg-based artist and curator Daniel Barrow offers as his latest piece the story of a defeated garbage man who, in his nightly rounds, catalogues his neighbors through portraiture to create an ìindependent phonebook.î The tale turns dark as a deranged killer follows close behind, murdering these subjects and thereby turning the portraits into memorials. Barrowís mannered drawing style, characterized by thick lines and sinewy limbs, evokes a grotesque childrenís-book illustration and is accompanied by music from Amy Linton of the Aislers Set. Projecting, layering, and manipulating his drawings on an overhead projector, Barrow simultaneously expands and collapses ideas about moving-image presentation by combining the recently outdated technology with live manipulation.
Artist-in-Attendance
September 7 + 8 + 9
Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry [2008, Overhead Animation/Performance, 60 min.]
September 10 [10:30PM] [THE WORKS, 531 SE 14th Ave] $10
Winnipeg BabysitteróDaniel Barrowís Community Access TV Tapes
For information about Daniel Barrow www.danielbarrow.com
For more information on TBA 2009 www.pica.org |
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WALDEN by Jonas Mekas
September 23 [7:30PM]
ìOf course, what I faced was the old problem of all artists: to merge Reality and Self, to come up with the third thing.î The godfather of New American Cinema and ostensible inventor of the diary film, Jonas Mekas has diligently worked for the past 60 years in service of American avant-garde film. "Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shoot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shoot nothing....î From such moments comes the material for his film Walden, a chronological string of snapshots from the years 1964 to 1968 among the thriving arts scene of New York City and the familiar faces within it, from Stan Brakhage to Timothy Leary, and John and Yoko to Edie Sedgwick. In Walden, a heightened spontaneity of camera movement and sense of edgy immediacy, which helped define New American Cinema, entwines with a simple diaristic approach, full of poetic reflections seeking to recover the past.
Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in Semeniskiai, Lithuania but has been living and working in New York since 1949. In 1944, Jonas Mekas and his brother Adolfas were taken by the Nazis and imprisoned in a forced labor camp in Nazi Germany for eight months. After the War, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz from 1946-48 and at the end of 1949 he emigrated with his brother to the U.S. settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex 16mm camera and began to record moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel's pioneering Cinema 16, and he began screening his own films in 1953. Mekas has been one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking or the "New American Cinema," as he dubbed it in the late '50s, playing various roles: in 1954, he became editor and chief of Film Culture; in 1958 he began writing his "Movie Journal" column for the Village Voice; in 1962 he co-founded the Film- Makers' Cooperative (FMC); and in 1964 the Filmmakers' Cinematheque which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most impressive repositories of avant-garde films.
September 23
Walden [1969, 16mm, color, sound, 180 min.] |
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MAGNETIC SLEEP by Janie Geiser
October 6 + 7 [7:30PM]
Co-presented with Pacific University
Filmmaker and visual artist Janie Geiserís most recent work, Magnetic Sleep, is a nine-part serial about a woman hypnotist, Marceline, and her journey across an ever-changing landscape. While the work combines a number of textural elementsócollage animation, hand-painted film, superimpostion, re-photography, along with performanceóit is essentially cinematic, channeling early experimental filmmakers such as Man Ray and Maya Deren. We follow Geiserís protagonist, in early melodrama style, through self-contained worlds and facades of glass, fabric, and celluloid, towards a mysterious destination divined through Marcelineís own desire. As she treads the border between dreams and reality, the goal becomes not to show her in realistic space, but to induce a space of distant thought and nostalgia, where the shapes of memory seem ever-impressionistic. A term used during the 19th century, ìmagnetic sleepî refers to the hypnotic trances that German physician Franz Mesmer induced in patients with the aid of magnetic and electrical forces. This program also includes an earlier 16mm work, Babel Town, which extends Geiserís expertise in puppet theatre to the realm of cinema.
Janie Geiser began making films in 1990, first as an element of her performances and installations. Her experimental films evolved as separate works for screening and for installations, while continuing to evolve as elements of her interdisciplinary performances. Her films have been screened at Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, Redcat, and SFMOMA, among others. Her films have premiered five times at the New York Film Festival's "Views from the Avant-Gardeî. A Guggenheim Fellow, her performances have been presented nationally and internationally, and she has been recognized with an Obie Award, two Bessie Awards, NEA Fellowships, a Rockefeller Media Artist Fellowship, a Pew/TCG grant, and funding from Creative Capitol, the Henson Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others.
October 6 + 7
Babel Town [1992, 16mm, color, 7:30 min.]
Magnetic Sleep [2009, DV, b&w, sound, 57 min.] |
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THE CONEY ISLAND AMATEUR PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY:
DREAM FILMS 1926-1972 Presented by Zoe Beloff
October 13 [7:30]
Starting in 1926, the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society held annual competitions in which members recreated their dreams on film and then analyzed them. Their enterprise was inspired by Freudís proposition in ìThe Interpretation of Dreamsî that in dreams, ideas and wishes are dramatized as ìmental pictures.î The Society decided to put Freudís theory into practice. Their films may be seen as a window onto the hopes, fears, and fantasies of a changing cross-section of people who made up the social fabric of Coney Island in the 20th century, from immigrant Jews and Italians to wealthy bohemians and young gay men exploring their sexuality in the 1960s. Curated and presented by New York City artist Zoe Beloff, the program is presented in conjunction with the book DREAMLAND: The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle, and accompanying exhibition at the Coney Island Museum; the program also celebrates the centennial of Freudís visit to the famed Brooklyn neighborhood in 1909. Ranging from the touching to the ecstatic, these amateur films explore the inner lives of Society members and are a true combination of science and spectacle. One night only!
