The Block Museum of Art - Winter 2020 Program

What’s inside The Block? It depends on how you look.

HOURS

GETTING HERE

Mon. Tues./Sat./ Sun. Wed./ Thurs./ Fri.

CLOSED 10 AM – 5 PM 10 AM – 8 PM

Location

FREE ADMISSION

The Block Museum of Art is located at 40 Arts Circle Drive, on the southeastern portion of Northwestern’s Evanston campus, near the lake and Sheridan Road.

Admission to exhibitions, screenings, and programming is always free and open to all.

Parking

RSVP Let us know you are coming! The Block Museum maintains a suggested RSVP list for public program offerings: bit.ly/BlockRSVP Event entry is first-come, first-served, and RSVP does not guarantee entry if capacity is reached.

CONTACT US Phone 847. 491. 4000 Email block-museum@northwestern.edu

Guest parking is available at the Segal Visitors Center Garage (1847 Campus Drive, Evanston). Parking is FREE after 4 PM on weekdays and all day on weekends. All other times parking is $8. The Arts Circle Drive is open to vehicles, and patrons with disabilities will find an accessible location for pick-up and drop-off directly in front of the museum.

Public Transportation The Block Museum is a 15–20 minute walk from the Davis and Foster stations on the CTA’s Purple Line. The Davis station has an elevator. On the Metra, the museum is a 15– 20 minute walk from the Union-Pacific North Davis station.

Web blockmuseum.northwestern.edu Follow us! @nublockmuseum or https://nublockmuseum.blog

Image [Right]: Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu (Turkish) Full Moon, 1961, Oil and glue on canvas, 50 7/8 x 42 in., Grey Art Gallery, New York University, Art Collection. Gift of Abby Weed Grey, G1975.293

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XHIBITIONS E

Faramarz Pilaram (Iranian), Mosques of Isfahan (B), c. 1962, Ink, watercolor, and gold and silver paint on paper, 45 3/4 x 34 3/4 in., Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection, Gift of Abby Weed Grey, G1975.110

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Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection January 21–April 5, 2020 Main Gallery

Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection surveys art from three nations where unique and vibrant forms of modernism sprang forth in the 1960s and 1970s. Challenging histories of artistic modernism that too often begin and end in the West, Modernisms explores an under-recognized flowering of innovation and risk-taking in art beyond Europe and North America.

Influenced by local traditions, cultural exchange, and the sights and sounds of modern life, artists in Iran, Turkey, and India forged distinctive new modes of expression. From Iranian and Turkish artists who explored calligraphy and ornamentation through avant-garde abstraction, to Indian painters whose expressive canvases drew upon Hindu iconography, the 114 works in Modernisms reflect the lively dialogue between East and West, past and present. These works testify to both the continuity of culture and the disruption of modernity.

Organized by New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, Modernisms draws from the collection of Abby Weed Grey. Grey traveled widely in Asia and the Middle East, searching for art that brought the visual language of modernity into dialogue with non-Western heritages. With a robust collection of some 700 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, she founded the Grey Art Gallery in 1974, stimulating learning through crosscultural exchange. Through her collection, this exhibition tells a story of “multiple modernities,” reflecting the diversity of formal and cultural responses to the changing world of the 1960s and 1970s.

Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection is organized by the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, and is made possible in part by the generous support of Dalinc and Mehves Ariburnu; Violet Jabara Charitable Trust; WLS Spencer Foundation; A. Alfred Taubman Foundation; Avid Modjtabai; Charina Endowment Fund; Persian Heritage Foundation; Vazifdar Builders Pvt. Ltd.; Ariel and Alaleh Ostad; the Grey’s Director’s Circle, Inter/National Council, and Friends; and the Abby Weed Grey Trust. In-kind support is provided by ArtCareNYC Inc. The Block’s presentation of the exhibition is supported in part by generous gifts from Anu and Arjun Aggarwal, Emine and Selim Gulcelik, and by the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

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EXHIBITIONS

Terence Gower: Ciudad Moderna January 21–April 19, 2020 Alsdorf Gallery

“Must-see...a valentine to Mexico City’s modernist architecture.”

