|
|
IDENTITY IN PLACE
February 20
[Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium | 6:30pm]
Presented by Cinema Project and Northwest Film Center
Sunlight spindle camera, the scratches and flashes of the expired raw material and the cut in the camera breathe together in Threshold of Transience a 16mm film by Guyla Nemes, a portrait of a place waiting to be destroyed. Robert Fenz’s Crossings investigates insularity in both geographical and cultural terms with multiple views of the wall that exists along parts of the US/Mexico border. In Liza Johnson’s South of Ten, residents of the destroyed Mississippi Gulf Coast act out atmospheric scenes of everyday life and the relentlessness of labor in their extreme landscape. Las Vegas is envisioned as a space of miniatures in motion, in site specific_LAS VEGAS 05 an installment in fine art photographer Olivo Barbieri's series on aerial city views, employing innovative selective focus techniques. 0778 man.road.river by Marcellvs I introduces a space that is viscous and indeterminate. An image is a aspic and an adhesive in which an event is held in a optical resemblance that creates difference according to its luxuriance or degradation. This Is My Land, a portrait of Jake Williams, a self sustaining man who lives alone within miles of forest in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, draws parallels between the life of the subject and the filmmaker, Ben Rivers. Lastly, haunting and spare, Xavier Lukomski’s Un Pont sur la Drina reflects on the history of a wounded place. The Drina River and the bridge that crosses it at Višegrad hold great significance in the history of the Balkan region as a symbol of the centuries-old tensions between the Muslim and Christian cultures of these nations.
February 20
Threshold of Transience aka the Dike of Transience by Guyla Nemes [Hungary, 2005, 35mm, b&w, 13 min]
Crossings by Robert Fenz [US, 2006, 16mm, color, silent, 5 min]
South Of Ten by Liza Johnson [US, 2006, 35mm, color, sound, 10 min]
Site specific_LAS VEGAS 05 by Olivo Berbieri [Canada/Italy, 2005, 35mm, color, sound, 12 min]
0778 man.road.river by Marcellvs L [Brazil, 2004, DV, b&w, sound, 9 min]
This Is My Land by Ben Rivers [UK, 2006, 16mm, b&w, sound, 14 min]
Un Pont Sur La Drina (A Bridge Over The Drina) by Xavier Lukomski [Belgium, 2005, 35mm, color, sound, 17 min]
Return to Top
|
|
 
|
| |
OMAR AMIRALAY – AN IMAGINATIVE RENDITION OF REALITY
March 6th + 7th [New American Art Union | 7:30pm]
Supported by a grant from Multnomah County Cultural Coalition
This program is part of Lens on Syria: Thirty Years of Contemporary Cinema, a touring exhibition organized by ArteEast.
Born in Damascus in 1944, Omar Amiralay, Syrian documentary film director and prominent civil society activist, is noted for the strong political criticism in his films. His first film, Film-Muhawalah ‘An Sadd al-Furat (Film-Essay on the Euphrates Dam, 1970) was an enthusiastic documentation of the Baath regime's construction of the Assad dam that promised to bring radical improvement to surrounding villages. His second film, conceived with Sa‘adallah Wannus, one of Syria's most celebrated modernist playwrights and essayists, was radically different. Titled al-Hayat al-Yaomiyyah fi Qarya Suriyya (Everyday Life in a Syrian Village, 1974) it was a scathing critique of the government's failure to provide basic amenities to the poor. The film, produced by the General Organization for Cinema, was banned and remains so to this day. Al-Dajaj (The Chickens, 1977), was produced for Syrian television and continued in the same critical vein, this time documenting the plight of poor peasants suffering as a result of failed ventures in chicken farming promised by the state to bring prosperity. Amiralay’s controversial new film, Tufan Fi Balad el-Ba'th (A Flood in Baath Country, 2003), returns to Assad Dam after fatal construction flaws have been discovered, exploring the metaphorical implications of such weakness. Without commentary or criticism, his film exposes Baath party propaganda and its debilitating effects on the people of al-Mashi village. From very early on, Amiralay's films earned a number of awards worldwide and his cinema has become canon for generations of documentary filmmakers in the Arab world.