Zoe Beloff grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1980, she moved to New York to study at Columbia University where she received an MFA in Film. Her work has been exhibited in museums, cinemas, and galleries internationally. Beloff works with a variety of cinematic imagery including film, stereoscopic projection performance, interactive media, and installation. Her projects are philosophical toysóobjects that elicit contemplation. Finding herself increasingly fascinated by phantoms and images that ìare not there,î Beloff describes herself as an heir to the 19th century mediums whose materialization sÈances conjured unconscious desires in a theatrical fashion. Though lacking psychic abilities, Beloff confesses that she relies on cinematic illusionism, or rather, (the) cinematic ìmedium.î Zoe is engaged in re-invigorating technologies such as stereoscopic imagery and dioramas that have largely been abandoned since the invention of the cinema. To this end, she sometimes uses archaic apparatuses alongside newer analog/digital hybrids including film, live 3-D projection performance, interactive cinema on CD-ROMs and video installation. Each project that Zoe presents aims to connect the present with the past, to create new visual languages where modern media may once again become invested with the uncanny.
Curator in attendance
October 13
Coney Island by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle [1917, 16mm, b&w, silent, 25 min.]
The Midget Crane by Albert Grass [1926, 16mm, b&w, silent, 2 min.]
The Praying Mantis by Charmion de Forde [1931,16mm, b&w, sound, 6 min.]
The Bear Dream by Arthur Rosenzweig [1937, 16mm, b&w, silent, 4 min.]
Chasing Louis Schnekowitz by Molly Lippman [1945, 8mm, b&w, silent, 4 min.]
The Lion Dream by Teddy Weisengrund [1947, 16mm, b&w, silent, 3 min.]
The Lonely Chicken Dream by Beverly díAngelo [1954, 16mm, color, sound, 3 min.]
The Abandoned Ark by Stella Weiss [1958, 16mm, color/ b&w, silent, 4 min.]
My Dream of Dental Irritation by Bobby Beaujolais [1964, 8mm, color, sound, 5 min.]
The Bobsled: A Recurring Dream by Eddie Kammerer [1972, 16mm, color/b&w, sound, 2 min.] |
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OCCASIONAL PIECES AND AFFLICTED STATES:
Films by Stephen Connolly
Beyond Borders Program IV
November 2 + 3 [7:30PM]
From diary to essay-film to observational document, London-based artist Stephen Connolly employs a variety of investigative and reconstructive approaches to his non-fiction filmmaking. Influenced in style by essay-filmmaker Chris Markerówho evinces similar urgency and complexity in examining world political affairsóConnolly combines and layers seemingly disparate images, sounds, and narrative threads to explore the relationships between individual and social agency.
Part of the program he brings to Portland is his ìAfflicted Statesî series, which began in late 2001 as a response to and examination of the quickly changing relationship between the individual and the state. Exploring the present through the past, the series seeks to question our political experience within a consumer society. In The Whale, Connollyís layering of information includes a parent-child dialogue about the relative threats posed by wild animals, an archival television interview with notorious RAF operative Ulrike Meinhof, as well as citations from Thomas Hobbesí Leviathan. Recipient of the Ghostly Award for Sound Design at the 2009 Ann Arbor Film Festival, Connolly is recognized for creating surprising juxtapositions of image and sound. Please join us in welcoming him to Portland for the first time.
Stephen Connolly is a true ìauteurî of a provocative and reflective cinema who makes no concessions whatsoever, and who has renounced much of what few filmmakers would be willing to give up. An approach to his brief and complex films requires a lot more than just a viewer, one has to approach him as a ìlecteur.î .ñProf. Maria Piedra
In Connollyís hands the documentary is a nonjudgmental form, un-dogmatic about its status as historical document or mode of investigation. Great American Desert (2008) moves from contemporary footage of recreational vehicles in the Arizona desert, to images of a re-staging of the Hiroshima bomb as propagandistic entertainment within the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1945. Through a mode of filmmaking rooted in the personal and quotidian, Connolly highlights the origins of our culture of spectacle and leisure - a culture that can obfuscate both history and truth. ñRichard Birkett
Artist-in-Attendance
November 2 + 3
Reading Room [2002, DV, color, silent, 3 min.]
Film for Tom [2005, DV, color, sound, 12 min.]
Postcard from Istanbul [2002, DV, color, sound, 6 min.]
The Whale [2003, 16mm, color/b&w, sound, 9 min.]
Great American Desert [2007, 16mm, color, sound, 16 min.]
