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Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater
FILM AND VIDEO SERIES
Fall 2004

Organized by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud, CalArts School of Film/Video

REDCAT's Film and Video Series opens its second season
Drawing on a variety of cultural perspectives from around the globe, this series is dedicated to expanding the definitions of the moving image in film, video and new media. It features curated surveys and retrospectives, a showcase for Los Angeles-area filmmakers and video artists, a special series of Monday night screenings and in-person presentations by influential international film and video artists. Emphasizing independent artistic and intellectual vision, this series combine fresh looks at classic independent films and videos with exciting new work by emerging artists.

September 27, 8 p.m.
BETZY BROMBERG: a DARKNESS SWALLOWED
USA, 2004, 16mm, 78 min., color. World premiere

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENING SERIES: a Darkness Swallowed is Los Angeles-based experimental filmmaker Betzy Bromberg's most abstract and most intimate work - and maybe her most beautiful in a list of films that have already shattered and expanded the viewer's conception of beauty. The camera sensually explores hues and textures that run from golden amber, reflected through murky waters and resin sculptures, to the light gray and pale green of subtle, Japanese-like compositions. A dark, brooding, richly patterned soundtrack (non-traditional percussion, processed sounds and instruments, a lone woman's voice) echoes the film's journey through a metaphorical, surreal landscape. Like a whisper, invisible traumas and imaginary memories haunt the cinematic space, sending the viewers back to their own swallowed darkness.

Betzy Bromberg, the Director of the Program in Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts, has been making experimental films since 1976. Her work has been shown extensively in the United States and Europe, most notably in the Sundance, Rotterdam, and Vancouver Film Festivals, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum, the Anthology Film Archives and the Harvard Film Archives.

Betzy Bromberg will be present at the screening.

Presented in collaboration with NewTown.

September 30, 8 p.m.
FULL SPECTRUM ANIMATION: CONFRONTING DEMONS
Curated by Myron Emery and Irene Kotlarz

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENING SERIES: In a special Thursday installment of the Monday night series, the Engel Animation Advancement Research Center--named after CalArts animation pioneer Jules Engel--offers a slate of animated shorts drawn from leading international festivals. The program is structured around the themes of personal struggle and forbidden desire in the context of a polarized, conflicted world. Films include:

• Paul Bush: Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (UK, 2001, 5 min., color)
• Ignacio Ferreras: Comment faire face à la mort (How to Cope with Death, UK, 2002, 4 min., color)
• Robert Morgan: The Cat with Hands (UK, 2001, 4 min., color)
• Phil Mulloy: Intolerance III--The Final Solution (UK/Germany, 2004, 25 min., color)
• Priit Pärn: Night of the Carrots (Estonia, 1998, 29 min., color)
• Koji Yamamura: Mountain Head (Japan, 2002, 10 min., color)
• Chris Landreth: Ryan (Canada, 2004 13:50)

October 1-3
FIC/CINