de Cuir_International

Black Material, a thematic section organized by Greg de Cuir Jr

Ruth Beckermann has been making engaged non-fiction cinema since the 1970s, peeling back the multiple layers of occupations, strikes, and political agitation in her native Austria. Yet it was only in 2016 when she received her first retrospective in her home country – at the Austrian Film Museum, which also published the first critical anthology on Beckermann’s work. In April 2018 she will receive a significant profile in Berlin at the Arsenal cinema, but not before her profile in March 2018 at the Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival. 

While she displayed an activist stance in her earliest film collaborations, Beckermann’s modus operandi shifted to a wandering and patiently inquisitive gaze, open to the world around her, often traveling to different countries, echoed by the numerous traveling camera shots she employs. One might call her an essayist, and indeed one of her short works is a homage to the legendary French film essayist Chris Marker. However, Beckermann also seems under the influence of a Claude Lanzmann, with her dedicated attention to charting the repercussions of the Holocaust from the Continent all the way to the Holy Land. Despite this patriarchal superstructure of the modern European documentary that I have just sketched, Beckermann is of course important for prioritizing a female gaze upon reality. One can just as easily link her with an Agnès Varda or a Helena Třeštíková. Regardless of the association, her time has come to stand among the greats of contemporary European documentary cinema.

This Belgrade profile presents a modest selection of Beckermann’s feature-length films, from the earlier stages of her work into the 21st century. Discussion is a central motif in these films, also performance. The cinematic enters the fold by way of the emotions the camera produces, by a montage of attractions of ideas and experiences. The titles of Beckermann’s films evoke dreams, enigmas, passages, and returns. But hers is a cinema grounded in what matters most: our relations to each other, to what came before us, and to the world we are creating. 

Greg de Cuir Jr 

Selector

Slovenska Kinoteka, Ljubljana

13 March 2018

9.8m/s, Davorin Marc, Slovenia, 2015, 4 min.

Some of the Sensations, Péter Lichter & Bori Máté, Hungary, 2017, 4 min.

Unknown Energies, Unidentified Emotions, Dalibor Barić, Croatia, 2015, 40 min.

The End of Time, Milcho Manchevski, United States/Cuba, 2017, 6 min.

The festival Alternative Film/Video was founded in 1982 in Belgrade, Serbia (then Socialist Yugoslavia). At that time the only other film festival explicitly dedicated to alternative, experimental, avant-garde forms of cinema was GEFF (Genre Film Festival) in Zagreb, Croatia (also part of Socialist Yugoslavia), which was structured as a multidisciplinary biennial and which only lasted for four editions through the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Alternative works of cinema could also be seen at the parallel festival MAFAF (Inter-Club Amateur Film Festival) in Pula (Croatia), or in any of the numerous other festivals of non-professional kino club production in Yugoslavia during the time, but these works would have been mixed in with narrative fiction, non-fiction, and animation. Alternative Film/Video was in fact organized by Academic Kino Club in Belgrade and championed many club productions in general, but its primary purpose was to serve a wider need in presenting film art and video art.

If one considers the larger European context, the pioneering festival of experimental cinema was what eventually became known as EXPRMNTL in Knokke, Belgium, which began as a section within the World Festival of Film and Fine Arts in 1949, and which was organized intermittently as an integral festival from the late 1950s into the early 1970s. This fact would seem to position Alternative Film/Video as the oldest festival of avant-garde cinema in Europe that is still in operation – though it was put on hiatus for a decade in the 1990s during the Yugoslav Wars. After it was re-established the film festival scene and film culture in general looked quite different on the continent. One might even say that the golden age of film festivals had passed and the over-proliferation of festivals was dawning along with the 21st century.

Alternative Film/Video was founded with a strong national focus, as a way to support and expose Yugoslav film and video artists. This does not mean that international artists and curators were not invited to present programs. Still, with the passage of decades and the ultimate disintegration of the country the international profile of the festival increased. Today it is known as an event with a global selection, though it has always maintained a deep regional tie with the Balkan and Central European spaces, which gives the festival its distinct character and allows it to offer works not often seen at larger, more commercial, more Western-oriented festivals.

