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
Jeffrey Skoller in person!
EL D�A QUE ME QUIERAS
1998, Leandro Katz, Argentina, 30 min.
EUREKA
1974, Ernie Gehr, USA, 30 min.
To celebrate the release of the Department of Film, Video and New Media faculty member Jeffrey Skoller's new book Shadows Specters Shards: Making History in Avant-Grade Film, we are delighted to offer this first of three evenings of films discussed in the book. Tonight's films: Leandro Katz's EL D�A QUE ME QUIERAS,a meditation on the photograph of Che Guevara's corpse that was transmitted around the world, and Ernie Gehr's EUREKA, in which the filmmaker acts as an archaeologist excavating footage of San Francisco's Market Street at the turn of the century. Both in 16mm. (KJ Mohr)
Thursday, October 6, 6:00 pm
Ana Luiza Beraba in person!
FILM OF LOVE
(FILME DE AMOR)
2004, J�lio Bressane, Brazil, 90 min.
With Bel Garc�a, Josi Antello
Three friends, Hilda, Matilda and Gasper, meet in a run-down house in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. During a single weekend, they drink, fool around, talk about sex, and try to escape the routine of their daily lives. In Spanish with English subtitles. 35mm.
Ana Luiza Beraba, who curated the Brazilian portion of Distant Parallels, will be present for audience discussion.
Thursday, October 13, 6:00 pm
Tribute to Yvonne Rainer
KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES
1976, Yvonne Rainer, USA, 90 min.
x From the beginning of her film career, Yvonne Rainer has inspired audiences by interweaving the real and fictional, the personal and political, the concrete and abstract in imaginative, unpredictable ways. Her bold feminist sensibility and often controversial subject matter is leavened with quirky humor. In this early dance film, Rainer examines the contradictions of public and private personas through the story of a Budapest lion tamer who comes to New York to become a choreographer. 16mm. (KJ Mohr)
The program will be introduced by Jonathan Walley, a professor in the Cinema Department at Denison University, Ohio.
Thursday, October 20, 6:00 pm
Special added program!
Yulie Cohen Gerstel in person!
MY TERRORIST
2002, Yulie Cohen Gerstel, Israel, 58 min
"A deeply personal reflection on the cycle of violence in the Middle East." -- Stephen Holden, The New York Times
In 1978 filmmaker Gerstel, then an El Al flight attendant, was wounded in a PLO attack that killed one of her companions. Now a photojournalist and peace activist, she decides to attempt her own private Camp David accord by contacting her surviving attacker and, eventually, petitioning for his parole. This decision provokes heated controversy in Israel and troubling second thoughts in herself. Beta SP video. (MR)
Wednesday, October 26, 6:00
Yulie Cohen Gerstel in person!
MY LAND ZION
2004, Yulie Cohen Gerstel, Israel, 57 min.
In this courageous personal essay, Gerstel, a sixth-generation Israeli, questions the myths of Zionism and her own decision to return to war-torn Israel after working in the US in the 1980s. As she wonders about the future that awaits her daughters in a country embroiled in continuous war, she stretches a connecting thread through the Holocaust, the War of Independence, the rise in settlement, and the condition of Palestinian refugees today. Beta SP video. (KJ Mohr)
Thursday, October 27, 6:00 pm
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 whose work encompasses music, live art, critical writing, and conceptual Internet artworks. The couple 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, 6:00pm
Tribute to Yvonne Rainer
The Conversations at the Edge presentation of KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES on October 20 is part of a three-film tribute to dancer/choreographer/filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, whom the Village Voice in 1986 called "the most influential American avant-garde filmmaker of the past dozen years." This program was curated by Kristen Cox and is sponsored by halo projects, a programming effort to engage audiences around social, political, and cultural issues. The screening of PRIVILEGE is supported in part by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971
1980, Yvonne Rainer, USA, 125 min.
With Annette Michelson
JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 is Rainer's epic meditation on psychoanalysis, the Baader-Meinhof gang, feminism, and pre-revolutionary Russia. To explore the ramifications of terrorism, Rainer employs an extended therapy session in which an American attempted-suicide patient (Michelson) speaks to a series of psychiatrists. Augmenting these stream-of-consciousness ramblings with surrealistic shots of modern Berlin and revolutionary Russia, the film asks whether all women's oppression and rage is political, and whether political outrage is reducible to mere personal frustration and disappointment. 16mm. (Kristen Cox)
Tuesday, October 18, 8:15 pm
PRIVILEGE
1990, Yvonne Rainer, USA, 100 min.
With Novella Nelson, Alice Spivak
In typically sardonic fashion, Rainer exposes the all-but-forbidden subject of menopause, noting that neither men nor women want to hear about it. She's right, and this subversively funny film tackles all the reasons and the cultural bog that surrounds them. A collage of dramatic vignettes, clueless fifties educational films, computer graphics, and witty monologues has the hit-and-run quality of guerilla theater. Menopause is the warm-up act for an even riskier examination of sexual identity and the unequal economies of race, gender, and class, all of which Rainer connects by visual and intellectual sleight of hand. 16mm. (BS)
A discussion will be held in the gallery/caf� following the screening.
