Media City Film Festival 2018 catalogue

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7 7:30PM [OPENING NIGHT DETROIT]

TRANSFORMATIVE ACTIONS: THE FILMS OF CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN & VALIE EXPORT CAROLYN CRAWFORD ACCOMPANIED BY RICK JONES [LIVE PERFORMANCE / ARETHA FRANKLIN TRIBUTE]

DETROIT FILM THEATRE at the DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS

PRESENTING PARTNERS: PENNY STAMPS SPEAKER SERIES, DETROIT FILM THEATRE & TRINOSOPHES

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MEDIA CITY FILM FESTIVAL: OPENING NIGHT DETROIT TRANSFORMATIVE ACTIONS: THE FILMS OF CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN & VALIE EXPORT Wednesday, November 7, 2018 7:30PM At the Detroit Institute of Arts, DETROIT FILM THEATRE Admission: $5 (Free for Media City Pass holders) 5200 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan Media City celebrates its Opening Night Detroit in partnership with The Penny Stamps Speaker Series at the Detroit Film Theatre. Join us for an incredible double-bill screening with legendary filmmakers and feminist activists Carolee Schneemann (USA) and VALIE EXPORT (Austria). The evening’s program includes a unique in-person presentation by Schneemann, and a selection of canonical and lesser-known films by both artists, including VALIE EXPORT’s Poem films (19661980), along with a restoration of Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses (1964-67).

Musical performance by Motown singer Carolyn Crawford accompanied by Rick Jones (Detroit), in tribute to Aretha Franklin.

Poems, VALIE EXPORT, 8 min, 1966-1980 Self-Portrait with Head, VALIE EXPORT, 4 min, 1967 Breath Text: Love Poem, VALIE EXPORT, 2 min, 1970-1973 Man & Woman & Animal, VALIE EXPORT, 8.5 min, 1970-1973 Fuses, Carolee Schneemann, 30 min, 1964-67 Viet-Flakes, Carolee Schneemann, 11 min, 1965 Devour, Carolee Schneemann, 9 min, 2003-2004 “I didn’t want to perform in a gallery or a museum as they were too conservative for me and would only give conventional responses to my experimental works. It was important for me to present my works to the public, in the public space, and not within an art-conservative space, but in the by then so-called underground. When I was performing my actions in public, on the streets, in the urban space, new and different forms of reception developed. In the streets I provoked new explanations.” – VALIE EXPORT “I’m of the opinion that we don’t necessarily need so many artists. I recommend that many of the people who think they want to be artists should go into the [American] Friends Service Committee, or do government outreach to communities that don’t have water, or that need seeds or ecological assistance. It would create a system in which people with engaged sensibilities and potential insight assist instead of imposing. We have some very powerful examples here in the United States, like in Detroit, where there’s been an intensive grassroots movement by local communities—black and white—to bring life back to the city.” – Carolee Schneemann

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN (Fox Chase, PA 1939). Studies at Bard College and University of Illinois. One of the defining avant-garde filmmakers and feminist performance artists of the 20th century. 20+ films since 1963; screenings and exhibitions including Museum der Moderne Salzburg, MoMA PS1 and Sotheby’s (New York), Joan Miró Foundation (Barcelona), Ludwig Museum (Vienna), Reina Sophia (Madrid), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), etc. Recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship (1993), Rockefeller Followship (1993), Yoko Ono Courage Award (2012) and Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (2017). Lives in upstate New York.

VALIE EXPORT (Linz, Austria 1940). Studies at convent (unidentified) and Vienna’s National School for Textile Industry. In 1967 begins to develop one of the most significant bodies of experimental feminist art of the postwar period. 100+ film, video and performance actions since 1966; screenings and exhibitions at Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Metropolitan Museum (New York), Shanghai Art Museum, mumok (Vienna), Centre Pompidou (Paris), MoMA (New York), Tate Modern (London), National Centre for Contemporary Art (Moscow). Recipient of Oskar Kokoschka Prize (2000), Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (2005), Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria (2010). Lives in Vienna, Austria and Cologne, Germany.

COMPETITION JURY ALEXANDRA CUESTA (Ecuador / USA) is a filmmaker and visual artist. Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. 5+ films since 2007; screenings and exhibitions at Image Forum (Tokyo), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Viennale, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Cinéma Du Réel (Paris), Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico), Courtisane Film Festival (Belgium), and NYFF. Award Winner at Media City (2013). Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and MacDowell Colony residency (2018).

NAZLI DINÇEL (Turkey / USA) is a first generation immigrant born in Ankara, Turkey. Studies at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 12+ films since 2009; screenings and exhibitions at MoMI (NY), IFF Rotterdam, BAFICI (Buenos Aires), Hong Kong International Film Festival, etc. Recipient of The Helen Hill Award from the Orphan Film Symposium and AAFF’s Eileen Maitland Award (2018). Lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

MARTIN GRENNBERGER (Sweden) is a film critic, writer and programmer based in Stockholm.

Studies at Stockholm and Södertörn universities. Screenings and exhibitions at Light Industry (New York), Fylkingen, Index–The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, and Filmform, Sweden’s oldest organization devoted to the promotion, preservation and distribution of film and video art. Editor of Walden magazine, and co-editor (with Daniel A. Swarthnas) of a forthcoming monograph on filmmaker Claes Söderquist (2018). His writings have appeared in Lumière, OEI, and Kunstkritikk.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8 7:30PM

YUGOSLAV STRUCTURALISM

ORGANIZED BY GREG DE CUIR JR. (BELGRADE, SERBIA)

MIHOVIL PANSINI ŽELIMIR ŽILNIK BOJAN JOVANOVIĆ TOMISLAV GOTOVAC BOJANA VUJANOVIĆ DAVORIN MARC IVAN LADISLAV GALETA

THE CAPITOL THEATRE

PRESENTING PARTNERS: TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL & ART GALLERY OF WINDSOR

YUGOSLAV STRUCTURALISM

ORGANIZED BY GREG DE CUIR JR. IN ATTENDANCE FROM BELGRADE, SERBIA You might be forgiven for believing that structural-materialist film is strictly a North American and Western European phenomenon. The canon has fortified itself over the decades, primarily through the activities of conservative writers and curators.

This screening program lays siege with a selection of films that testify to the pioneering conceptual work taking shape in Socialist Yugoslavia from the 1960s through the 1980s.

The principles of structuralism in film were incubated at an early stage in Yugoslavia, as kino culture was very advanced, no doubt owing something to the radical principles of self-management in culture and non-alignment in geopolitics that helped the country forge its own independent path. The film artists that this program introduces were aware of and influenced by this nascent Western aesthetic, but likewise uncovered their own routes to realizing a moving image avant-garde. If many of these brilliant works have been lost in the seams of film history, it is because we have not shifted our own perspectives. Imagine an international structuralism, free of hierarchies and received wisdoms. And then allow these Yugoslav objectifs to trace those inner shapes and outer boundaries while simultaneously exceeding them.

K3 ili čisto nebo bez oblaka / K3 Clear Sky Without Clouds Mihovil Pansini, 3 min, 1963 Inventur-Metzstrasse 11 / Inventory Želimir Žilnik, 9 min, 1975 Putovanje / Journey Bojana Vujanović, 2 min, 1972 Kružnica / Circle Tomislav Gotovac, 9 min, 1964 Praznik / Holiday Bojan Jovanović, 11 min, 1983 Pravac / Straight Line Tomislav Gotovac, 7 min, 1964 Ugrizni me. Že enkrat. / Bite me. Once already.

Davorin Marc, 2 min, 1978-1980 sfaĩra 1985 – 1895 / sphere 1985 – 1895 Ivan Ladislav Galeta, 10 min, 1984

GREG DE CUIR JR. (Los Angeles, CA). Studies at the University of Arts Belgrade. Selector for Alternative Film/ Video (Belgrade); screenings and exhibitions at The National Gallery of Art (Washington), ICA (London), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw), Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington), Los Angeles Filmforum, Slovenian Kinoteka (Ljubljana), Flaherty Seminar (New York), Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque), etc. Author of Yugoslav Black Wave: Polemical Cinema in Socialist Yugoslavia (2011).