– Artforum

Working in video, sculpture, drawing, and photography, New Yorkbased artist Terence Gower (b. British Columbia, 1965) investigates the material and intellectual histories of postwar positivism in art and architecture. The contemporary built environments of 1960s Mexico are the focus of his 2004 video, Ciudad Moderna. A kinetic, six-minute montage of clips drawn from the Mexican comedy film Despedida de Casada (1966), Ciudad Moderna wittily transforms its source material to examine the film’s modernist architectural backdrop.

Throughout much of the 20th century, Mexico City was fertile ground for progressive architects and urban planners seeking development and social reform through design. Using freeze frames, projection drawings and clever digital composites, Gower analyzes some of the most celebrated monuments of this utopian moment in Latin American history, from Mexico City’s famed Museum of Anthropology to the Hotel Presidente in Acapulco. Pop culture and high modernism collide as Gower shifts from depersonalized interiors to swinging musical numbers, presenting architecture as a visual abstraction as well as a space of lived experience.

A limited-edition work, Ciudad Moderna is part of a gift of 68 works of contemporary art donated to the Block Museum in 2016 by art collector, philanthropist, and software innovator Peter Norton.

This exhibition is supported by the Bernstein Family Contemporary Art Fund, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Mary and Leigh Block Endowment

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Images: Terence Gower, Ciudad Moderna [stills], 2004, Digital Video, 6:20 minutes, Courtesy of the artist.

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“These works are the highlights of a collection unsurpassed in its depth and breadth by any other in the U.S.” – Wall Street Journal

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Prabhakar Barwe (Indian), King and Queen of Spades, 1967, Oil and paper on canvas, 39 1/4 x 54 1/8 in., Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection Gift of Abby Weed Grey, G1975.188

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PRO G R A M S

OPENING CONVERSATION

Modernisms Wednesday, January 22, 6 PM Join us in celebrating the opening of Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection. Organized by New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, Modernisms surveys art from Iran, India, and Turkey, where unique and vibrant forms of artmaking flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition explores an under-recognized era of global innovation and risk-taking in art, challenging histories of artistic modernism that too often begin and end in the West. This program will spotlight the expertise of four Northwestern University graduate students —Maryam Athari, Hamed Yousefi, Simran Bhalla, and Özge Karagöz—who are breaking new ground in the study of art in Iran, India, and Turkey. They will be joined in discussion by Block curators Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Michael Metzger.

Parviz Tanavoli (Iranian), Heech, 1972, Bronze on wood base, 22 1/4 x 12 x 8 in., Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection Gift of Abby Weed Grey, G1975.54 © Parviz Tanavoli

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ARTIST TALK

Sonya Clark: The Flag We (Should) Know Wednesday, February 5, 6 PM Throughout her more than two-decade career, artist Sonya Clark has explored the meaning embedded in commonplace objects and materials to reflect on the complex issues of race, American history, and black cultural production. Her recent work presents challenging questions about nationhood and memorialization through the investigation, reconstruction, and dismantling of flags as symbols. Clark’s 2019 project Monumental Cloth, the Flag We Should Know, explores the symbolic legacy of the Confederate Battle Flag by invoking its lesser-known historical counterpart, the Confederate Flag of Truce. Clark will be joined in conversation by Janet Dees, the Block’s Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Presented in conjunction with the Kaplan Institute for Humanities Dialogue 2019-2020: Memorializing.

Co-presented by The Block Museum of Art, Department of Art Theory and Practice, and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

CONVERSATION

Sonya Clark. Photo: Diego Valdez

Open the Door: Memory, Mourning and The Ancestor As Foundation – M. Carmen Lane with Michael Rakowitz Tuesday, February 18, 5 PM February 18, 2020 marks posthumously the 86th birthday of Audre Lorde and the 89th birthday of Toni Morrison (the first since her death on August 15, 2019). M. Carmen Lane and Michael Rakowitz will engage in a public talk on ancestry, place, dispossession, and the steadfastness of survival. Using textual prompts from both Lorde and Morrison, the artists continue a dialogue between each other that began half a decade ago and which has impacted both of their practices— which involves grief as both a material and a process that resists disconnection.