March 6
Everyday Life in a Syrian Village (al-Hayat al-Yawmiyyah fi Qarya Suriyyah) [Syria, 1974, video, b&w, 90 min]
March 7
The Chickens (al-Dajaj) [Syria, 1977, video, b&w, 40 min]
Film-Essai on the Euphrates Dam (Muhawalah ‘an Wadi al-Furat) [Syria, 1970, video, b&w, 10 min]
A Flood in Baath Country (Al-Tawfan) [Syria/France, 2003, video, color, 46 min]
Return to Top
|
|
  |
| |
Through Lebanese Eyes—Recent Documentaries by Lebanese Women
March 20 +21[New American Art Union | 7:30pm]
Guest curated by Irina Leimbacher
Supported by a grant from Multnomah County Cultural Coalition
Images, like stories, are constructed, and in turn, they construct us, our imagination, our beliefs. Images and stories have, and refer to, collective histories, which they also provoke and create. Sometimes images and stories get under our skin, they prick us, they shift, enlarge, or intensify our engagement with certain aspects of the world. The name Lebanon was all over the press in the summer of 2006, as were the descriptions of war, the numbers of dead, the accusations and blame. These films—shot before 2006—by Lebanese women offer a way to see images and hear stories of, from, in this landscape. Complex stories, told simply, conflicting images, with incongruous desires. Not one image or story, but many, are depicted in each of the films, and they all suggest Lebanon, and the world, as a site of multiple, competing stories and images.
Dalia Fathallah’s Mabrouk at Tahrir, Chronicle of a Return to South Lebanon (2002) examines the daily gestures and political complexities of life in a small village in South Lebanon. The Israeli army, which had occupied the region from 1978 to 2000, withdrew in May 2000. Many inhabitants who had been forced to leave the area then returned, and “mabrouk at tahrir,” literally “congratulations on the liberation,” was an oft-repeated exclamation. In Here and Perhaps Elsewhere Lamia Joreige takes her video camera to interviews numerous residents of Beirut, especially along the line that used to be the demarcation between East and West Beirut, about disappearances of family members or friends. The resulting conversations shed light on the deep and still present trauma of the Civil War. Lebanon/War by Rania Stephan, was shot in the midst of and immediately following the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in July and August 2006, Stephan gives us eight brief glimpses into what it means to be caught in the middle of a war. From workers, ambulance crews and refugees in Beirut to the rubble of villages in the South, the video provides a sense of the rage, resignation, and trauma caused by war.—Irina Leimbacher
March 20
Mabrouk At-Tahir: Chronicle Of A Return To South Lebanon by Dalia Fathallah [Lebanon, 2002, video, color, 60 min]
March 21
Lebanon/War by Rania Stephan [Lebanon, 2006, video, 47 min]
Here and Perhaps Elsewhere by Lamia Joreige [Lebanon, 2003, video, 55 min]
*please note last minute change in program, Danielle Arbid's film had to be pulled at the last minute for reasons out of our control.
Return to Top
|
|
   |
| |
BB OPTICS – BILL BRAND
April 15 +16 [New American Art Union | 7:30pm]
Underwritten in part by Randy Rapaport
Cinema Project is honored to present two evenings with Bill Brand. For over three decades Bill Brand has been an artist, educator, activist and film preservationist. Starting with his film studies under Paul Sharits in the early 70s, he went on to found Chicago Filmmakers in 1973. Since 1976 Bill Brand has operated BB Optics, an optical printing service specializing in 8mm blow-ups and archival preservation particularly of films by artists. In 1981 he completed a permanent public art project, Masstransiscope, a mural installed in the subway system of New York City that is animated by the movement of passing trains. Brand is currently Professor of Flim and Photography at Hampshire College and teaches film preservation in the graduate Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program at NYU.
Bill will present a number of his own films as well as work that he has preserved. Bill Brand's own films begin with formal, structural studies, which have lead to more personnel works that address personal and family history dealing with the implications of being the only sibling of five not to have inherited Polycystic Kidney Disease. Among the many remarkable films presented this two evenings is an extremely rare public presentation of The Nixon White House Staff Super 8 Motion Picture Film Collection, which contains FBI-confiscated films recorded between 1969 and 1973. The films were found in the office files of John Ehrlichman after he resigned his post as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs on April 30, 1973 and show Nixon and the First Family in a combination of banal and official scenarios. Other great works include films by Saul Levine, Peter Herwitz, and Jack Waters.