Current Managing Editor of the book series Eastern European Screen Cultures and the journal NECSUS. Cotranslator of Tomislav Gotovac: Life as a Film Experiment (2018). Lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia as a curator, writer and translator.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8 9:30PM

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 1 KEVIN JEROME EVERSON ANA VAZ JODIE MACK MARY HELENA CLARK SEAMUS HARAHAN LIS RHODES JONATHAN SCHWARTZ SAUL LEVINE SKY HOPINKA

THE CAPITOL THEATRE

PRESENTING PARTNER: MOTHLIGHT MICROCINEMA & ARTCITE INC.

POLLY ONE

Kevin Jerome Everson, USA, 16mm > digital, 6 min, 2018 Polly One is a silent meditation on the cosmos, capturing a light dimmed but never extinguished. Made in memory of Bertha Everson, the filmmaker’s grandmother—who passed the day before the August 2017 solar eclipse.

KEVIN JEROME EVERSON (Mansfield OH, 1965). Studies at University of Akron and Ohio University. 100+ films since 1997; screenings at Centre Pompidou (Paris), TIFF, Whitney Museum, MoMA (New York), etc. Guggenheim Fellowship (1996), Rome Prize (2001). Eighth appearance at Media City; 2014 Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence. Lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

AMAZING FANTASY Ana Vaz, Brazil / Portugal, 16mm > digital, 3 min, 2018 Defying gravity, a game of levitation becomes at once the possibility of magic, or a translation of an irrepressible desire for mastery.

Shot in Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

ANA VAZ (Brasilia, Brazil 1986). Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Le Fresnoy. 10+ films since 2008; screenings at Curtas Vila do Conde, Visions du Réel (Nyon), “Views from the Avant-garde” and “Projections” at the NYFF, etc. Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Kazuko Trust Award, Media City and Fronteira Festival (Goiânia) Grand Prizes (2015). Media City Award Winner (2017). Fourth appearance at Media City. Lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

ATOMIC GARDEN

Ana Vaz, Brazil / Portugal, 16mm > digital, 7.5 min, 2018 “We could say that a firework is not different from a tree, or from a big artificial flower that grows, develops, flowers and dies in a few seconds. Withered, finally, it soon disappears in unrecognizable fragments. Well, let’s take this firework and make it last for a month, and we will have a flower with all the characteristics of other flowers. Or so, inverting the order of factors, may we imagine that the seed of a plant can explode like a bomb.” – Bruno Munari Fields of newborn flowers, small gatherings of surviving bees, resistant plant species and new types of egg lay upon our shore, engaging us to dig and search for the meaning of such unexpected life…

ANA VAZ (Brasilia, Brazil 1986). Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Le Fresnoy. 10+ films since 2008; screenings at Curtas Vila do Conde, Visions du Réel (Nyon), “Views from the Avant-garde” and “Projections” at the NYFF, etc. Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Kazuko Trust Award, Media City and Fronteira Festival (Goiânia) Grand Prizes (2015). Media City Award Winner (2017).

Fourth appearance at Media City. Lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

HOARDERS WITHOUT BORDERS Jodie Mack, USA, 16mm, 6 min, 2018

Featuring crystallized magic markers and the kidney stone of a horse, the generously curated mineral collection of Mary Johnson comes to life in a manual labor of love for the process of archival procedure.

JODIE MACK (London, England 1983). Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 30+ films since 2003; screenings and exhibitions at 25FPS Festival (Zagreb), Harvard Film Archive, National Gallery of Art (Washington), IFF Rotterdam, and Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus). Associate Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College. Radcliffe Film Study Center Fellow at Harvard University (2018-2019). Lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.

THE GLASS NOTE

Mary Helena Clark, USA, 16mm & digital, 9.5 min, 2018 “We hear of those formations of rocks which suddenly shift when the winds blow upon them, or else emit a soughing sound or give forth a mandolin-like music. People come from near and far to see them. And yet one’s initial impulse is to turn and run from such phenomena, no matter how much one may love music.” –Story of O, Ann Desclos In The Glass Note, fragmented bodies, statuary, a beach marred by a storm, a virtual ocean, the phenomena of lithophonic stones, empty bear cages at an abandoned zoo, and a chair that served as a hearing aid come together to explore cinema’s inherent ventriloquism, fetish, and the boundarylessness of sense.

MARY HELENA CLARK (Santee SC, 1983). Studies at Emerson College and University of Illinois at Chicago. 10+ films since 2008; screenings and exhibitions include TIFF, NYFF, IFF Rotterdam, ICA and LUX (London), Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and Whitney Biennial. Second appearance at Media City.

Lives in New York, New York.

SHINY WET STONES & MR. & MRS. COMPOST

Seamus Harahan, Northern Ireland, digital, 1.5 min & 3 min, 2016 & 2013 Garden for the gardenless.

“And it’s little boxes all made into houses That’s where they sleep, my friend I sing a song of sixes, invoke the curse of witches In a remote woodland Ah ah ah ah Oh oh oh oh” – Robyn G Shiels

SEAMUS HARAHAN (London, England 1968). Studies at University of Ulster. 25+ films since 2000; screenings and exhibitions at IFF Rotterdam, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, M HKA (Antwerp), ICA and LUX (London), etc. Third appearance at Media City.

Jarman Award Winner (2015). Lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

DRESDEN DYNAMO

Lis Rhodes, UK, 16mm, 5 min, 1971 It was perhaps the question of sound – the uncertainty of any synchronicity between what was seen and what was said that began an investigation into the relationship of sound to image. Dresden Dynamo is a film that I made without a camera – in which the image is the sound track – the sound track the image. A film document.

I will begin with a generalization. Resistance is many and different actions, and can apply to many and different political movements. It depends on a changed perception of ‘authority’. Emily Dickinson put it so succinctly: “I took one Draught of Life/ I’ll tell you what I paid/ Precisely an existence/ The market price, they said.”

LIS RHODES (Cornwall, England 1942). Studies at the Royal College of Art. 10+ films since 1972; screenings and exhibitions at Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Tate Modern, ICA, and National Film Theatre (London), etc. Curator at London Filmmakers’ Co-op (1975-1976); co-founder of Circles: Feminist Film Distribution Network (1979). Lives in London, England.

THE CRACK-UP

Jonathan Schwartz, USA, 16mm, 18.5 min, 2017 “Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work – the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside – the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within – that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.

The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick – the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed…” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

JONATHAN SCHWARTZ (New York NY, 1973). Studies at Massachusetts College of Art. 25+ films since 2000; screenings at IFF Rotterdam, EXiS (Seoul), NYFF, Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), San Francisco Cinematheque, etc. Fifth appearance at Media City.

LIGHT LICKS LOVE STAINS

Saul Levine, USA, S8mm > 16mm, 3.5 min, 2018 Light Licks are a series of films which are made frame by frame, often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into frames left unexposed. Light Licks are ecstatic flicker films, inspired by improvised music, particularly jazz, and by accounts of mystic visionary practice.

SAUL LEVINE (New Haven CT, 1943). 85+ films since 1964; screenings at numerous venues worldwide including recent retrospectives at MoMA (New York), The Nightingale (Chicago), etc. Former editor of New Left Notes; former programmer of MassArt Film Society for 40+ years. Fourth appearance at Media City including retrospective screening (2013). Lives in Boston, MA and “hardly ever leaves town.�

FAINTING SPELLS

Sky Hopinka, Ho-Chunk Nation, digital, 11 min, 2018 Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, this is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska, or the Indian Pipe Plant – used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.

SKY HOPINKA (Bellingham WA, 1984). Studies at Portland State University and the University of WisconsinMilwaukee. 9+ films since 2010; screenings at TIFF, Courtisane (Ghent), imagineNATIVE (Toronto), “Projections” at NYFF, and Whitney Biennial (2017), etc.

Third appearance at Media City; Award Winner (2014).

Lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9 1:00PM

HOME COMING: THE DIASPORA SUITE ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

EPHRAIM ASILI & THE FREEDOM SEEKERS

SANDWICH FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH

PRESENTING PARTNERS: ARTS COUNCIL WINDSOR & REGION, SANDWICH FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH

HOME COMING: The Diaspora Suite on the Underground Railroad Ephraim Asili & The Freedom Seekers Friday, November 9, 2018, 1:00 PM At Sandwich First Baptist Church: 3652 Peter Street, Windsor, Ontario Admission: Pay What You Like. Donations to benefit the building’s preservation.

Screening of The Diaspora Suite with New York filmmaker Ephraim Asili in attendance. Hosted at Sandwich First Baptist Church, significant terminus on the Underground Railroad. Descendants of original freedom seekers and cast members of Asili’s Windsor-Detroit film Fluid Frontiers in attendance.

