Conversations at the Edge
The Department of Film, Video and New Media of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in association with the Video Data Bank and the Gene Siskel Film Center, presents a series of Thursday night screenings at the Film Center. Conversations at the Edge brings to Chicago media makers, critics, scholars and theorists in dialogue around the most provocative and daring works being produced in media today.
-- Daniel Eisenberg
film descriptions
Mendi+Keith Obadike in person!
Web Work of Mendi+Keith Obadike
2003-2005, Mendi+Keith Obadike, USA, 75 min.
Mendi+Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists who reject the notion of Internet anonymity by using the web to broadcast their innovative investigations of personal identity. The program includes THE PINK OF STEALTH, a Flash-based online game story about two characters who attempt different forms of “passing,” and three works in progress: 4-1-9 (OR YOU CAN’T VIEW A MASQUERADE BY STANDING IN ONE PLACE); TARONDA, WHO WORE WHITE GLOVES; and FOUR ELECTRIC GHOSTS. Computer projection. (KJ Mohr)
Thursday, November 3, 6:00 pm
Jeffrey Skoller and Daniel Eisenberg in person!
CHILE, OBSTINATE MEMORY
1997, Patricio Guzman, Chile, 58 min.
COOPERATION OF PARTS
1987, Daniel Eisenberg, USA, 42 min.
This is the second of three programs celebrating the release of Department of Film, Video and New Media faculty member Jeffrey Skoller’s new book Shadows Specters Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film. Patricio Guzm�n explores collective political amnesia in CHILE, OBSTINATE MEMORY. Twenty-five years after THE BATTLE OF CHILE, his seminal documentation of the 1973 coup, survivors reminisce as they watch that film, recognizing lost comrades and recalling their courage and love of life. In Spanish with English subtitles. Beta SP video.
FVNM Department Chair Daniel Eisenberg`s COOPERATION OF PARTS is a journey through France, Germany, and Poland to examine the history of his most recent film story and the shadows of the holocaust. 16mm. (KJ Mohr)
Thursday, November 10, 6:00 pm
Timoleon Wilkins in person!
Films of Timoleon Wilkins
1995-2005, Timoleon Wilkins, USA/Mexico, 62 min.
In the words of critic Brecht Andersch, ”Timoleon Wilkins has fashioned a mytho-poetic vision of his own resolutely in the American grain. His stunning Kodachrome imagery, redolent of home-movies, educational films, the specter of Hollywood arcane Americana, frames a world of memory and experience.” This retrospective of the last decade of Wilkins’s work includes the Chicago premiere of LOS CAUDALES; the gorgeously saturated BLUE SUN WESTERN; the verit� documentary, CHINATOWN SKETCH; LAKE OF THE SPIRITS; the unslit regular-8 critique of gay culture, GAY PRIDE4; and the somber, farcical, and stunning MM. 16mm. (KJ Mohr)
Thursday, November 17, 6:00 pm
Alex Juhasz in person!
VIDEO REMAINS
2005, Alex Juhasz, USA, 54 min.
In observance of World AIDS Day, we welcome documentarian Alex Juhasz with her recently completed video about the intersection between AIDS, the deterioration of video documentation, and the complicated nature of collective and individual memory. In 1993, Juhasz shot an interview with her dying best friend Jim as he tried to recount his life. In 2004, she reworked this haunted video with a host of present-day interviewees (including Gregg Bordowitz) who reflect upon AIDS, death, activism, and video. Mini-DV video. (KJ Mohr)