Bill Brand will also be presenting a workshop at the Northwest Film Center on April 14th! Please check www.nwfilm.org for more details.
—ARTIST IN ATTENDANCE—
April 15 • The Radical Image in Politics
Reel S-10 Nixon White House Super-8 Films [1969-73, Super8 on 16mm, silent, 18 min]
New Left Note by Saul Levine [1968-82, 8mm on 16mm, color, silent, 28 min]
Coalfields by Bill Brand [1984, 16mm, color, sound, 38 min]
April 16 • Interior Landscape
Angular Momentum by Bill Brand [1973, 16mm, color, sound, 20 min]
Winter Dream Lieder by Peter Herwitz [1993, Super 8 on 16mm, color, silent, 12 min]
Berlin NY by Jack Waters [1984-86, super8 on 16mm, b&w and color, sound, 20 min]
Swan's Island by Bill Brand and Katy Martin [2006, 16mm, color, sound, 5 min]
Suite by Bill Brand [1996-2003, video, color, sound, 28 min]
Return to Top
|
|
 |
| |
CARTE BLANCHE du CANADA—BRETT KASHMERE
April 24 [New American Art Union | 7:30pm]
Cinema Project is pleased to welcome guest curator and filmmaker Brett Kashmere to town to present this special program. Carte Blanche du Canada magnifies cracks in the friendly Northern façade: Isolation, loneliness, melancholia, the dissipation of rural life, the fall of civilization and the end of civilized play are displayed in this program of Canadian film et video.
Free Fall, by the legendary National Film Board artist Arthur Lipsett, features dazzling pixilation, in-camera superimpositions, syncopated rhythms and ironic sound-image juxtaposition. Individual perceptions of memory are foregrounded in distance is relative by Amber Goodwyn, a silent travelogue built around the romantic conceit of a missing lover. still | move, a sociological reflection on family history by Michael Rollo, transposes the architecture of photographic albums to chronicle the decay of his grandparents’ prairie railroad community. unfinished passages, a five-part film cycle by Brett Kashmere, uses reprocessed archival images and text to trace the migration of the artist's great-grandfather from London, England to Golden Plains, Saskatchewan. Christina Battle's sumptuously colored buffalo lifts reveals a herd desperately trying to hold on as they struggle to cross the film frame. Jake Kennedy's Colonel Canuck propagates the popular image of a well-mannered, simple, and lonely Canadian, lost in a cross-cultural chatroom. Richard Kerr's Last Days of Contrition is a moving poem that speaks of terror and wonder through
desolation of the western American landscape; the film acts as a metaphor for the industrial/militay politics of 20th century America.
—ARTIST IN ATTENDANCE—
April 24
Free Fall by Arthur Lipsett [1964, 16mm, b&w, 9 min]
Distance is Relative by Amber Goodwyn [2004, 16mm, b&w, silent, 5 min]
still | move by Michael Rollo [2003, video, color/b&w, 11 min]
unfinished passages by Brett Kashmere [2005, video, b&w, 17 min]
buffalo lifts by Christina Battle [ 2004, 16mm, color, silent, 3 min]
Colonel Canuck by Jake Kennedy [ 2003, video, color, 2:30 min]
Last Days of Contrition by Richard Kerr [1988, 16mm, b&w, sound, 35 min]
Return to Top
|
|
   |
| |
PINE FLAT—SHARON LOCKHART
May 22 + 23 [New American Art Union | 7:30pm]
Sharon Lockhart is internationally recognized for films and photographs that frame quiet moments of everyday life. Pine Flat focuses on the landscape and children of a small community of three hundred in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California. Over a period of three years, Lockhart made numerous extended visits to this community and slowly immersed herself in the people and the place. The film portrays the town’s children as they engage in activities such as playing, reading, hanging out, and hunting in stunningly beautiful natural settings. Sometimes Lockhart directed the children, and at other times they improvised, but there is throughout the film an ease of interaction and an intimacy that the artist achieved in part by simplifying her process: she eliminated her customary film crew, learned to use a movie camera herself, and employed a composer friend as sound technician. This created a space in which the dividing line between artist and subject was softened and interpersonal exchanges were illuminated in new ways.—Harvard Film Archives
May 22 + 23
Pine Flat by Sharon Lockhart [2005, 16mm, color, sound, 135 min]
Return to Top
|
|
 |
| |
SMITHSON, SERRA, & HOLT—AT THE DRIVE IN
Underwritten by PDX Contemporary Art & Brad Adkins
Cinema Project leaves the friendly confines of our gallery space, taking our projector and venturing out beneath the Portland stars. This one night only screening includes work by seminal artists Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, and Nancy Holt. All three artists work share many similarities and are intertwined in many ways. Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt were briefly married and all three were close friends in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt were two pioneers of the movement of “earthworks” or “earth art” in the late 1960s, where many artists became disillusioned with the commodification and insularity of gallery bound art. Smithson wrote many influential essays before he dying prematurely in 1973, but his Spiral Jetty project in the Great Salt Lake in Utah is his enduring legacy. In Spiral Jetty Smithson documents this massive undertaking, weaving in sequences filmed in a natural history museum featuring prehistoric relics, aerial footage of he Jetty, and voice over narration by Smithson.