In August 2016, Ephraim Asili filmed the fifth and final chapter of his famed Diaspora Suite in Windsor-Detroit. Shot exclusively on 16mm over the course of seven years in Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jamaica, and the United States,The Diaspora Suite was recently described by the Brooklyn Art Museum as a “revelatory cycle of five short films collapsing time and space to reveal the hidden resonances that connect the black American experience to the greater African diaspora.”

Fluid Frontiers, the culminating film in the series, features community members form the Windsor-Detroit region. Named for the recent scholarly publication “A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland,” the film was awarded Media City Film Festival’s Grand Prize (2017). This significant repeat screening represents a homecoming for the film, an opportunity to visit this internationally significant landmark, and a chance to view The Diaspora Suite with filmmaker and cast in attendance. This event will be moderated

by Greg de Cuir Jr. Fluid Frontiers cast: Teajai Travis, Tawana Petty, Deborah Lee, Bruce E. Davis, Jonni Ujama, Leslie McCurdy, Irene Moore Davis, Genoa O’Brien, Kim Duane Elliott, Marsha Battle Philpot, and Efe Bes. EPHRAIM ASILI (Philadelphia PA, 1979). Studies at Temple University and Bard College. Working in film since 2007; screenings and exhibitions at TIFF, MoMA (New York), Milan Film Festival, “Projections” at NYFF, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Film-Makers’ Cooperative (New York), Whitney, etc. Third appearance at Media City. 2016 Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence. Media City Grand Prize Winner (2017). Lives in Hudson, New York.

THE DIASPORA SUITE Forged Ways, 15 min, 2011

Photographed in Harlem and various locations throughout Ethiopia, the film shifts between the first person account of a filmmaker, the third person experience of a man navigating the streets of Harlem, and day-to-day life in the cities and villages of Ethiopia.

American Hunger, 19 min, 2013

Oscillating between a street festival in Philadelphia, the slave forts and capital city of Ghana, and the New Jersey shore, American Hunger explores the relationship between personal experience and collective histories.

Many Thousands Gone, 8 min, 2015

Filmed in Salvador, Brazil (the last city in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery) and Harlem, New York (an international stronghold of the African diaspora), Many Thousands Gone draws parallels between a summer afternoon on the streets of the two cities.

Kindah, 12 min, 2016

Accompong was founded in 1739 after rebel slaves and their descendants fought a protracted war with the British, leading to the establishment of a treaty between the two sides. Cudjoe, a leader of the Maroons, is said to have united the Maroons in their fight for autonomy under the Kindah Tree—a large, ancient mango tree that is still standing.

Fluid Frontiers, 23 min, 2017

Shot along the Detroit River border region, Fluid Frontiers explores the relationship between concepts of resistance and liberation exemplified by the Underground Railroad (the Detroit River being a major terminal point), and more modern resistance and liberation movements represented by Dudley Randall’s Detroitbased Broadside Press.

THE VENUE Sandwich First Baptist Church is the oldest active black church in Canada. A group of former slaves began an informal church group in the 1820s. In 1840, fugitive slaves from the Close Communion of Baptists formed the congregation. They worshipped outdoors or in the homes of individual members until a log cabin was constructed in 1847 under the direction of Rev. Madison Lightfoot. One acre of land was donated by the Crown for a new brick church in 1851. Fugitive slaves worked to construct the new church with hand-hewn lumber and bricks. The clay for the bricks was obtained from the Detroit riverbanks and fired in a handmade kiln.

The church was an important terminal on the Underground Railroad because it was situated near an ideal river crossing point. A series of tunnels and trapdoors helped facilitate safe arrival of fugitives. Individuals escaping slavery in America could make their way, with the assistance of members of the congregation, from the cellar of the church. Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in America, slave catchers would venture into Canada in attempts to capture fugitive slaves and claim their bounty. In the event that a slave catcher would arrive in the church a rehearsed plan would go into effect. It is said that the pastor would raise the alarm by singing predetermined hymns such as “There is a Stranger at The Door.”

The site is still an active church with a dedicated membership. Visitors to Sandwich First Baptist Church can still view the trapdoor in the floor. The church and other historically significant sites appear in Ephraim Asili’s film Fluid Frontiers.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 9 6:00PM

REGIONAL ARTISTS’ PROGRAM DEREK JENKINS JEFFERSON KIELWAGEN MARCOS SARAFIM STEEVENS SIMEON ED JANZEN SALLY LAWTON

NICHOLAS GEORGE SEAN BOKENKAMP MICHELE GOULETTE JASON SUDAK CHRISTINE NEGUS

THE CAPITOL THEATRE

PRESENTING PARTNERS: LIAISON OF INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERS OF TORONTO & WINDSOR ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

CONTENTS

Derek Jenkins, Hamilton, 16mm, 7.5 min, 2018

Uncorroborated memories of a close, but distant relation.

GEDE VIZYON

Jefferson Kielwagen, Marcos Serafim, Steevens Simeon, East Lansing, digital, 15 min, 2018 A walk through the Port-au-Prince Grand Cemetery guided by one of its inhabitants.

ROAD 3

Ed Janzen, Windsor, digital, 1 min, 2018

Repeating and predictable cycles, memory loss.

SKY HIGH AND THE COLOR OF MONEY Sally Lawton, Detroit, digital, 6 min, 2018

A concoction of nationalism and festivity at protests and parades provides a potion of slushiness.

ONYX ASHANTI PROGRAMS HIMSELF Nicholas George, Detroit, digital, 13 min, 2017 If music isn’t entertainment, what is it?

THEORIA

Sean Bokenkamp, Milford, digital, 12.5 min, 2018

A scratch animation made by hand-painting the 35mm filmstrip.

OCEAN RING #3

Michele Goulette, Windsor, digital, 1 min, 2018

The Ocean Ring series is a meditation on mother earth. Salty amniotic waters run in our veins.

GREAT DISMAL SWAMP

Jason Sudak, Detroit, 16mm > digital, 10 min, 2017

Contact and underwater microphones are combined with 16mm film to portray the real and imagined landscapes of the Great Dismal Swamp.

I’VE BEEN WAITING TO SMILE FOR A LONG TIME Christine Negus, London, S8mm > digital, 4.5 min, 2017

i’ve been waiting to smile for a long time moves between an approximate (and absurd) Greco-Roman reconstruction and the filmmaker’s sister trying to remake a childhood ceramic homage.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 9 7:30PM

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 2 NEIL HENDERSON MARGARET TAIT LUKE FOWLER MALENA SZLAM ROSE LOWDER PETER HUTTON BEN RIVERS KURT KREN

THE CAPITOL THEATRE SCREENING DEDICATED TO NOVA FAXON (BORN MAY 16, 2017)

PRESENTING PARTNER: VISUAL STUDIES WORKSHOP

CANDLE (COLOUR)

Neil Henderson, UK, 16mm, 3 min, 2018 A polaroid of a candle is observed developing from the moment of capture to its final state. The film presents this event in reverse. As the image “un-develops” it dissolves/ fades into a frame of white light, illuminating the space and audience in the process.

The photographic process takes exactly as long as one 100ft roll of 16mm, creating an equivalence between a still and a moving medium. At 18fps the projector animates the candle’s flame into a flicker.

NEIL HENDERSON (Worcester, UK 1973). Studies at Kent Institute of Art and Design and Slade School of Fine Art. Screenings at Whitechapel Gallery and Tate Britain (London), Microscope Galley (New York), Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge). Editor of RGB Publishing with Simon Payne.

Shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2009). Third appearance at Media City. Lives in Kent, England.

PORTRAIT OF GA

Margaret Tait, Scotland, 16mm, 4.5 min, 1952 My mother seemed a good subject for a portrait, and I thought it offered a chance to do a sort of “abstract film,” in the sense that it didn’t have what you might call “the grammar of film.” It’s mostly discontinuous shots linked just by subject, in one case by colour, only rarely by movement.

Flame / Is a thing I / Always wonder about. / It seems to be made of colour only./ I don’t know what else it’s made of.

MARGARET TAIT (Kirkwall, Scotland 1918 – Orkney Islands, Scotland 1999). Studies medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and film at Centro Sperimentale di Photographia. 30+ films since 1952; screenings at National Film Theatre (London), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), EXPRMNTL (Knokke le Zoute), etc. Established Ancona Films (1956), and published three books of poetry: origins and elements, The Hen and the Bees, and Subjects and Sequences. Tait was accorded a retrospective at the 1970 Edinburgh Film Festival.