M. Carmen Lane is the February 2020 Artist-in-Residence of the Department of Art Theory and Practice and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. This talk is also part of Kaplan Institute for Humanities Dialogue 2019-2020: Memorializing.

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PRO G R A M S

The Fabulous Life and Thought of Ahmad Fardid (2015)

SCREENING AND CONVERSATION

The Fabulous Life and Thought of Ahmad Fardid (2015) Hamed Yousefi in Conversation Thursday, February 20, 6 PM At the center of this engrossing documentary history is Ahmad Fardid, a 20th-century Iranian philosopher who rejected “Westoxification,” or the pernicious effect of Western culture on Iranian society. Directors Hamed Yousefi and Ali Mirsepassi navigate his inscrutable, yet highly influential theories (which reflect the dual influence of Martin Heidegger and political Islam) using scholarly interviews and astonishing archival footage. Whether praised as an intellectual leader or condemned as a charlatan, Fardid’s peculiar example tests the limits of Modernism’s claims to universality. In English and Farsi with English subtitles.

Hamed Yousefi (Co-director and Northwestern University doctoral candidate in Art History), Hannah Feldman (Northwestern Associate Professor of Art History), and W.J.T Mitchell (Professor of English and Art History at University of Chicago and editor of Critical Inquiry) will take part in a post screening discussion moderated by Danny Postel (Associate Director of International and Area Studies at Northwestern.)

Co-presented by Block Cinema with the Iranian-American Fund for Cultural Programming, the Critical Theory Program, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Art History, and the Middle East & North African Studies Program at Northwestern.

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DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY WARNOCK LECTURE SERIES

Mariët Westermann: First Art: Gardens of Eden and the Human Condition Wednesday, February 26, 5 PM Mariët Westermann, former executive Vice President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and current Vice Chancellor and Professor of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi, discusses her research around Renaissance and Early Modern gardens. The author of A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585–1718 (1996) and Rembrandt – Art and Ideas (2000), she is currently preparing an exhibition and book on the Garden of Eden as an idea with varying resonance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with significant implications for garden practices in these cultures.

Presented by the Department of Art History at Northwestern University.

FAMILY PROGRAM

Tales of Art at The Block Saturday, February 29, 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM Museums are full of stories. Join us for read-aloud stories and interactive activities designed to help you look closer and think deeper about the art on view at the museum. Come discover the stories hidden beneath the surface of the art at The Block and invent your own. Geared for children ages 3-8 but all are welcome.

Photo: Sean Su Photography

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PRO G R A M S CONVERSATION

“The Picture Is the Window”: Lynn Gumpert and Lisa Corrin on Abby Grey and Intrepid Art Collecting Wednesday, March 4, 6 PM Consisting of more than 700 artworks, the Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at New York University comprises the largest institutional holdings of Iranian, Turkish and Indian modern art in any American university museum. This unparalleled historical resource was amassed by Abby Weed Grey (1902-1983), a self-described “dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner” from St. Paul, Minnesota. In the 1960s and early ’70s, when few other American collectors were attuned to art being made in the Middle East and Asia, Grey traveled extensively in these regions, steadily acquiring works by contemporary local artists. Throughout her life, Grey’s collecting was guided by a belief in the power of art to stimulate intercultural dialogue.

Join Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, and Lisa Corrin, Director of The Block Museum of Art, for a conversation on this intrepid woman collector and the way that her legacy might inform global directions for contemporary collectors.

Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli and Abby Weed Grey at the opening of an exhibition of student sculpture at the University of Tehran, May 14, 1967. Abby Weed Grey Papers, University Archives, New York University

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Eren Eyüboğlu (Turkish), Design for Mosaic [detail] , 1957, Gouache and pencil on cardboard, 18 3/4 x 20 in. Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection, Gift of Abby Weed Grey, G1975.246

GALLERY TALKS

Modernisms: Spotlight Gallery Talks Take an in-depth look at select works in the Modernisms exhibition during these monthly spotlight gallery talks, led by Northwestern scholars advancing the study of Iranian, Indian, and Turkish art.

