September
23, Thursday, 7:30PM, 2004
Echoes
from the Flaherty Seminar
This
year, Flaherty Seminar (http://www.flahertyseminar.org)
– a one-week film viewing retreat spiced
with impassionate discussions among filmmakers,
critics, scholars, curators, librarians and
students, celebrated its 50th anniversary. This
program is an eclectic selection of shots presented
at Flaherty by this year's curator Susan Oxtoby.
Margarita DeLaVega, executive
director of the Flaherty Seminar, will be in
person to present the program.
Standard
Gauge 35min, 16mm, 1984
Director: Morgan Fisher
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"A
frame of frames, a piece of pieces, a length
of lengths. Standard gauge on substandard; narrower,
yes, but longer. An ECU that's an ELS. Disjecta
membra; Hollywood anthologised. A kind of autobiography
of its maker, a kind of history of the institution
from whose shards it is composed, the commercial
motion picture industry. A mutual interrogation
between 35 mm and 16 mm, the gauge of Hollywood,
and the gauge of the amateur and independent."
- Morgan Fisher
"Standard Gauge is composed
of strips and frames a corpus delecti , a reliquary
of abandoned footage defunct television episodes,
"China girls" glorious frames that
resemble El Litsky and Rothko paintings illustrating
the filmically inscribed runic codes of off
screen technologies and procedures. Physical
fragments and narrated references including
Godard, Corman, Ulmer and Leonard Kastle illustrate
a mortal and metaphorical biography of the history
of film and the partial autobiography of Morgan
Fisher himself." -Rotterdam Film Festival
Morgan
Fisher
is based in Los Angeles and has been making
films since the late 1960s. His films include
Production Stills 1970, The Wilkinson
Household Fire Alarm 1973, Cue Rolls
1974, Projection Instructions
1976, and Standard Gauge 1984. His
latests film ( ) has
been screened at the Whitney Biennial 2004,
Galerie Daniel Buchholz 2004, the International
Film Festival Rotterdam 2004, the 3rd Berlin
Biennale 2004, the 41st New York Film Festival
2003.
Bocas
de Ceniza (Mouths of Ash)
18min, video, 2004
Director: Juan Manuel Echavarria (Colombia)
"Juan
Manuel Echavarría’s Mouths
of Ash is a sequence of seven songs,
each written and sung by an individual who has
experienced violence and destruction in their
native Colombia. This direct and deeply affecting
work puts a personal face on politically motivated
violence."
- Susan Oxtoby
Born in Medellin, Colombia, in 1947,
Juan Manuel Echavarría, a
writer, photographer and video artist, attended
college in the United States, then returned
to Colombia to write. He worked as co-editor
of the El Zumbambico newspaper in Medellin and
published two novels in 1981 and 1991. He now
divides his time between Bogotá and New
York.His works include Bandeja de Bolivar
(99), Guerra y Pa (02) and Mouths
of Ash (03/04).
Journeys
40min,
35min on video, 2003
Director: Vinayan Kodoth (India)
"In
the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay), the long
trips commuting from home to work and back again
is gradually taking on unbearable proportions.
The trains are so overcrowded that people can
only board, using their elbows. At first, the
scenes of people frenetically trying to secure
a seat are almost funny: it seems like a game
of musical chairs. At the same time, it’s
clear that the lack of capacity is leading to
perilous situations. People ride with their
bodies sticking outside the train, they sit
on the roof and hang off the sides. They often
jump on while it is still moving. The rush and
stress causes people to be very careless and
agressive. A newspaper headline ‘14 dead
in 24 hours’ speaks volumes. From a distance,
the throng of people is the streets is a column
of ants. A general view shows how choked up
the arterial roadways really are. There is contrast
between the slum-swellers scratching out a living
in the small spaces between the roads and the
tracks and a glittering Bombay city soaring
above them. Roads are lined with billboards
advertising luxury items. Thus, the film raises
questions about progress and urbanisation and
the price that is paid." - International
Documentary Film Festival (Amsterdam)
Vinayan
Kodoth was born in 1963, in Kerala,
India. He completed a post-graduate degree
in literature in 1986. In 1989 he joined the
film direction program at the Film and Television
Institue of India in Pune. Between 1992 and
1996, he worked in television in Mumbai (Bombay).
Since 1996, he has taught film and video at
the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.
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