MUM’S CARDS

Luke Fowler, Scotland, 16mm > 35mm, 10 min, 2018 “Kunst ist Magie, befreit von der Lüge, Wahrheit zu sein.” – Adorno

LUKE FOWLER (Glasgow, Scotland 1978). Studies at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. 20+ films since 2001; exhibitions and screenings at White Chapel Gallery, ICA, Tate Modern (London), White Columns and MoMA (New York), Muzeum Sztuki (Łódź), Witte de With (Rotterdam), Courtisane Festival (Ghent), Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), etc. Derek Jarman award winner (2008), shortlisted for the Turner Prize (2012). Second appearance at Media City. Lives in Glasgow, Scotland.

ALTIPLANO

Malena Szlam, Chile / Canada, 16mm > 35mm, 15.5 min, 2018 Filmed in the Andean Mountains, in the traditional lands of the Atacameño, Aymara, and Calchaquí-Diaguita in Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO takes place within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and coloured lakes. Fusing earth with sky, day with night, heartbeat with mountain, and mineral with iridescent cloud, ALTIPLANO reveals a vibrating Ektachrome landscape in which a bright blue sun threatens to eclipse a blood-red moon.

MALENA SZLAM (Santiago, Chile 1979). Studies at Universidad de Artes y Ciencias Sociales and Concordia University. 20+ films and media installations since 2000; screenings at IFF Rotterdam, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, [S8] Mostra de Cinema Pereférico (A Coruña), Viennale, TIFF, etc. Member of Double Negative Collective (Montréal).

Underground Mines and Mobile Frames Residency artists (2015). Second appearance at Media City. Lives in Montréal, Québec.

VOILIERS ET COQUELICOTS

Rose Lowder, France, 16mm, 2.5 min, 2001 In my films, you’re not exactly sure where anything is. The film escapes simplistic definition, which is part of the project. It is also a part of my philosophy. My films don’t progress along a track and arrive somewhere, because I don’t think life works like that.

Little is necessary for everything to appear differently. The date, the hour, the weather, the space’s layout, one’s glance or presence of mind can make everything change.

The boats sail out of the Vieux Port in Marseille to be amongst the poppy fields.

ROSE LOWDER (Lima, Peru 1941). Studies at Lima School of Fine Arts and Chelsea School of Art. 50+ films since 1978; solo screenings at Tate Modern (London), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Cinema Project (Portland), etc. Co-founder of the Archives du film expérimental d’Avignon (1981).

Worked with Groucho Marx in London, England. Seventh appearance at Media City. Lives in Avignon, France.

BOUQUETS 31-36

Rose Lowder, France, 16mm, 10.5 min, 2018 “Colours, objects and their treatments go beyond the discourse of scientific research that the filmmaker usually tends to maintain. We cannot ignore the high sensuality of the scenes and their choices. Rose Lowder favours scenes of nature, even though some of the sites filmed are located in the city. Through their filmic transformation, they no longer appear to be urban manifestations but natural landscapes. In this way, Rose Lowder continues an impressionist tradition: working in nature rather than in the studio; like Cézanne, working on site is the sine qua non condition in order to reveal the ‘little sensation’ and represent it.” – Yann Beauvais

ROSE LOWDER (Lima, Peru 1941). Studies at Lima School of Fine Arts and Chelsea School of Art. 50+ films since 1978; solo screenings at Tate Modern (London), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Cinema Project (Portland), etc. Co-founder of the Archives du film expérimental d’Avignon (1981).

Worked with Groucho Marx in London, England. Seventh appearance at Media City. Lives in Avignon, France.

LANDSCAPE (FOR MANON) Peter Hutton, USA, 16mm, 12 min, 1987

“Hutton’s black-and-white haikus are an exquisite distillation of the cinematic eye. The limitations imposed – no colour, no sound, no movement (except from a vehicle not directly propelled by the filmmaker), no direct cuts since the images are born and die in black – ironically entail an ultimate freedom of the imagination ... If pleasure can disturb, Hutton’s ploys emerge in full focus.” – Warren Sonbert

PETER HUTTON (Detroit MI, 1944 – Hudson NY, 2016).

Studies at San Francisco Art Institute. 20+ films since 1970; screenings at all major venues for artist’s film worldwide, including full retrospective at MoMA and four editions of Whitney Biennial (New York). Guggenheim Fellow (1989). Fifth appearance at Media City, including retrospective and Grand Prize for World Premiere of At Sea (2006). Greatly missed.

TREES DOWN HERE

Ben Rivers, UK, 16mm > 35mm, 10 min, 2018 “These are amazing: each / Joining a neighbor, as though speech / Were a still performance. / Arranging by chance / To meet as far this morning / From the world as agreeing / With it, you and I / Are suddenly what the trees try / To tell us we are: / That their merely being there / Means something; that soon / We may touch, love, explain. / And glad not to have invented / Such comeliness, we are surrounded: / A silence already filled with noises, / A canvas on which emerges / A chorus of smiles, a winter morning. / Placed in a puzzling light, and moving, / Our days put on such reticence / These accents seem their own defense.” – John Ashbery

BEN RIVERS (Somerset, England 1972). Studies at Falmouth School of Art. 30+ films since 2003; screenings and exhibitions at IFF Rotterdam, Renaissance Society (Chicago), Courtisane (Ghent), Image Forum (Tokyo), etc.

68th Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize (2011), Robert Gardner Film Award (2012), IFFR Tiger Award for Short Film (2011 & 2014), EYE Art Film Prize (2016). Seventh appearance at Media City. Lives in London, England.

37/78 TREE AGAIN

Kurt Kren, Austria, 16mm, 3 min, 1978 “Film and video can be seen as part of an evolutionary/manufacturing process, whereby plant-based cellulose is transformed into the celluloid filmstrip; sedimented organisms (oil) are turned into plastics; aluminum is used in camera bodies; silica in lenses; silicon in microchips; and likewise the use of light-emitting diodes (OLED) in videographic technologies…Natural resources are divided into discrete parts, as is the ‘idea’ of nature, reanimated into a new conglomerate. Tree Again explores this as figure and ground, engaging the technology, and the question of compatibility and difference between the two-dimensional semblance of reality on screen and its referent. In Tree Again the image often nearly bursts into abstraction; the flurries of colour and flitters of light present a landscape always on the brink of vanishing.” – Gareth Polmeer KURT KREN (Vienna, Austria 1929 – 1998). Co-founder of Vienna Institute of Direct Art and Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative. Works at National Bank of Austria from 1947; dismissed following “Kunst und Revolution” action of 1968. 56+ films since 1956; screenings and exhibitions at Cannes, Museum of Modern Art (New York), Documenta 6 (Kassel), National Film Theatre (London), etc. Fourth presentation at Media City, including retrospective (2006).

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 9 9:30PM

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 3 STEPHANIE BARBER JAYNE PARKER JONATHAN SCHWARTZ JOHN PRICE ROBERT TODD SYLVIA SCHEDELBAUER

THE CAPITOL THEATRE

PRESENTING PARTNER: MEDIA ARTS NETWORK OF ONTARIO

3 PEONIES

Stephanie Barber, USA, 16mm, 3 min, 2017 What becomes apparent is the humour possible in material interactions and the tender and sometimes melodramatic symbolism of cut flowers. What begins as a reverence for natural beauty ends up pointing towards the abstract expressionism and colour field work of high modernism which, in many cases eschewed the banality of such “natural” beauty. The collaged soundtrack suggests weightier concerns, gently insistent behind the flatness of the utilitarian sounds of ripping tape.

STEPHANIE BARBER (Riverhead NY, 1975). 30+ films since 1990; screenings at National Gallery of Art (Washington), MoMA (New York), IFF Rotterdam, Tate Modern (London), NYFF’s “Projections” and “Views from the Avant-Garde,” among others. Books include Night Moves (Publishing Genius Press, 2013) and ALL THE PEOPLE (Ink Press Productions, 2015). Resident artist at The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

THE OBLIQUE

Jayne Parker, UK, 16mm > digital, 10 min, 2018 The music, “Blues in B-flat” by Volker Heyn, performed by cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, provides the framework for The Oblique. The title comes from an instruction in the score: “oblique down stroke.” In this film branches of magnolia extend into the empty cavity of the cello, the space where sound resonates.