Vidura Bahadur - Friday, February 7, 12 PM Vidura Jang Bahadur is a photographer whose interests lie in experimenting with storytelling, form and format. He is currently working on an interdisciplinary project on the Chinese community in India that will culminate in a book and an exhibition.

Hamed Yousefi - Thursday, February 27, 12 PM Hamed Yousefi’s research looks at the convergence of three categories: avant-garde art, the global south, and the Cold War. As a filmmaker, he has made numerous documentaries including a series of essay films about the aesthetic history of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Maryam Athari - Friday, March 13, 12 PM Maryam Athari is a PhD student researching the dynamics of the global contemporary art world in relation to the region broadly called the Middle East. She is focused on visual arts in contemporary Tehran, Iran.

Özge Karagöz - Thursday, April 2, 12 PM Özge Karagöz is a PhD student in the Department of Art History. Her research concentrates on transnational histories of art, specializing in the circulation of modern art and revolutionary politics on the Turkish-Soviet-French axis in the first half of the twentieth century.

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CA L E N DA R

January 17

Friday

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Wednesday

7 PM

CINEMA Carmen Jones (1954)

7 PM

CINEMA Three Films by Farrokhzad and Golestan

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Wednesday

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Thursday

6 PM

OPENING CONVERSATION Modernisms

7 PM

CINEMA Electro-Pythagoras (a portrait of Martin Bartlett) (2017)

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Thursday

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Friday

7 PM

CINEMA Families in Transition

7 PM

CINEMA Pyaasa (Thirst) (1957)

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Friday

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Tuesday

7 PM

CINEMA A Night with the Shabistan Film Archive

5 PM

CONVERSATION Open the Door: M. Carmen Lane with Michael Rakowitz

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Thursday

7 PM

CINEMA Interview (1971)

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Friday

7 PM

CINEMA Will (1981)

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p. 10

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Thursday

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6 PM

CINEMA & CONVERSATION Fabulous Life and Thought of Ahmad Fardid (1975)

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Friday

7 PM

CINEMA Gelin (The Bride) (1973)

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Wednesday

5 PM

WARNOCK LECTURE Mariët Westermann

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Thursday

12 PM

GALLERY TALK Modernisms: Hamed Yousefi

7 PM

CINEMA Compensation (1999)

February 5

Wednesday

6 PM

ARTIST TALK Sonya Clark: The Flag We (Should) Know

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Thursday

7 PM

CINEMA Brick and Mirror (1965)

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Friday

12 PM

GALLERY TALK Modernisms: Vidura Bahadur

7 PM

CINEMA The Runaway (1958)

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Friday

7 PM

CINEMA Present.Perfect (2019)

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Saturday

10:30 AM

FAMILY PROGRAM Tales of Art at The Block

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p. 12

p. 26

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p. 15

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p. 27

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p. 19

p. 13

March 4

Wednesday

6 PM

CONVERSATION On Collecting & Abby Weed Grey

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Thursday

7 PM

CINEMA Moon for My Father (2019)

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Thursday

7 PM

CINEMA Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019)

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Friday

12 PM

GALLERY TALK Modernisms: Maryam Athari

7 PM

CINEMA Badnam Basti (1971)

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April 2

Thursday

12 PM

GALLERY TALK Modernisms: Özge Karagöz

EXHIBITIONS

January 21–April 5, 2020 Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection January 21–April 19, 2020 Terence Gower: Ciudad Moderna April 28–July 26, 2020 Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s

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TOURS OF MODERNISMS

Sunday Docent Tours 3 PM February 2 February 9 February 16 February 23 March 1 March 8 March 15 April 5

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CINEMA

Morning Will Come: Modernity in Indian Cinema India is home to the world’s most prolific and diverse film industries, and Bollywood movies in particular have found rapturous audiences from Russia to the Middle East. This series, presented as a complement to Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection, features seminal classics of Indian cinema that have rarely been projected in the United States. In addition to landmark films by Guru Dutt, Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen, which consider postcolonial conflicts between tradition and modernity, the series will also feature a program dedicated to the Shabistan Film Archive.