This program is a brief sampling of contemporary works from this region that have won awards at Alternative Film/Video, and which introduce an ‘other’ European cinema that is unique and vibrant and with a proud history behind it. This cinema must be fully accounted for if a more complete picture is to be drawn of the European avant-garde of today. Péter Lichter, a young artist from Hungary, has been making films with archival footage for the past ten years. Only recently he began co-directing with the Hungarian artist Bori Máté, who brings a painterly approach to their collaborative work. Dalibor Barić, a mid-career artist from Croatia, is known for making visionary animated experiments. Like Lichter, he is a multiple award-winner at Alternative Film/Video over the years. Davorin Marc, an artist from Slovenia, has kept up an incredible pace of activity since the 1980s when he first began showing his work at Alternative Film/Video. He has also won multiple awards at the festival and can be considered something of an unsung hero of ex-Yugoslav and European alternative cinema. Milcho Manchevski, an artist from Macedonia, is perhaps more known for his challenging feature-length narrative films of the past twenty years. What is less known is his early and consistent engagement with experimentation in and around cinema, which has proven to be the fertile soil of his and so many of his contemporaries’ multifaceted and exciting careers.

Greg de Cuir Jr

An essay film by an art collective deserves a collective response as well. The impromptu critics' collective Team Metaprocessed – which includes such luminaries as Catherine Grant, Peter van Bueren, Celluloid Liberation Front, and Greg de Cuir Jr – has applied a wide range of digital processes for a globe-spanning prepossession and repossession of Possessed (2018), a film by Metahaven & Rob Schröder.

Possessed is nominated for a Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Whoever chooses blindly is struck in the eyes by the smoke of sacrifice. – Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock 

Subtract the weight of the ashes from the weight of the wood which is burnt, and you have the weight of the smoke. – Immanuel Kant

This film and video screening program is a scientific experiment. The control variable is the artist Kevin Jerome Everson. Everson has made 8 feature-length films and over 120 short films in an award-winning career that began in the 1990s. His works have been shown throughout the world in iconic institutions like Museum of Modern Art in New York, Toronto International Film Festival, Tate Modern in London, Berlin International Film Festival, and many more. The writer-curator Greg de Cuir Jr has called Everson the most significant African-American film artist of the 21st century, and certainly the most productive. His cinema makes visible that which is hidden; it searches for the fleeting moment when necessity meets coincidence, in the artist’s own words.

This experiment is a thorough investigation of Everson’s artistic affinities as well as a re-formulation of the canonical codes that structure the art of cinema. It proposes the various aesthetic modes and themes that have influenced Everson throughout his career, it assembles an array of film and video works that act as catalysts for these modalities, and it positions these works to interact with each other and with exemplary works made by Everson. What if the weight of cinema could be measured in qualitative and quantitative terms? This program-experiment hypothesizes a calculation for doing so.

The inspiration for this experiment is derived from J.W. Goethe and his capital novel Elective Affinities, which, in a speculative fusing of the artistic and the scientific, is based on the theory that molecular forms display a natural affinity or attraction to certain others. Goethe’s is an attempt to translate this principle of molecules to human relationships. Affinities or The Weight of Cinema is an attempt to adapt this theory to moving image works. If humans are drawn to certain other types then one might postulate that certain artistic forms also display affinities toward other aesthetics.

To lay the foundation for this experiment the co-curators Kevin Jerome Everson and Greg de Cuir Jr have engaged in a wide-ranging series of discussions about art and then have researched works of cinema along related lines of inquiry. The result is the identification of areas of interest that become fertile cultures in which to place Everson’s films in dialogue with the work of other artists past and present. These areas of interest have been labeled as Affinities. They are presented here in brief:

An affinity for witnessing. Works assembled here bear testament. The camera eye is used as an ethical meter. Visible evidence is as necessary for the experimental impulse in cinema as it is for the documentary urge. Cinema fulfills its potential when it is a method for exposing the machinations of the world.

An affinity for the interval. These works disassemble reality and build new worlds in its place. These new worlds are recognizable by their openness and their resistance to facile definition. They are complex, revolutionary spaces. Dziga Vertov defined intervals as ‘material’ and ‘elements’ that enable movement. For Trinh T. Minh-ha the interval is ‘what persists between the meaning of something and its truth’.