In Sun Tunnels, Nancy Holt takes a close look at the many different processes involved in making art in the American landscape, away from urban centers and outside the usual art-world confines of museums and galleries. More specifically, it is a personal record of the making the filmmaker's art work, Sun Tunnels, in the remote northwest Utah desert. Being aligned with the sunsets and sunrises during the summer and winter solstices, the sculpture indicates the daily and yearly cycle of the sun.
Richard Serra, more internationially reknowned for his giant sculptures of steel, is also an accomplished film and video artist. Railroad Turnbridge studies the steel structure of a five-part early-20th-century railroad turnbridge as it slowly opens and closes and was shot in Portland, Oregon. For Serra, "the bridge enabled me to examine movement in filmic structure [and] the filming became a way of concentrating certain iconic elements of bridge structure."
JUNE 2
Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson [1970, 16mm, color, sound, 32 min]
Railroad Turnbridge by Richard Serra [1975-76, 16mm, b&w, silent, 17 min]
Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt [1978, 16mm, color, sound, 27 min]
Special Musical Guest Jean-Paul Jenkins!
Return to Top
|
|
  |
|
THE INTIMATE DISTANCE—"CONSCIOUSNESS UNBOUND"
A TRIBUTE TO MARK LaPORE (1952- 2005)
NEW DATES!
July 21 + 22 [New American Art Union | 7:30pm]
Guest Curated by Mark McElhatten
Underwritten by Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College
These two programs are offered as a tribute to Mark LaPore, one the greatest filmmakers of his generation, presented by his close friend curator Mark McElhatten The first program traces a linear chronology with three major works that followed after LaPore’s early period of super 8 work in the Sudan. The second evening is devoted to more subjective leaps across time periods to reveal hidden trajectories and echoes as the filmmaker returns to places and subject matter across the decades.
Keenly aware of the limitations of individual knowledge these sensuous and formally severe films refuse to satisfy curiosity with information. They inform through experiential immersion, purposeful disorientation and striking juxtapositions of geographic dislocation and opposing sound and image. LaPore fashioned works that were both deeply poetic and unflinchingly matter of fact. The variety of images across the films of quotidian labor, images of itinerant knife grinders and tightrope walkers, ceremonial elephants, tea harvesters, fish sellers, intersecting with images of suggestive repose; twilight figures locked in reverie and sleep or intercepted by death, heighten our attention to cyclical ebb and flow, the mystery of existence, and the filmmakers understated belief in a subjective cinema of consciousness.
—CURATOR IN ATTENDANCE—
A Depression in the Bay of Bengal [1996, 16mm, color, sound, 28 min]
The Five Bad Elements [1998, 16mm, b&w, sound, 32 min]
The Glass System [2000, 16mm, color, sound, 20 min]
Untitled (Camera Rolls) [2005, 16mm, b&w, silent, 5 min]
Lunatic Princess [2005, video, b&w, sound, 4 min ]
Kolkata [2005, 16mm, b&w, sound, 35 min]
The Sleepers [1989, 16mm, color, sound, 16 min]
The Glass System [2000 16mm, color, sound, 20 min]
Untitled (for David Gatten) (with Phil Solomon) [2005, video, color, sound, 5 min]
Return to Top
|
|
  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