Presented with support from the Consulate General of India, Chicago, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Image courtesy Shabistan Film Archive

A Night with the Shabistan Film Archive Friday, January 24, 7 PM

The Shabistan Film Archive is a new non-profit initiative, based in Bangalore, dedicated to preserving South Asian cinema. Thousands of Indian films have been lost to history as reels are sold, discarded, or neglected. Shabistan’s mission is to rescue as many original prints as possible, and has built an archive that spans everything from B-movies to documentaries, and includes important works of Hindi and regional cinemas. This special event will feature a conversation with executive director David Farris, and Northwestern professor and Shabistan operations director David Boyk. They will present rare reels from Shabistan’s singular film collection.

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The Runaway, 1958

Interview Thursday, January 30, 7 PM

101 min Mrinal Sen, 1971, India, DCP

Bengali filmmaker Mrinal Sen pioneered a bracing blend of political modernism and popular appeal with Interview, the first film in his celebrated “Calcutta Trilogy.” In the film, labor strikes and political demonstrations prevent an ambitious young man from retrieving his Westernstyle suit from the laundry, putting an important job interview in jeopardy. Sen explodes the neo-realist trappings of this plot through daring shifts in style and perspective, challenging colonial and cinematic conventions alike. Interview will be presented in a new digital restoration, with an introduction and discussion by Kunal Sen, the filmmaker’s son. Screened in a restored DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive of India. In Bengali with English subtitles.

In Person: Kunal Sen

The Runaway Friday, February 7, 7 PM

124 min Ritwik Ghatak, 1958, India, DCP

In The Runaway, Bengali auteur Ritwik Ghatak brings his unique gift for stylistic play and trenchant social observation to this story of a runaway child lost in the big city. Fed up with his authoritarian father’s mistreatment, the enterprising eight-year-old Kanchan runs away from his small village to Calcutta, where he discovers the delights and hardships of life among the urban underclass.

The Runaway is a precursor to Parallel Cinema, a film movement that served as a critical counter to Bollywood fantasies of the 1960s and 1970s. Presented in a new digital restoration by the National Film Archive of India. In Bengali with English subtitles.

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CINEMA Pyaasa (Thirst) Friday, February 14, 7 PM

146 min Guru Dutt, 1957, India, DCP

Guru Dutt’s melancholy romantic drama is an icon of Hindi cinema’s golden age. Dutt, who counts among India’s greatest directors, also stars in the film as Vijay, a poor poet searching for recognition and respect. Set in Calcutta, the film considers the position of the creative underclass amidst postcolonial India’s uncompromising development agendas. The enigmatic Waheeda Rehman plays Gulabo, a sex worker who finds solace in Vijay’s poetry. Pyaasa also features some of Bollywood’s most enduring love songs, composed by S.D. Burman and Sahir Ludhianvi. (This series takes its title from a poem by Ludhianvi.) In a new restoration from Ultra Media. In Hindi with English subtitles.

Badnam Basti (Alley of Ill Repute) 100 min Friday, March 13, 7 PM Prem Kapoor, 1971, India, digital

Badnam Basti is considered one of the first Indian films to explore queer relationships. Based on a novel by Hindi writer Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena, it centers on a love triangle between two men and one woman on the margins of society. The film is noted for its adventurous editing, strong performances, neorealist style, and the music by Vijay Raghav Rao, one of postcolonial India’s most innovative composers. Although Badnam Basti was recut and rereleased in 1978, it has since faded into obscurity; until recently, the film was presumed lost. This screening may be the film’s US debut, in a new digital transfer from the only known 35mm print. Courtesy of Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin. In Hindi with English subtitles.

Pyaasa (Thirst), 1957

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Sonic Signature: Approaches to Film Sound Cinematography captures a picture of the world, but film sound creates a world. These two films– one, an experimental biography of a pioneer of experimental music, the other, an invaluable primer on the history of sonic innovation in cinema–offer vastly different understandings of the possibilities of the soundtrack. Both, however, reveal how innovative spirits and changes in technology echo across generations of sound artists working with the moving image.