An affinity for labor. Works assembled here evoke labor in its numerous forms. Active bodies are on display, also the results of labor. The key question commonly posed when considering labor is who benefits, and who is exploited. We might add another: what sort of labor constitutes the practice of both making and watching cinema?

An affinity for constructivism. The works represented here evoke an attempt to hammer the world into an improved form. As written by its early theorists, constructivism indissolubly unites the ideological with the formal. An aesthetic of constructivism in cinema has not often been represented accurately and is difficult to ascertain. Its significance might reside at the level of the shot, or the sequence, or intangible shifts in consciousness. 

An affinity for color. Works assembled here explore color as a visual quality, a variance of temperatures and the ideas they signify. Works assembled here also explore color as a racial construct, a lens through which to view and know the world.

An affinity for minimalism. Works used here are characterized by reduction and achieving a maximum of affect in inverse relation to the means of expression. We might rather call these works ‘postminimalist’, connecting more to an artistic tendency rather than a movement.

An affinity for the readymade. Works in this group are composed of existing materials that have been repurposed to serve new aims. The artisanal quality of the readymade is of concern here; how to attain form, and how to build on previous traditions.  

An affinity for collage. Works gathered here function as visual collages on multiple levels. Often formed using archival footage, the heterogeneous nature of these works gains shape through collision and multiplication. This particular affinity is closely related to the readymade and functions as a complication and extension of the former.

An affinity for technique. These works celebrate the beauty and nobility of craft, of those who toil on the sidelines and in the shadows, yet who enable the fabric of society to remain intact. A good craftsman/woman leaves a seamless technique in the wake of their operations, an artistic code to be admired, if one looks close enough.

The art of cinema can only be experimental. If so, then the cinema theater has not often enough been conceived as a laboratory for the combustion and distillation of ideas. These Affinities as presented and investigated here are not the essentialist or ideal components of all cinemas everywhere, nor are they meant to be proposed as relevant foundations for all artists. They are also not mutually-exclusive. They constitute postulates, models, ideals for comprehending film and video art, for relating it, for using it as an exploratory tool, a polemical tool. The value of the schematic these Affinities produce must be measured against their ability to transform the mind, the body, and the soul of the viewer. This margin, this co-efficient, is what we call art.

Returning to the philosopher Kant and the profound minimalism of his introductory formula – what should we burn to calculate the weight of cinema?

AGAINST: RACISM AND MISOGYNY IN ALL FORMS WITHIN THE EXPERIMENTAL FILM COMMUNITY

AGAINST: HISTORIES OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM THAT PROBLEMATICALLY EXCLUDE POC FILMMAKERS ENTIRELY AS WELL AS EXCLUDING MANY WOMEN AND QUEER FILMMAKERS AGAINST: WHITE SUPREMACY PERPETUATED WITHIN THE EXPERIMENTAL FILM COMMUNITY

AGAINST: EXPERIMENTAL FILM CURATING THAT FEATURES ONLY CIS WHITE MEN FILMMAKERS

AGAINST: MEN AT EXPERIMENTAL FILM SCREENINGS GETTING UP AND ATTEMPTING TO COMMANDEER THE FILM PROJECTOR FROM WOMEN PROJECTIONISTS (YES THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS)

AGAINST: WHITE MEN IN ACADEMIA PERPETUATING MORE SCHOLARSHIP ONLY & SOLELY ON CIS WHITE MEN EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKERS

AGAINST: THE CANON

FOR: DECOLONIZING EXPERIMENTAL FILM CURATING & EXPERIMENTAL FILM HISTORY

FOR: EXHIBITING EXPERIMENTAL FILM IN PLACES OTHER THAN THE ACADEMY, GALLERY, AND FESTIVAL

FOR: EXPERIMENTAL FILM MADE MORE ACCESSIBLE TO VIEW FOR THE MASSES, IN THEIR COMMUNITIES

FOR: MORE RADICAL FILM CURATORS, MORE POC FILM CURATORS, MORE WOMEN FILM CURATORS, AND MORE QUEER FILM CURATORS

FOR: MORE WOMEN FILM PROJECTIONISTS FOR: CREATING MORE ACCESS TO FILMMAKING EQUIPMENT FOR: CREATING INCLUSIVE TEACHING SPACES FOR BEGINNER FILMMAKERS FOR: MORE FILMS FOR REVOLUTION & MORE FILMS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO BOTH THE ABOLITION OF CAPITALISM & THE STRUGGLE AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY

FOR: EXPLICITLY CALLING OUT RACISM AND SEXISM WHEN WE SEE IT IN THE EXPERIMENTAL FILM COMMUNITY

FOR: FILMMAKERS WHO HAVE BEEN DISCRIMINATED AGAINST, SUPPORTING AND UPLIFTING EACH OTHER’S WORK FOR: RADICAL CONTENT AND RADICAL FORM

Subversion is in the content, in the style, in the form. It lies on the surface and the practice of the image, in the visuals and the principles ordering them as a sequence. Subversion is in thinking cinema, it is in sensing cinema.

The first major critical study of subversion in cinema is Film as a Subversive Art. It was 1974 when the first edition of Amos Vogel’s book came out – numerous editions and translations quickly followed (in French in 1977, in German in 1979), making the volume something of a classic in accounts of avant-gardism in cinema, a classic of subversion. This might sound contradictory: how can something subversive in and of itself, something overcoming the constraints of the canon, be a classic? This is one of the fascinating aspects of the relationship between cinema and the idea of subversion, and one of the questions this curatorial project addresses. Vogel’s book is then the anchor of this exhibition, not only because of its iconic status as a critical work but because it connects cinematic subversion in the former Eastern European sphere to international currents through the use of an image from Dušan Makavejev’s subversive masterpiece WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) on the cover.

This exhibition aims at following such a two-fold path, by offering a synthetic survey charting international histories of cinematic subversion. The concept is focused on presenting classical examples from the ex-Yugoslav region and connecting them to their counterparts in other regions, putting them in dialogue with other international practitioners. Inspired by unexpected continuities, by visual, symbolic, and conceptual echoes, the moving image component of the exhibition forwards the idea of subversion by coupling a number of works on the basis of their shared, albeit profoundly multifaceted, radical attitude. Because we believe cinematic subversion overcomes medium-specific constraints the exhibition is cross-disciplinary, including not only films and videos, but also books, new media, and more. 

DON’T BELIEVE IN SUBVERSION

(an exhibition curated by Greg de Cuir Jr & Miriam de Rosa) 

The title of the exhibition references an early kino club film by Makavejev titled Don’t Believe in Monuments (1958, 5 min., film transferred to video, collection AFC Belgrade). This film was banned for a number of years due to its heavy eroticism and also the erroneous belief that the statue that the woman makes love to in the film depicted a wounded Partisan fighter. It did not – lending credence to Makavejev’s polemical title and also encouraging us to take a skeptical, self-critical stance to the very ideological construction of this exhibition. We have drawn a parallel to Makavejev’s film with fragments from the film Consumer Art (1972, 1974-1975, 16 min., 16mm transferred to video, courtesy of lokal_30, Warsaw) by the uncompromising Polish feminist artist Natalia LL. Her erotic images of various women (including herself) consuming edible items in overtly suggestive ways comments on the nature of consumer culture in Socialist Poland while also subverting the use value of everyday groceries.

The film Scusa Signorina (1963, 7 min., 16mm transferred to video, collection HFS Zagreb) by Mihovil Pansini is the anthemic example of antifilm, which Pansini initiated and theorized as subverting and ultimately negating the very idea of cinema and cinema aesthetics. We have linked Pansini’s work with the video Scanner Pack (2017, 7 min., video, courtesy of the artist) by the Ecuadorian-Spanish artist Karla Tobar Abarca. The artist was kind enough to accept our invitation and to edit a new cut of her video in direct response to Scusa Signorina. The installation of this video therefore serves as its premiere. These two works offer a complementary interpretation of the coordinates characterising the position of the camera in space, and its corporeality and relationship to the filmmaker’s body. Worn pointing backwards, Pansini’s camera explores the city of Zagreb, unveiling overlooked details, showing unfamiliar perspectives employed to frame the urban space. Conversely, Abarca’s Scanner Pack, also meant to be worn pointing backwards, but in fact subverting such an orientation, embodies a hacking system that disrupts the way in which we navigate that same urban space. The back pack employs a scanning technology device to focus on the physical contact, the materiality, and the surfaces of the city.