“No comment as there is nothing or maybe too much to say about it.

Nothing but a short directive for the audience: Do never sit up when you listen to blues” – Volker Heyn

JAYNE PARKER (Nottingham, UK 1957). Studies at Mansfield College of Art, Canterbury College of Art and Slade School of Fine Arts. Screenings and exhibitions at Jeonju IFF, Institute of Contemporary Art, Tate Modern and BFI (London), IFF Oberhausen, etc. Recipient of the Henry Moore Foundation 1871 Fellowship (2003). Collaborations with Anton Lukoszevieze, Katharina Wolpe and others.

Interpretations of Messiaen, Oehring, Cage, Schumann, Feldman, etc. Fifth appearance at Media City. Lives in London, England.

A LEAF IS THE SEA IS A THEATRE

Jonathan Schwartz, USA, 16mm > digital, 16.5 min, 2018 “Facts are perceptions of surfaces.” – Susan Howe “You cannot describe a house on fire until the actual event takes place. Perhaps there will be no fire. Either you’ll have to deny the description as a fiction, or burn the house in accordance with the script.” – Dziga Vertov “You cannot put a fire out; A thing that can ignite Can go, itself, without a fan Upon the slowest night.” – Emily Dickinson JONATHAN SCHWARTZ (New York NY, 1973). Studies at Massachusetts College of Art. 25+ films since 2000; screenings at IFF Rotterdam, EXiS (Seoul), NYFF, etc; recent solo screenings at Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), San Francisco Cinematheque, etc. Fifth appearance at Media City.

NAISSANCE DES ETOILES

John Price, Canada, 35mm CinemaScope, 11.5 min, 2018 “Emulating the butterfly’s patterns / And the repetitive indifference of leaves / Turning pink, color of the rose, so flushed / Orange color, color of trees / Ecstatic mists train us, no feeling / No feeling, only moving beginning / The pane crashed, baby falls / Between loose pelvis onto the sheet / Watches leaves blow wind onto window / Ecstatic poets bend over, watch the thin doctor / He’s in the light, this is a chore or task / Leaves blow the rose upside down up and down the street / Interior blowing toward muscles and thighs / Bending up and down, pictures of people / The butterfly replaces the hat” – Bernadette Mayer

JOHN PRICE (Raritan Township NJ, 1967). Studies at Concordia University. 50+ films since 1992; screenings at IFF Rotterdam, Pleasure Dome (Toronto), TIFF, Palacio La Moneda (Santiago), etc. Underground Mines and Mobile Frames Commission Artists (2015). Seventh appearance at Media City. Lives in Toronto, Ontario.

SHRINE

Robert Todd, USA, 16mm, 19 min, 2017 A shrine made by many in honour and memory of Lucas Wheeler.

ROBERT TODD (Boston MA, 1963 – 2018). Studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. 150+ films since 1993; screenings and exhibitions at Harvard Film Archive, “Views from the Avant Garde” at NYFF, Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Cinematheque Ontario (Toronto), etc.

Fourteenth consecutive appearance at Media City. Greatly missed.

WISHING WELL

Sylvia Schedelbauer, Germany, digital, 13 min, 2018 “The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you’re looking for.” – J. Campbell

SYLVIA SCHEDELBAUER (Tokyo, Japan 1973). Studies at Berlin University of Arts. 7 films since 2004; screenings and exhibitions at Berlinale, IFF Oberhausen, TIFF, NYFF, Stan Brakhage Symposium (Boulder). Awards include the VG Bildkunst Award (2007), the German Film Critics’ Award (2008). First appearance at Media City. Lives in Berlin, Germany.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10 6:00PM

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 4 TYLER TURKLE FERN SILVA ABIGAIL CHILD EPHRAIM ASILI LAURA HUERTAS MILLÁN PARASTOO ANOUSHAHPOUR FARAZ ANOUSHAHPOUR RYAN FERKO KARPO GODINA

THE CAPITOL THEATRE

PRESENTING PARTNER: CORKTOWN CINEMA

OBSERVEILLANCE

Tyler Turkle, USA, 16mm, 4 min, 1975 A lyrical tour guide takes the viewer on a trip down the Wakulla River in North Florida.

Although the camera remains relentlessly fixed on the protagonist, his vivid, nearmusical descriptions of Southern flora, fauna, and wildlife gives a better view of things than total visual mobility could ever allow.

Alligator on your left.

TYLER TURKLE (Alliance OH, 1947). Studies at Mount Union College and Kent State. 15+ films since 1973; screenings and exhibitions at mumok (Vienna), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Groninger Museum (Groningen), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Cornell University, and New Museum (New York). First appearance at Media City.

Lives in Sonoma County, California.

RIDE LIKE LIGHTNING, CRASH LIKE THUNDER Fern Silva, Portugal / USA, 16mm, 8.5 min, 2017

Framed within the vision of the Hudson River School and the legend of Rip Van Winkle, Ride Like Lightning, Crash Like Thunder unfolds as a storm approaches on the horizon. An uncertain future is in store as the creeping hand of history disrupts nature and civility in the Hudson River regions of upstate New York.

FERN SILVA (Hartford CT, 1982). Studies at the Massachusetts College of Art and Bard College. 10+ films since 2007; screenings and exhibitions at Cinema du RĂŠel (Paris), IFF Rotterdam, Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), New Museum (New York), etc. Sixth appearance at Media City. 2014 Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence. Radcliffe Film Studies Fellow at Harvard University (2018-2019). Lives in New York, NY.

PREFACES

Abigail Child, USA, 16mm, 10 min, 1981 Prefaces is composed of wild sounds constructed along entropic lines, placed tensely beside bebop rhythms, and a resurfacing narrative cut from a dialogue with poet Hannah Weiner. The tracks are placed in precise and asynchronous relation to images of workers, the gestures of the marketplace, colonial Africa, and abstractions, to pose questions of social force, gender relations, and subordination.

It was Arthur Jafa who taught me how to make video look like film. I told my students video could do this. But I lied. Recently shooting film I realized how wrong I was. As of now, film remains, what AJ calls, the gold standard of image-making—what “is considered definitive.” A nineteenth century relic then, or is film the definitive icon…?

ABIGAIL CHILD (Newark NJ, 1948). Studies at Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and Yale University School of Art. 40+ films since 1970; screenings at all major venues for artists’ film worldwide; in permanent collections of MoMA (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), etc. Fulbright (1993) and Guggenheim (1996) Fellowships; Rome Prize (2010).

Six volumes of poetry since 1983. Sixth appearance at Media City, including retrospective screening (2004).

Lives in New York, NY.

SKETCHES AND PORTRAITS FOR JEAN-MICHEL Ephraim Asili, USA, 16mm, 10 min, 2018

“Sketches and Portraits for Jean-Michel was photographed on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan, two areas familiar to Basquiat, and visually explores many of the themes and influences found in his paintings: street life, street art, politics, jazz, bodies in motion, bodies at rest, life, death, and black resilience.” – The Barbican

EPHRAIM ASILI (Philadelphia PA, 1979). Studies at Temple University and Bard College. 10+ films since 2007; screenings and exhibitions at TIFF, MoMA (New York), Milan Film Festival, “Projections” at NYFF, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Whitney Museum (New York), etc. Third appearance at Media City. Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence (2016). Media City Grand Prize Winner (2017). Lives in Hudson, New York.

JENY303

Laura Huertas Millán, Colombia, 16mm > digital, 6 min, 2018 “The film is a testimony where the discreet affirmation of revolt can be heard: ‘neither torturer, nor victim.’ Jeny (who refers to himself in the masculine gender) recounts his delinquency as being the just return for the social violence committed against him. The building, disused at the time of the shooting, is not only interesting for its Bauhaus style copied by German architects in 1964, but also because it has been the centre of many student uprisings. During the generation of the filmmaker’s father, it was a hotspot of the activism repressed in bloodshed across all of South America. On one side, a survivor (heroin used as an escape to elsewhere), who turned his tattooed body into a work of art, and on the other, the political slogans “tattooed” on the brick walls – openair history books that were demolished in 2015.” – Charlotte Garson LAURA HUERTAS MILLÁN (Bogotá, Colombia 1983). Studies at Le Fresnoy, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Harvard University. 10+ films since 2008. Screenings and exhibitions at Guggenheim (New York), ICA (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo de Arte de Medellín, NYFF, etc. Prix Pardi di domani, Locarno Festival (2018). First appearance at Media City. Lives in Paris, France.