Electro-Pythagoras (a portrait of Martin Bartlett) , 2017

Electro-Pythagoras (a portrait of Martin Bartlett) Thursday, February 13, 7 PM

45 min Luke Fowler, 2017, UK/Canada, 35mm

British film artist Luke Fowler lends his unmatched gift for portraiture to this sensitive, curious exploration of electronic music composer Martin Bartlett. Electro-Pythagoras turns the conventions of biographical documentary on their head, weaving personal photographs, letters, notes, rare performances, and new 16mm footage into a dense, evocative fugue.

Sound artist Ernst Karel’s soundtrack is every bit as adventurous, a fitting tribute to the film’s defiantly queer, uncompromising subject. Following the screening, Karel will perform a quadrophonic sound composition, drawing on recordings from Bartlett’s archives.

In Person: Sound designer Ernst Karel Co presented by Block Cinema with the MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern, the MA in Sound Arts and Industries, and CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM.

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound Thursday, March 12, 7 PM

94 min Midge Costin, 2019, USA, Digital Projection

Making Waves offers a front-row seat to a revolution in cinematic sound design. The voices of world-famous sound designers (Walter Murch, Ben Burtt, and Gary Rydstrom) and directors (David Lynch, Ryan Coogler, Sofia Coppola) guide viewers through a century of auditory innovation, peeling back the elaborate constructions behind some of film history’s most indelible scenes.

For this special screening, Block Cinema welcomes Skywalker Sound designer Tom Myers, whose work on WALL•E, Up, and Toy Story 3 earned Academy Awards in Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, for an in-depth discussion. In Person: Sound designer Tom Myers Co-presented by Block Cinema and the Northwestern MA in Sound Arts and Industries.

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CINEMA

Compensation, 1999

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Hidden Figures Drawing on the example of the 2019–2020 One Book One Northwestern selection, Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women who Helped Launch Our Nation Into Space, Block Cinema presents a yearlong series celebrating the history of women of color behind the camera. Featuring rarely screened films and in-depth discussions with filmmakers and historians, these programs also seek to champion the scholars, educators, curators, and archivists who work to make these histories visible today.

Will Friday, January 31, 7 PM

70 min Jessie Maple, 1981, USA, digital

Jessie Maple’s Will, about a basketball coach who adopts a homeless 12-year-old while trying to beat a heroin habit, offers a vision of 1980s Harlem unlike any other. At a time when mainstream representations painted a fearful picture of life above 96th St., Maple’s film reveals a more complex landscape, one in which community bonds flourish despite the effects of poverty and addiction. Maple is a true trailblazer: the first African-American woman to join the International Photographers of Motion Picture & Television union, she also established a long-running venue for independent Black filmmakers in her own home. Maple will appear in person to discuss the film, and her new memoir The Maple Crew, which reflects on these achievements.

In person: filmmaker Jessie Maple Courtesy Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Co-presented by Block Cinema and One Book One Northwestern.

Compensation 95 min Thursday, February 27, 7 PM Zeinabu irene Davis, 1999,USA, 16mm

Zeinabu irene Davis’ 1999 feature is one of the most formally audacious and emotionally resonant films ever made in Chicago. Telling two versions of a love story between a deaf woman and a hearing man–one set at the turn of the 20th century, the other in the 1990s–Compensation adopts a playful, fluid style, drawing on silent-film tropes and experimental montage techniques.

Director (and former NU professor) Davis navigates the challenges of race, class, disease, and disability with a dexterity shared by leads Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks, each playing a dual role. 20 years after its debut, the film remains a revelation. Print courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Introduction by Gerald Butters (Professor, MA in Liberal Studies program at Northwestern University). Post-screening discussion with Butters, Golden Owens (PhD candidate in Screen Cultures at NU), and director Zeinabu irene Davis (via Skype).

Co-presented by Block Cinema with SPS Graduate Programs Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program and One Book One Northwestern.

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CINEMA

Selections from the Golestan Film Workshop The Golestan Film Workshop, founded by Ebrahim Golestan, was a collective of leftist Iranian artists that mostly produced commissioned films for the National Iranian Oil Company and other institutions in the 1950s and 60s. This series, programmed to complement the exhibition Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection, includes several recent restorations of these signature works of Iranian modernist cinema.