The film Blue Rider (1964, 12 min., 16mm transferred to video, collection AFC Belgrade) by Tomislav Gotovac is subversive cinema by way of subversive action. The artist’s legendary strategy of entering various cafes in Belgrade unannounced and confronting the clientele and staff with a film camera was a very risky affair. Film cameras did not often make intrusions into everyday life in Socialist Yugoslavia, and therefore the apparatus itself is the carrier of subversive potential, upsetting the status quo and transforming it into unique visible evidence. Gotovac’s film is compared with The Searchers (2016, 2 min., video, courtesy of the artist), a video by Kevin L. Ferguson that uses frame grabs summed in sequence to subvert and transform the visual style of John Ford’s canonical Western. Gotovac’s film features the usage of a readymade soundtrack lifted from the classical television series Bonanza. Sharing this Western background, Blue Rider and Ferguson’s The Searchers exemplify very differently what subversion may well mean: while the former tackles this topic by focusing on the combination of film and life, emphasising the everyday and spontaneity as counter-elements mitigating the pretentions of a scenario, the latter reshapes Ford’s film, offering a visual reinterpretation of filmic time and image which relies instead upon a sophisticated technical process based on a composition of frame grabs taken every 10 seconds. Ferguson’s work looks like a true visual tapestry whose threads are multilayered images thickening the digital grain of the film’s perceptive materiality.

Black Film (1971, 14 min., 16mm transferred to video, courtesy of the artist) by Želimir Žilnik takes an interventionist, socially-engaged stance toward subversion. The artist appears in this film on the street, investigating the homeless situation in Novi Sad, Serbia, eventually bringing a number of vagrants to his apartment so they can sleep for the night and figure out a solution to their condition. Of course, there is no solution. The ultimate message is not dissimilar to Makavejev’s subversive polemics: don’t believe in socio-critical film. Žilnik’s self-critical realism is a subversive act par excellence for artists who display a fervent, idealistic humanism in their work. The link here is with the film Batrachian’s Ballad (2016, 11 min., 16mm transferred to video, courtesy of Portugal Film) by Leonor Teles, which won the Golden Bear for Short Film at the Berlinale. Teles’ work is an anti-racist intervention into the status quo of Portuguese society – into the very places of business that structure Portuguese society. Her action consists of filming herself rushing into stores, stealing the green porcelain frogs that shopkeepers display to symbolize a warding off of the presence of Roma people, and smashing them on the concrete. This is literally a destructive cinema, an unruly and anarchic cinema, moving the act of subversion into ethically-questionable territory – which it should never be afraid to do, if we are to believe in subversion.

This exhibition also presents a literary section comprising the following key publications that chart the various contours of cinematic subversion: Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art (French edition, 1977); the large-format anthology Film and Revolution Today, edited by Dušan Makavejev and Lazar Stojanović in connection with the curated film program Confrontation (Belgrade FEST, 1971); Želimir Žilnik’s manifestos ‘Black Film’ and ‘This Festival is a Graveyard’ (Belgrade Short and Documentary Film Festival/Sineast #13-14, 1971); Richard Porton’s Film and the Anarchist Imagination (1999); the catalog for Sergio Grmek Germani’s curated film program Socialism (Subversive Film Festival Zagreb, 2010); the online journal Now! A Journal of Urgent Praxis, which exemplifies the subversive elements of open access publication projects.

When interviewed by Scott MacDonald, Amos Vogel claimed that the ‘common denominator’ of the films he selected for his Cinema 16 screening space is that ‘they created a disturbance in the status quo […] they would disturb you in some way, would add to your knowledge and make you change’.[1] Inspired by the research that Vogel developed over many years of curating, the works in this exhibition represent that radical spirit. They offer new ways of seeing, unpredictable practices, unexpected actions, and alternative appraisals of the moving image and the discourses that surround it.

