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
Filmmakers and activists in person!
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
2005, Kerry Richardson, USA, 30 min.
BEYOND DISABILITY: THE FE FE STORIES
2004, Salome Chasnoff, USA, 26 min./em>
< Just in time for the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon, this program celebrates disability activists, including former Jerry’s Kids and a group of kick-ass teenage girls called the Empowered Fe Fes (slang for female). THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT is a documentary about renegade Jerry’s Kid Mike Ervin, a 1960s Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) poster child who now challenges the MDA’s use of pity to raise money in its telethon. In BEYOND DISABILITY, the Fe Fes talk to folks on the street and get candid interviews showing people’s reactions to disability when confronted with these fearless young women. DV-CAM Video. (KJ Mohr)
Kerry Richardson, Mike Ervin, Salome Chasnoff, and the Empowered Fe Fes will be present for audience discussion.
Thursday, September 1, 6:00 pm
Thomas Comerford in person!
Urban Rural Wild: Chicagoland Gridded/Revised
1934-2005, Various directors, USA, ca. 70 min.
Curated by Department of Film, Video & New Media faculty member Thomas Comerford, these works culled from different decades all examine the urban landscape of Chicago, but each employs different tactics. James Benning’s CHICAGO LOOP (1976) emphasizes the sequential, gridded nature of the photographic filmstrip. The Kartemquin Film collective’s NOW WE LIVE ON CLIFTON (1974) follows two Lincoln Park children in a neighborhood beset by gentrification. Also: HALSTED STREET (Conrad Friberg aka C.O. Nelson, 1934); WHITE BLIGHT MANIFESTO (Paul Lloyd Sargent, 2003); and THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE (Brandon Doherty, 2002), among others. This program is a satellite event for the show “Urban Rural Wild,” at the I Space Gallery (230 West Superior Street, www.ispace.uiuc.edu), which opens Friday, Sept. 9. Various formats. (Thomas Comerford)
Thursday, September 8, 6:00 pm
Shelly Silver in person!
Shelly Silver’s World
1990-2004, Shelly Silver, USA/Switzerland/Japan, 85 min.
Acclaimed photographer and video artist Shelly Silver’s work has been exhibited the whole world over, and indeed a peripatetic existence is essential to her practice, questioning the myths and realities of cultural and national identity. Silver shares her latest video WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR (2004, 15 min.), a short story about desire, control, and the intimacy of portrait photography; 1 (2001, 3 min.), a controversial ode to uniformed police officers; ROOSTER, an installation based on an 18th-century Jewish tale; SMALL LIES, BIG TRUTH which deals with morality, voyeurism, and the banality of sex; and excerpts from Silver’s stunning experimental feature, SUICIDE (2003). Silver will also show excerpts from the documentary 37 STORIES ABOUT LEAVING HOME and a trailer from her 1990 feature THE HOUSES THAT ARE LEFT. Co-presented with Video Data Bank. Beta SP video.
Thursday, September 15, 6:00 pm
Richard Fung in person!
SEA IN THE BLOOD
2000, Richard Fung, 2000, Canada, 26 min.
ISLANDS
2002, Richard Fung, 2002, Canada, 9 min.
Trinidad-born, Toronto-based video artist and cultural critic Richard Fung is known for bringing criticism and activism to art. SEA IN THE BLOOD is a personal documentary, a narrative of love and loss set against a background of colonialism in the Caribbean and the reverberations of migration and political change. In ISLANDS, Fung deconstructs the 1957 John Huston film HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON to comment on the Caribbean’s relationship to the cinematic image. Also: a sneak preview of a yet untitled documentary, Fung’s latest project with Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier. Co-presented with the Video Data Bank. Beta SP video. Total running time: ca. 90 min.
Thursday, September 22, 6:00 pm
Paul Bush in person!
The Animated Paul Bush
1994-2004, Paul Bush, Britain, 86 min.
UK-based artist Paul Bush is an award-winning experimental filmmaker whose life changed when he discovered animation in the early 1990s: “Within the animation community there was an understanding of a purely visual language, not one borrowed from the theatre (as in drama) or journalism (as in documentary).” This retrospective of his work includes his seminal first animation HIS COMEDY (1994, 8 min.), the racy BUSBY BERKELEY’S TRIBUTE TO MAE WEST (2002, 1 min.), structure imitating story in DR. JEKYLL AND MR HYDE (2001, 5 min.), a slice of Tokyo in SHINJUKU SAMURAI (2004, 6 min.), and the mescaline dream-like vision of WHILE DARWIN SLEEPS (2004, 5 min.) Co-presented with the Video Data Bank. 35mm & Beta SP video.