Brick and Mirror 125 min Thursday, February 6, 7 PM Ebrahim Golestan, 1965, Iran, DCP

Brick and Mirror was the Golestan Film Workshop’s only feature film, but it had an enormous impact on Iranian cinema, and garnered international acclaim. The film, directed by Golestan from his own unfinished script, is a precursor to Iran’s New Wave, bringing together social realism with poetic expressionism. Forough Farrokhzad appears briefly, in one of her few acting roles.

Brick and Mirror also provides a rare view of the cosmopolitan Tehran of the 1960s, but takes care to expose the underlying tensions that were portents of political change in Iran. Shown in a recent digital restoration by the Cineteca di Bologna. In Farsi with English subtitles.

Three Films by Forugh Farrokhzad and Ebrahim Golestan Wednesday, February 12, 7 PM These three films demonstrate the rich aesthetic possibilities of the sponsored film. The House is Black (1961), directed by Forugh Farrokhzad, is considered a masterpiece of Iranian cinema.

The film, screening in a recent Cineteca di Bologna restoration, focuses on a leper colony, and Farrokhzad, a modernist poet, brings a lyrical and humanist but unsentimental grace to the subject. Wave, Coral, and Rock (1958-1961) is a poetic reflection on the processes of labor and industrialization under Iran’s new oil regime. A highly collaborative film, it betrays the uneven concerns of various transnational and nationalist interests. Finally, Golestan’s The Hills of Marlik (1963), also newly restored, focuses on an archeological excavation, considering the land’s use in the past, present, and future. In Farsi with English subtitles.

Brick and Mirror, 1965

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Block Cinema Winter 2020 Special Events

Carmen Jones, 1954

Carmen Jones 108 min Friday, January 17, 7 PM Otto Preminger, 1954, USA, 35mm

Otto Preminger brought Georges Bizet’s beloved opera blazingly to the modern screen in Carmen Jones, famous for its daring, all-Black cast, its astonishing Cinemascope compositions, and above all for the bewitching star turn by Dorothy Dandridge. Playing the titular temptress, a factory worker who ensnares a hapless GI (Harry Belafonte) in a doomed romance, Dandridge established herself as a major talent, rewriting the possibilities of African American femininity on screen. Presented in an imported 35mm print from the British Film Institute.

Families in Transition Thursday, January 23, 7 PM

This program brings together two documentary stories about families navigating the complexities of gender across generational and cultural lines. Oli Rodriguez’s autobiographical documentary, Lyndale, returns to footage shot over a decade ago, tracing his brother’s struggles with mental illness alongside his own transition experience. André Pérez’s web series “America in Transition” profiles the experiences of trans people of color; in the episode A Family Matter, Pérez explores the mother-son dynamics of transitioning. Pérez and Rodriguez will appear to discuss their films and their experiences as trans filmmakers in Chicago. In Person: filmmakers Oli Rodriguez and André Alan Pérez Co-presented by Block Cinema with the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the NU Queer Pride Graduate Student Association, and the Northwestern Women’s Center. This event is also part of the Kaplan Institute for Humanities Dialogue 2019-2020: Memorializing.

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CINEMA Gelin (The Bride) Friday, February 21, 7 PM

97 min.

Lütfi Akad, 1973, Turkey, digital

Regularly cited as one of the best Turkish films of all time, Ömer Lütfi Akad’s The Bride narrates the struggles of a family who moves from rural Anatolia to modern Istanbul. With compassion and keen sociological insight, The Bride examines the effects of migration on traditional family structures, revealing the impossible demands placed on women as caregivers and providers.

Known as the “masterless master” of Turkish film, Akad pioneered a realist style that transformed the nation’s cinema; The Bride, the first feature in his landmark trilogy on migration, is his masterpiece. Shown in a new digital restoration. In Turkish with English Subtitles.

Co-presented by Block Cinema with with the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies program.

Gelin (The Bride), 1973

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Present.Perfect, 2019

Present.Perfect Thursday, February 28, 7 PM

124 min.