Miriam de Rosa & Greg de Cuir Jr

December 2017

The curators would like to acknowledge the support of Alex Johnston, NOW! A Journal of Urgent Praxis, Richard Porton, Miki Stojanović, Wanda Strauven, Verso, the Yugoslav Kinoteka Library, and all of the writers and artists.

Miriam de Rosa is Senior Lecturer in Media & Communications at Coventry University. She most recently organized the screening program Desktop Cinema at Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb.

Greg de Cuir Jr is Selector at Alternative Film/Video. He most recently organized the screening program Avant-Noir, Volume 3 at ICA London.

The End of Time, Milčo Mančevski, US/Cuba, 2017

Tower XYZ, Ayo Akingbade, UK, 2016*

She Blinks and Flowers Tremble, Niko Novak and Matevž Jerman, Slovenia, 2017

Confident, Karen Akerman and Miguel Seabra Lopes, Brazil, 2016

Puerto Rico Tautology (14-Dubs High), Rob Feulner, Canada, 2016

Some of the Sensations, Peter Lichter and Bori Mate, Hungary, 2017

Black & White Box, Osi Wald and Efrat Rubin, Israel, 2017**

Jury: Miša Radivojević, Hito Steyerl, Lordan Zafranović       

*Sonja Savić Award (inaugural award)

13-17 December 2017, Belgrade

Program #1

The End of Time, Milcho Manchevski, United States/Cuba, 2017, 5 min.

Welcome 5x4, Davorin Marc, Slovenia, 2017, 3 min.

How Can I Ever Be Late, Kevin Jerome Everson & Claudrena Harold, United States, 2017, 5 min.

Re-Vue, Dirk de Bruyn, Australia, 2017, 6 min.

Wishful Thinking, Allan Brown, Canada, 2017, 13 min.

Durch nacht zum licht, Friedl vom Groller, Austria, 2016, 3 min.

The Entropy of a Collective Atmosphere Colored in Red, Igor Simic, Serbia, 2017, 3 min.

I Love You, Ines, Ana Husman, Croatia, 2017, 14 min. 

Program #2

Tower XYZ, Ayo Akingbade, United Kingdom, 2016, 3 min.

Leopard Man Study, Duo Strangloscope, Serbia/Brazil, 2017, 8 min.

(I)FRAME, Karissa Hahn & Andrew Kim, United States, 2015, 10 min.

Orphan of Asia, Kuo Ying Hsiu, Taiwan, 2017, 4 min.

Viewfinder Material, Baptiste Jopeck, France, 2017, 16 min.

A Walk to the Beach, Rafael Gomez, Spain, 2017, 7 min.

Return to Forms, Zachary Epcar, United States, 2016, 10 min. 

Program #3

Antarctica, Salise Hughes, United States, 2016, 4 min.

She Blinks and Flowers Tremble, Niko Novak & Matevz Jerman, Slovenia, 2017, 8 min.  

Confident, Karen Akerman & Miguel Seabra Lopes, Brazil, 2016, 12 min.

Inside - The Color Version, Dietmar Brehm, Austria, 2017, 5 min.

Puerto Rico Tautology (14-Dubs High), Rob Feulner, Canada, 2016, 7 min.

Lost Highway Revisited, Igor M. Toholj & Nevena Matovic, Serbia, 2016, 13 min. 

Program #4

Some of the Sensations, Peter Lichter & Bori Mate, Hungary, 2017, 4 min.

Unknown Hours, Calum Walter, United States, 2016, 10 min.

Junkanoo Talk, Rhea Storr, United Kingdom, 2017, 12 min.

Where Am I, Joao Leal, Portugal, 2016, 6 min.

Herz und tat, mund und leben, Nina Kreuzinger, Austria, 2017, 12 min.

165708, Josephine Massarella, Canada, 2017, 7 min.