Mas Se Perdio [2008, 16mm, color, sound, 14 min.] |
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no.w.here lab
Beyond Borders Program V
November 17 +18 [7:30pm] [New American Art Union | 922 SE Ankeny]
As part of Cinema Projectís continuing effort to bring international film and video to Portland, we welcome UK artist and co-founder of the London arts space no.w.here lab Brad Butler, to present work from two projects, the Museum of Non-Participation and Cinema of Prayoga. Initiated in Karachi, Pakistan and London, the Museum of Non Participation is an ongoing project conceived of in 2007 during the Pakistani Lawyers Movement in Islamabad. Over an 18-month period Butler (along with no.w.here lab co-founder Karen Mirza) worked with street vendors, Urdu translators, architects, hairdressers, and countless other community members in order to play out different manifestations of the Museum and promote dialogue among a diverse group of people. Included in this program is Mirza and Butlerís new film The Exception and the Rule, as well as copies of the Museum of Non Participation edition of the Urdu/English newspaper the Daily Jang.
A four-year collaboration between no.w.here lab in London and Filter in Mumbai, Cinema of Prayoga is a survey of film and video work from India that spans more than eighty years. These rich and largely unseen histories introduce a unique perspective on Indian culture and identity through both historic and contemporary work. 'Prayoga' is a Sanskrit word, loosely translated as ìexperimentî (it can also mean ìrepresentationî or ìpracticeî). Coined by film historian Amrit Gangar, the term ìcinema of prayogaî means "the eternal quest, [the] continuing process in time and space" central to artists' creation of film and video.
Karen Mirza and Brad Butler have been actively involved in the London art scene for 10 years and have participated in many exhibitions with leading institutions in Europe and abroad. Much of their work has been received and programmed by well-known galleries like the Serpentine Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery, biennials like the Architecture and Film Biennale Graz, and other distinguished film festivals. Mirza and Butler are currently artists-in-residence at Werkleitz Film Festival in Germany and their current collaboration, The Museum of Non-Participation, has been commissioned by Artangel, one of the most prestigious art commissioning bodies in London.
November 17 - The Museum of Non-Participation
Non Places [1999, 16mm, color, sound, 15 min.]
The Space Between [2005, 16mm, color, sound, 15 min.]
The Autonomous Object? [2009, 16mm, color, silent, 13 min.]
The Exception and the Rule [2009, DigiBeta, color, sound, 37 min.]
November 18 ñ Cinema of Prayoga
Lanka Dahan (Lanka Aflame) by D.G.Phalke [1917, video, b&w, silent, 9 min.]
Shree Krishna Janma (Birth of Shree Krishna) by D.G.Phalke [1918, video, b&w, silent, 6 min.]
And I Make Short Films by S.N.S Sastry [1968, video, b&w, sound, 16 min.]
Kalighat Fetish by Ashish Avikunthak [1999, video, color, sound, 22 min.]
BOMgAY by Riyad Wadia [1996, video, colr, sound, 12 min.]
Kshya Tra Gya by Amit Dutta [2004, video, color, sound, 22 min.] |
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The Cinematic Practice of Replayed Reality:
Work by Susanna Helke
Beyond Borders Program VI
December 1 [7:30PM] [NWFC Whitsell Auditorium | 1219 SW Park Ave] $8
Co-presented with Pacific University &
The Northwest Film Center
In the work of Susanna Helke and co-director Virpi Suutari, questions about the practice of non-fiction filmmaking are constantly posed. Playing with the borders of documentary and fiction, the pair work in the tradition of documentaire jouÈ, or as Helke describes it, ìthe cinematic practice of replayed reality.î As part of our Beyond Borders series, we welcome Helke, a Finnish filmmaker, university lecturer, and film theorist, to Portland to present a number of works that examine the capacity for humans to adapt and learn (or not) from their surroundings. White Sky is the portrait of a family living in the shadow of Russiaís second largest nickel plant. While the factory spews out heavy metals into the crisp northern landscape, the family members go about life in their high rise apartment, saving money, planning for a new car, and yearning for a vacation. Sin, a stylized and mannerist confessional of small betrayals and petty misdeeds, may be described as a ìdocumentary of daily offenses,î while the short videos War and Spring present two different views on the youth of Finland.
Susanna Helkeís films have been featured in various international documentary film festivals and have received several awards, including the nomination for the European Film Academy Arte award for Best Documentary, as well as the Best Scandinavian Documentary Award in the Nordisk Panorama Festival, the Best Documentary Award in the Milano Festival Internazionale, and the Best Documentary Film award in the Finnish Academy Awards. Susanna received her doctorate from the University of Art and Design, Helsinki and her dissertation was published with the title ìA Trace of Nanook: Cinematic Methods Intertwining Documentary and Fictional Stylesî in the spring of 2006. She is currently affiliated with the UC Santa Cruz Film Program as a visiting filmmaker and scholar.
Artist-in-Attendance
December 1
Sin [1996, 35mm, color, sound, 33 min.]
Spring [2006, Beta, color, sound, 16 min.]
War [2006, Beta, color, sound, 5 min.]
White Sky [1998, 35mm, color, sound, 54 min.]
For Information on the Northwest Film Center contact www.nwfilm.org |
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