CHOOKA

Faraz & Parastoo Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, Iran / Canada, digital, 21 min, 2018 In 1973, the Shah of Iran commissioned the construction of a paper factory in the lush northern province of Gilan. Foreign engineers from Canada and the United States were brought to develop and run the facility, bringing with them their families as well as a species of pine tree previously unknown to the region. Their stay, however, came to a sudden halt in 1979 with the Iranian revolution forcing them to flee the site overnight. Chooka unfolds between the site of this factory and a rural family house located in a nearby village. Coinciding with the construction of the factory, this family hosted the production of Bahram Beyzaie’s film, The Stranger and The Fog. Shot in the same village, the film begins when an unconscious stranger drifts ashore in a small boat. After the revolution, Beyzaie returned to the same house to produce his film Bashu, the Little Stranger about a young war refugee who escapes the south and ends up alone in a small northern village.

PARASTOO ANOUSHAHPOUR (Tehran, Iran 1986), FARAZ ANOUSHAHPOUR (Tehran, Iran 1987), RYAN FERKOR (Mississauga ON, 1987). Work in collaboration since 2013. Screenings at NYFF, IFF Rotterdam and TIFF. Second appearance at Media City. All live in Toronto.

HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR FUN

Karpo Godina, Yugoslavia, 35mm > digital, 15 min, 1971 “Healthy People for Fun represents Godina’s mature experimental style, characterized by carefully composed, colourful, and almost totally still shots, heavy focus on soundtrack music, and countercultural or obliquely provocative content that in a deadpan way defied official representations of Yugoslav life. In the wake of a reactionary backlash in Yugoslav political life in the early 1970s, Godina’s career as an experimental director was stymied—his last experimental short from that era, On the Art of Loving or Film with 14441 Frames (1972), was chopped up with an ax by representatives of the Yugoslav army, which had commissioned the film. According to Godina, he was able to save only one print.”— Ksenya Gurshtein KARPO GODINA (Skopje, Macedonia 1943). Studies at Ljubljana Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television.

25+ films since 1962; screenings and exhibitions at Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), IFF Rotterdam, and career retrospective at MoMA as part of “Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980” (2018). Collaborator of Želimir Žilnik. Winner of Golden Bear at Berlinale (1969), Prešern Lifetime Achievement Award – highest state award for arts in Slovenia (2006). First appearance at Media City.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10 7:30PM

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 5 JOHN SMITH KEVIN JEROME EVERSON CAMILO RESTREPO COLECTIVO LOS INGRÁVIDOS LAURA HUERTAS MILLÁN MICHAEL ROBINSON

THE CAPITOL THEATRE

PRESENTING PARTNER: COMMON GROUND GALLERY

OM

John Smith, UK, 16mm, 4 min, 1986 “This four-minute film explores our response to stereotypes—aural, visual and ideological. Smith signals these stereotypes to the viewer through a chiefly associational system, which deftly manipulates the path of our expectations. The structure is stunningly simple and deceptively subtle. We are taken on a journey from one concrete stereotype to its diametric opposite, as images transform and juxtapose to, ultimately, invert our interpretation of what we see and hear.”—Gary Davis

JOHN SMITH (London, England 1952). Studies at the Royal College of Art. 50+ films and media artworks since 1972; screenings and exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art (Leipzig), Turner Contemporary (Kent), IFF Oberhausen, Tampere Short Film Festival, Tate (London), Venice Biennale, etc. In permanent collections of MoMA (New York), Kunstmuseum Kloster unser lieben Frauen (Magdeburg), etc. Fifth appearance at Media City.

Lives in London, England.

GODDESS

Kevin Jerome Everson, USA, 16mm > digital, 2 min, 2018 Goddess is based on a stag film produced by American photographer Garry Winogrand and the corrupt police department from my home county of Richland, Ohio.

KEVIN JEROME EVERSON (Mansfield OH, 1965). Studies at University of Akron and Ohio University. 100+ films since 1997; screenings at Centre Pompidou (Paris), TIFF, Whitney Museum, MoMA (New York), etc. Guggenheim Fellowship (1996), Rome Prize (2001). Eighth appearance at Media City; 2014 Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence. Lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

LA BOUCHE

Camilo Restrepo, France / Colombia, 16mm > digital, 19 min, 2017 A man learns his daughter has been brutally murdered by her husband. Time stands still as he oscillates between the need for solace and his urge for revenge. A musical based on real-life events of Guinean percussion master Mohamed “Diable Rouge” Bangoura.

Featuring Issiaga Bangoura, Karamoko Daman, Mabinty Kohn, Marie Touré, Mohamed “Diable Rouge” Bangoura, Raymond Camara.

CAMILO RESTREPO (Medellín, Colombia 1975). Studies at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Ecole des BeauxArts de Paris. 5+ films since 2011; screenings at Cannes, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Courtisane Festival (Ghent), TIFF, Mar del Plata Film Festival, “Projections” at NYFF, etc. Winner Silver Pardino, Locarno Festival (2016).

Member of L’Abominable (Paris). Honourable Mention at Media City (2017). Second appearance at Media City.

Lives in Paris, France.

COYOLXAUHQUI

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Mexico, 16mm > digital, 10 min, 2017 “Coyolxauhqui recasts the mythical dismemberment of the Aztec moon goddess Coyolxauhqui by her brother Huitzilopochtli, deity of war, the sun, and human sacrifice. The film is a poetry of perception, one that unveils how contemporary Mexican femicide is linked to a patriarchal history with roots in deeper cultural formations.” – Almudena Escobar López

COLECTIVO LOS INGRÁVIDOS (Tehuacán, Mexico 2012).

300+ films since 2012; screenings and exhibitions at IFF Oberhausen, Flaherty Film Seminar (New York), Crossroads (San Francisco), Filmadrid (Madrid), Ambulante Cine Documental and DocsDF (Mexico City), etc. Marian McMahon Award (2018). First appearance at Media City.

THE LABYRINTH

Laura Huertas Millán, Colombia / France, 16mm > digital, 21 min, 2018 “The Labyrinth speaks to the syncretism of contemporary Colombia, where the disaster of narcocapitalism coexists with enduring precolonial relations to the world, creating an accord between the violence of the drug wars, the violence of European conquest, and possibilities of survival and resistance against both.” – Erika Balsom A journey into the labyrinthine memories of a narrator who was witness to the spectacular rise and fall of drug lords in the Colombian Amazon. Walking through the forest and the ruins of a mansion (a replica of the villa from the television show Dynasty built by a “narco”), our narrator becomes the protagonist of a meandering and hallucinatory account.

LAURA HUERTAS MILLÁN (Bogotá, Colombia 1983). Studies at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Le Fresnoy, Sensory Ethnography Lab, Harvard University. 10+ film and video artworks since 2008. Screenings and exhibitions at Guggenheim (New York), ICA (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo de Arte de Medellín (Colombia), NYFF, etc. Winner Videobrasil Resorts Prize (2013), Prix Pardi di domani, Locarno Festival (2018). First appearance at Media City. Live in Paris, France.

ONWARD LOSSLESS FOLLOWS Michael Robinson, USA, digital, 17 min, 2017

A password-protected love affair, a little vapour on Venus, and a horse with no name ride out in search of a better world. Against the mounting darkness, a willing abduction offers a stab at tomorrow.

“On the first part of the journey I was looking at all the life There were plants and birds and rocks and things There was sand and hills and rings” – Dewey Bunnell

MICHAEL ROBINSON (Plattsburgh NY, 1981). Studies at Ithaca College and the University of Illinois at Chicago. 24+ films since 2001; screenings and exhibitions at Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), Whitney Biennial (2012), IFF Rotterdam, NYFF, TIFF, The National Portrait Gallery (London), etc.

Creative Capital Grant (2012), Wexner Center Film/Video Award (2012), EXiS Best of Festival Award (Seoul 2014).

Sixth appearance at Media City. Lives in Los Angeles, California.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10 9:30PM

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 6 NEIL HENDERSON LAURA PADGETT WOJCIECH BRUSZWESKI BEA HAUT PHILIPP FLEISCHMANN IVAN MARTINAC APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL FRIEDL VOM GRÖLLER PATHOMPON MONT TESPRATEEP BRUCE MCCLURE

THE CAPITOL THEATRE PRESENTING PARTNER: COLLEGE FOR CREATIVE STUDIES

CANDLE (BLACK & WHITE) Neil Henderson, UK, 16mm, 3 min, 2018

A polaroid of a candle is observed developing from the moment of capture to its final state. The film presents this event in reverse. As the image “un-develops” it dissolves/ fades into a frame of white light, illuminating the space and audience in the process.