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, January 6-14, 2018

The idea behind Affinities or The Weight of Cinema derives from Goethe’s classic 1809 novel Elective Affinities. The project, playfully adapting Goethe’s artistic-scientific theory of attractions to the practice of exhibiting experimental cinema, is presented in person by filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson and curator Greg de Cuir Jr, who serve as co-curators. Eight programs of international works of film and video art are arranged along various thematic lines that correspond to their shared interests and concerns. Additional screenings will be presented at the National Museum of African American History & Culture. With thanks to Kevin Jerome Everson, Greg de Cuir Jr, Jon Goff and Rhea Combs of the National Museum of African American History & Culture, Madeleine Molyneaux, and all the artists involved. Additional information about the programs is available at www.nga.gov/film 

An Affinity for Witnessing

Sat Jan 6 (2:00)

Kelly Gallagher in person 

Works assembled for this program explore the idea of bearing testament, the notion that visible evidence is as necessary for the experimental impulse in cinema as it is for the documentary urge. Titles include Ears, Nose and Throat (Everson, 2016), Perfect Film (Ken Jacobs, 1986), Shoot, Don’t Shoot (William E. Jones, 2012), and From Ally to Accomplice (Kelly Gallagher, 2015). Total running time 55 minutes. 

An Affinity for the Interval

Sat Jan 6 (4:00)

Claudrena Harold in person


Cinematically, the interval can refer not only to durational elements (how long a work is), but also to the space it creates. Trinh T. Minh-ha posits that the interval can be described as “what persists between the meaning of something and its truth.” Program includes Oscar at 8903 Empire (Everson, 2016), Considerations (Arthur Jafa, 1982), Bird’s Milk (Dineo Seshee Bopape, 2009), Hour Glass (Haile Gerima, 1971), Kuhani (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, 2013), and Reassemblage (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1982). Total running time 85 minutes. 

An Affinity for Labor

Sun Jan 7 (4:00)

Akosua Adoma Owusu in person

A question commonly posed when considering labor is who benefits, and who is exploited? In this case, an alternate question might be: what sort of labor constitutes the practice of both making and viewing films? Works include Smooth Surface (Everson, 2015), Marseille après la guerre (Billy Woodberry, 2016), Intermittent Delight (Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2007), and Iseeyou (Simon Gush, 2013), among others. Total running time 40 minutes. 

An Affinity for Constructivism

Sun Jan 7 (5:00)

Margaret Rorison in person

As written by its early theorists, constructivism indissolubly unites the ideological with the formal. Titles in this program offer a contemporary cinematic rendition of the term in both practice and interpretation. Included are Kino-nedelja No. 33 (Dziga Vertov, 1919), Genet parle d’Angela Davis (Carole Roussopoulos, 1970), One Document for Hope (Margaret Rorison, 2016), and We Demand (Everson and Claudrena Harold, 2016) among others. Total running time 53 minutes.

An Affinity for Color

Sat Jan 13 (2:00)

Christopher Harris in person

Color is explored in this program as a visual quality, a variance of temperatures and the ideas they signify, as well as a racial construct through which to view and know the world. Titles include Grand Finale (Everson, 2015), Feeling Seven (Tomislav Gotovac, 2000), Explosion Ma Baby (Pauline Curnier Jardin, 2016), Rainbow’s Gravity (Kerstin Schroedinger and Mareike Bernien, 2014), and Ujamii Uhuru Schule Community Freedom School (Don Amis, 1974). Total running time 58 minutes.

An Affinity for Minimalism

Sat Jan 13 (4:00)

Each of the four films assembled in this program could be characterized by reduction, achieving maximum effect through seemingly simple means: 27.12.2013 St. Louis Senegal (Friedl vom Gröller, 2014), Several Friends (Charles Burnett, 1969), Movies of Local People (Chapel Hill) (H. Lee Waters, 1939-1941), and Rams 23 Blue Bears 21 (Everson, 2017). Total running time 42 minutes.

An Affinity for the Readymade

Sun Jan 14 (4:00)

Cauleen Smith in person

While the use of found footage conjures the notion of the readymade in the visual arts, films in this program also repurpose visual and aural recordings original to the makers, to build on tradition and to attain new forms in cinema. The program features The Citizens (Everson, 2009), Nice Biscuits #2 (Luther Price, 2005), My Only Idol is Reality (Martine Syms, 2007), Our Trip to Africa (Peter Kubelka, 1966), and Sugarcoated Arsenic (Everson and Claudrena Harold, 2013). Total running time 42 minutes.

An Affinity for Collage

Sun Jan 14 (5:00)

Dirk de Bruyn in person