Shengze Zhu, 2019, Digital, USA/Hong Kong,

Shengze Zhu’s award-winning experimental documentary Present.Perfect surveys contemporary China through the lives of live-streaming “anchors” broadcasting their everyday experiences to unseen audiences around the world. From over 800 hours of recorded live-streaming footage, Chicago-based filmmaker Zhu crafts an absorbing, far-ranging cinematic essay on the construction and performance of identity, posing stark questions about community, labor, gender, disability, and the economic forces that shape our social realities. In Mandarin with English subtitles. In Person: filmmaker Shengze Zhu Co-presented by Block Cinema with the MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern.

A Moon For My Father Thursday, March 5, 7 PM

85 min.

Mania Akbari and Douglas White, 2019, UK/Iran/Germany, digital

At age 30, Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. A Moon For My Father, an epistolary essay film made in collaboration with her partner, the British sculptor Douglas White, positions Akbari’s illness within layers of personal and national history. Rich in texture and astonishingly intimate, Akbari’s film presents memory as a poetic, embodied experience. Mania Akbari and Douglas White will appear via Skype for a Q&A with Northwestern professor of Screen Cultures Hamid Naficy after the screening.

Co-presented by Block Cinema with the Iranian American Fund for Cultural Programming and the Middle East and North African Studies program at Northwestern.

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P U B L I C TO U RS

Modernisms Sunday Afternoon Tours Select Sundays, 3 PM

Explore Modernisms with The Block Museum’s student docents. These free, informal tours kick off in the museum lobby at 3 PM and can be tailored to the questions and interests of those attending. Tours typically last 45–60 minutes.

February 2 February 9 February 16 February 23

March 1 March 8 March 15 April 5

Guests tour the Fall 2019 exhibition Pop América, 1965-1975. Photo Sean Su Photography.

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LEARN WITH US

Researchers in the Eloise W. Martin Study Center. Photo Sean Su Photography

Schedule a Group Visit to Modernisms Bring your group to The Block Museum for a free gallery tour of our current exhibitions. We are happy to work with you to plan a visit that meets your group’s needs and interests. All guided tours are led by Northwestern student docents, who come from a wide range of academic backgrounds, including art history, psychology, journalism, science, and engineering. On guided tours, our docents provide information about the works on view and also facilitate open discussion. If you would like to request a tour for your organization, please visit our website to complete a request form.

Visit our Eloise W. Martin Study Center We welcome scholars, classes, and researchers to our Eloise W. Martin Study Center to further explore The Block Museum’s permanent collection. To select works for your visit, you may search the online database or contact one of the curators. Appointments can be scheduled Tuesday through Friday between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM. To schedule your appointment, contact Collections Coordinator Joseph Scott at 847.467.0734 or printroom@northwestern.edu.

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P U B L I CAT I O N

Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection Hirmer Publishers Hardcover | 2019 | $50.00 | 240 pp. | 10 x 11 in. | 120 color illus.

Modernisms is the first book to offer a crosscultural exploration of modern art from Iran, Turkey, and India. Focusing on select works from the Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at New York University, the contributions here discuss significant pieces from the 1960s and early 1970s. Along the way, Modernisms outlines a welcome alternative to the long-dominant focus on North American and western European art.

Featuring fresh scholarship from a range of voices, among them Fereshteh Daftari, Shiva Balaghi, Susan Hapgood, and Ranjit Hoskote, Modernisms powerfully argues for the importance of nonwestern art as a component of modernity—and defies the long-held belief that other forms of modernism can only be second-rate.

Purchase at The Block Museum or online at https://press.uchicago.edu

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COMING UP: SPRING 2020

Abdallah Benanteur (Algerian), To Monet, Giverny, 1983. Oil on canvas, . Collection of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE

Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s – 1980s April 28 – July 26, 2019 Main Gallery From the 1950s through the 1980s, painters and sculptors throughout the Arab world explored the challenges and possibilities of abstraction in art. Taking Shape, an exhibition of works from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE), presents the work of Middle Eastern and North African artists whose creative visions stretched beyond the boundaries of representation. Including artists originating from or working in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and the UAE, this exhibition, organized by the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, reveals the global reach and regional importance of abstraction in the 20th century.

SAVE THE DATE

Opening Conversation with Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, Founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation Wednesday, April 29, 2020 THE BLOCK MUSEUM OF ART

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