The photographic process takes exactly as long as one 100ft roll of 16mm, creating an equivalence between a still and a moving medium. At 18fps the projector animates the candle’s flame into a flicker.

NEIL HENDERSON (Worcester, UK 1973). Studies at Kent Institute of Art and Design and Slade School of Fine Art; screenings at Whitechapel Gallery and Tate Britain (London), Microscope Galley (New York), Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge). Editor of RGB Publishing with Simon Payne.

Shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2009). Third appearance at Media City. Lives in Kent, England.

SOLITAIRE

Laura Padgett, Germany, 16mm > digital, 2.5 min, 2017 We see Max Horkheimer buying newspapers, we hear Hannah Arendt speaking about the mother tongue and making the invisible tangible. We also see Frankfurt am Main during the great (re)construction boom of the 1960s. We see demonstrations on the RĂśmerberg and the presence of the American Forces in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War, as well as scenes after the apprehension of members of the Red Army Faction. Housing shortages, urban development, youth and their future, guest workers, consumer society: these topics are repeatedly presented and discussed in the Hessen Schau news program from this period.

LAURA J. PADGETT (Cambridge MA, 1958). Studies at Pratt Institute, Städelschule, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University; screenings and exhibitions at Haus of World Cultures (Berlin), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art (Nicosia), IFF Oberhausen, Les Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin), Dokfest (Kassel). First appearance at Media City. Lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

YYAA

Wojciech Bruszewski, Poland, 16mm, 5.5 min, 1973 “Cinema’s ventriloquism is the product of an effort to overcome the sound-image gap, to mask the sound’s technological origin, and to permit the film’s production personnel to speak their sub-conscious mind – their belly – without fear of discovery.”

– Rick Altman WHAT EXISTS – exists outside of me. WHAT EXISTS is knowledge of what exists.

This knowledge exists from cultural pressure. WHAT EXISTS – IS A CONVENTION. What I do in film, video or in the area of other techniques consists of nothing more than laying traps for WHAT EXISTS.

WOJCIECH BRUSZEWSKI (Wrocław, Poland 1947– Łódź, Poland 2009). 25+ films and video since 1971; screenings and exhibitions at The Artists’ Museum (Łódź), Erweiterte Fotografie (Vienna), Documenta 8 (Kassel), LUX (London).

Member of Zero-61 (1965-68) and Film Form Workshop (1970-77). Builds Poetical Machine (1982). Publishes Leipzig Sonnets (1992), Wrocław Sonnets (1993), Budapest Sonnets (1996). Broadcasts The Infinite Talk on Radio Ruine der Künste Berlin without pause (1988-1993).

DRAG

Bea Haut, UK, 16mm, 5 min, 2017 Theatre of the Overlooked. Performance and film come together to evidence a physical and poetic response to an old sofa abandoned on the street. Transforming the discarded into action, comedy, and pleasure. A road test of materials, bylaws, and nerve.

BEA HAUT (London, UK 1966). Studies at Goldsmiths College. 15+ films since 2012; screenings at ICA (London), Museum of Moving Image (New York), AVANT (Karlstad), etc. Member of Loophole Cinema (1990-1998), Analogue Recurring (2012) and Film in Process (2015). Lives in London, England.

mumok kino

Philipp Fleischmann, Austria, 35mm, 1.5 min, 2017 “mumok kino is a thrilling miniature portrait of the Viennese cinema, as seen through stuttering, flickering glimpses of walls and other surfaces in a pure play of light and shadow.” – TIFF

PHILIPP FLEISCHMANN (Hollabrunn, Austria 1985). Studies at Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien and Die Schule für unabhängiger Film Friedl Kubelka. 10+ films since 2006; screenings at TIFF, Berlinale, Anthology Film Archives (New York), Vienna Secession, etc. Fourth appearance at Media City. Lives in Vienna, Austria.

FOCUS

Ivan Martinac, Yugoslavia, 16mm > 35mm, 7.5 min, 1967 “The Mediterranean being and the Dalmatian blueness, caught in a spell by the focus of the camera, as if the mechanized Caerus had stretched his scales from one object to another, from the lens all the way to the shore…Death walks the world south to north, across all meridians and all parallels, but it seems to me that no death is so close to a man, so daily and so normal as the Mediterranean death in the sun.” – Ivan Martinac (translated by Petra Belc)

IVAN MARTINAC (Split, Croatia 1938 – 2005). Studies architecture and civil engineering at University of Zagreb and University of Belgrade. 70+ films since 1959; screenings and exhibitions at Pera Museum (Istanbul), Tate Modern (London), Anthology Film Archive (New York). Member of Zagreb Kino Club (1957), Belgrade Kino Club (1959), Split Kino Club (1960). 9 extant books of poetry since 1962. Split Film Festival establishes the “Ivan Martinac Award” (2017). First appearance at Media City.

THIRDWORLD

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 16mm > digital, 15.5 min, 1997 “Thirdworld depicts the landscapes, metaphorical and actual, of the southern island Panyi. The sounds are taken from different sources, but all were recorded without the subjects’ awareness of the recording apparatus. Thus, this piece may be called a reconstructed documentary”. –Harvard Film Archive

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL (Bangkok, Thailand 1970).

Studies at Khon Kaen University and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 50+ films and digital artworks since 1993; screenings and exhibitions at Venice Film Festival, 11th Sharjah Biennial, documenta (Kassel), Busan Biennial, Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), Haus der Kunst (Munich), New Museum (New York), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, etc.

Three-time award winner at Cannes, including Palme d’Or (2010). Third appearance at Media City.

TICINO

Friedl vom Gröller (Kubelka), Austria, 16mm, 3 min, 2017 “Ephemeral moments in which the flow of time becomes manifest.” – Michelle Koch The river Ticino is the most important perennial left-bank tributary of the Po. It has given its name to the Swiss canton through which its upper portion flows. The two youths Ivon and Sango live in Pavia, not far from the river. The sculptures were also shaped directly by the life of the river, much as the recently deceased Mr. Chiodi through whom I inherited them. These objects reminded me of Franz West’s Adaptives, sculptures which West invited viewers to use as they pleased…

FRIEDL VOM GRÖLLER (London, England 1946). Studies at Vienna’s Graphic Instruction and Research Institute. 50+ films since 1968; screenings and exhibitions at Austrian Filmmuseum (Vienna), Anthology Film Archives (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Frankfurter Kunstverein, etc. Founder of School for Artistic Photography and School for Independent Film (Vienna). Austrian State Prize for Photography (2005) and Film (2016). Seventh appearance at Media City, including first dual film and photography retrospective screening in 2010. Lives in Vienna, Austria.

SONG X

Pathompon Mont Tesprateep, Thailand, S8mm & 16mm > digital, 20 min, 2017 “A group of teenagers conducts a cremation ceremony for a man who is entering the afterlife while still being sought by the military for deserting.” – IFFR “The Last Village” is an unreleased song which depicts a group of hidden villagers delightfully conducting a funeral. Song X is an attempt to compose an extended version of this posthumous song, in the form of a visual poem, shooting with deteriorated 16mm and super 8 film stock, portraying life after death. It is a means to deliver a message to my deceased band member and friend, and a memorial ritual for the dead.

PATHOMPON MONT TESPRATEEP (Bangkok, Thailand 1978).

Studies at Chelsea College of Arts. 6 films since 2008; screenings at Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, IFF Rotterdam, Locarno Festival, Les Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin), etc. Second appearance at Media City.

Lives in Bangkok, Thailand.

HAT IN THE RING

Bruce McClure, USA, 16mm, 12 min, 2018 Projector and projectionist form a binary star system. Only two points of light are showcased, the hand held flashlight and the exciter bulb. The “black hole” of a screen exhibits strong gravitational effects in the absence of the projector’s main bulb, forming an empty event horizon in relation to it. Sound, rotationally symmetrical, forms primitive cells with distinct orientations in its rotocenters in an all out star bout that rages between extraordinary and petty tricks.

“You and I must make a pact / We must bring salvation back, / Where there is love / I’ll be there.”– Berry Gordy, Hal Davis, Bob West, and Willie Hutch BRUCE MCCLURE (Washington DC, 1959). Studies architecture at Virginia Tech. 100+ projector performances since 1995; screenings and exhibitions at IFF Rotterdam, Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), two editions of the Whitney Biennial (2002 & 2004), etc; Guggenheim Fellowship (2011). 16th consecutive appearance at Media City. Lives in Brooklyn, New York.

above image: courtesy Yannick Grandmont

THANK YOU

Sigrid Guggenberger and VALIE EXPORT at Atelier VALIE EXPORT (Vienna); Dietmar Schwärzler, Brigitta Burger- Utzer and Gerald Weber at Sixpack Film (Vienna); Carolee Schneemann and Lilah Grace Dougherty (Kingston, NY); Diana Nenadić at Croatian Film Association and Petra Belc (Zagreb); Marin Lukanović, Filmaktiv (Rijeka); Tara Maranda Nelson and Almudena Escobar López at Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, NY); Lana Talbot, Kim Eliott, Teajay Travis, and all those affiliated with Sandwich First Baptist Church (Windsor); Susan Gold Smith, Elaine Carr, and Collette Broeders at MayWorks (Windsor); Jesse Cumming at Vertical Features (Toronto); Maria Palacios Cruz, Matt Carter, Alice Lea, and Anthony Gartland at LUX (London); Samuel La France, Andréa Picard, and Steven Landry at TIFF; Chris Kennedy at LIFT (Toronto); Mark McElhatten at Sikelia Productions (NYC); Lawrence Baranski, Matthew Breneau, and the staff and volunteers at the DIA’s Detroit Film Theatre; Rebecca Mazzei and Joel Peterson at Trinosophes (Detroit); Judy Chappus, Gustave Morin, Jenny Kimmerly, Nova Faxon, and the Board of Directors at Common Ground Gallery (Windsor); Mike Stoltz (Los Angeles); Emmanuel Lefrant Eleni Gioti and Clément Verrier at Light Cone (Paris); Madeleine Molyneaux at Picture Palace Pictures (NYC); Lauren Howes and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre; Ben Donoghue and Adriana Rosselli at the Media Arts Network of Ontario; Felipé Diaz, Michèle Stanley, and Line Dezainde at the Canada Council for the Arts; Mark Haslam at the Ontario Arts Council; Steve Polta at the San Francisco Cinematheque; Bill Brand at BB Optics (NYC); Aily Nash and Shelby Shaw at NYFF; staff and board at Artcite Inc., Windsor Symphony Orchestra, and the Capitol Theatre and Arts Centre; Tom Lucier, Joe O’Brien, and the staff at Phog Lounge; Ryan Smith at Pause Café; Kitty Cleary at MoMA Film & Video Library, and House of Toast Film & Video Collective founders Dierdre Logue, Christopher McNamara, Britta Poisson, Kim Truchan, and Dermot Wilson.

23rd MEDIA CITY FILM FESTIVAL / NOVEMBER 7–10, 2018 / WINDSOR–DETROIT

STAFF & VOLUNTEERS

Program Director Oona Mosna Assistant Director / Festival Coordinator Liane Cunje Festival Announcer / Moderator Steve Polta Technical Supervisor James Bond Projection Team Travis Bird Kevin Rice Justin Dean Doug McLaren

Capitol Theatre Technician Tom Savage Capitol Theatre Manager Julia Galli Front of House Manager Gayle Allen Administrative Coordinator Philippa von Ziegenweidt Venue Logistic / Hospitality Coordinator Merry Ellen Scully Guest Services Coordinator Julia Hall Volunteer Coordinator Mrunal Parekh Advertising Coordinator Julie Tucker Website Designer Eric Brockman Catalogue Designer Stephen L.T. Hargreaves Trailer Designer Scott Northrup

Distribution Coordinator Elizabeth Prosser Photographer Jay Verspeelt Regional Curator Brandon Walley Programming Committee Brandon Walley, Gustave Morin Emma Piper-Burket, Almudena Escobar López Board of Directors Stephen Pender, Roxanne Qussem, Julie Tucker, Carrie Deming, Philippa von Ziegenweldt, Frances Barber, Dean Carson, Greg Baise IFD Development Coordinator

Emma Piper-Burket

International Fund Development Team Mark Toscano, Herb Shellenberger, Becca Keating, Jeremy Rossen, Gilles Hébert, Maia Asshaq, Emma Piper-Burket Festival Founders Deirdre Logue, Britta Poisson, Christopher McNamara, Kim Truchan, Dermot Wilson Media City Film Festival is a co-presentation of the House of Toast Film & Video Collective, Arts Council Windsor & Region, and Allied Media (Detroit). The 23rd edition is presented with support from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Additional sponsorship and in-kind support from Penny Stamps Speaker Series, Full Aperture Systems (Chicago), the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Film Theatre, Media Arts Network of Ontario, and Common Ground Gallery. Additional thanks to our members, donors, sponsors, presenting partner organizations, and volunteers.

FROM FILM GRAIN TO HIGH-DEFINITION PIXEL

Comprehensive training, equipment and community for film, video, interactive and installation art.

For more information visit www.liſt.ca

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CATALOGUE NOTES • Durations are rounded to the nearest half-minute • Descriptions are provided by the artists unless another source is cited • Exhibition formats are those presented at Media City; others may exist All works completed before 2016, including: films and digital artworks of VALIE EXPORT and Carolee Schneemann; Portrait of Ga (Margaret Tait); YYAA (Wojciech Bruszewski); Focus (Ivan Martinac); Thirdworld (Apichatpong Weerasethakul); Dresden Dynamo (Lis Rhodes); Voliers et coquelicots (Rose Lowder); Observeillance (Tyler Turkle); Healthy People for Fun (Karpo Godina); K3 Clear Sky Without Clouds (Mihovil Pansini); Metzstrasse 11 / Inventory (Želimir Žilnik); Holiday (Bojan Jovanović); Bite me. Once already (Davorin Marc); Circle and Straight Line (Tomoslav Gotovac); Journey (Bojana Vujanović); sphere 1985 – 1895 (Ivan Ladislav Galeta); Mr. & Mrs Compost (Seamus Harahan); Forged Ways, American Hunger, Many Thousands Gone, Kindah and Fluid Frontiers (Ephraim Asili); Landscape (for Manon) (Peter Hutton); 37/78 Tree Again (Kurt Kren); Prefaces (Abigail Child) and Om (John Smith) are exhibited out of competition.

All prints and digital materials are provided by the artists except: All films of Carolee Schneemann provided by New York Filmmaker’s Co-op and EAI (New York); Poems, Self-Portrait with Head and Breath Text: Love Poem (VALIE EXPORT) courtesy Sixpack Film, Vienna; Portrait of Ga (Margaret Tait),YYAA (Wojciech Bruszewski), Dresden Dynamo (Lis Rhodes), Trees Down Here (Ben Rivers),The Oblique (Jayne Parker) courtesy LUX, London; Prefaces (Abigail Child), Om (John Smith), Observeillance (Tyler Turkle), Man & Woman & Animal (VALIE EXPORT), Landscape (for Manon) (Peter Hutton), 37/78 Tree Again (Kurt Kren) courtesy of Canyon Cinema, San Francisco; K3 Clear Sky Without Clouds (Mihovil Pansini), sphere 1985 – 1895 (Ivan Ladislav Galeta), Circle and Straight Line (Tomoslav Gotovac), courtesy of Croatian Film Association.

Inside front cover: Sky Hopinka. Situated at the East End of Devils Lake on Sect 25 THN. R6B on N. Kirks Pleasure Ground and facing page: Sky Hopinka.This is Morning Star Carrying the Head of Evening Star. Calligrams courtesy of the artist.

BOUQUETS 11-20

The NOTEBOOKS of ROSE LOWDER Book and enhanced ebook | VSW Press

BOUQUETS 11-20: The Notebooks Of Rose Lowder includes 88 pages of images and texts from the voluminous notebooks of French experimental filmmaker Rose Lowder. Focusing on ten films from the Bouquet series, this book includes direct facsimiles of the intricately hand drawn pages that Lowder creates in parallel with her films, as well as an eBook companion with embedded videos of the films represented in the Notebooks.

The book was designed by Joan Lyons, founder of VSW Press, and edited

by Tara Merenda Nelson, Curator of Moving Image Collections at the Visual Studies Workshop.

Visit bookstore.vsw.org to order Visual Studies Workshop Press Rochester, New York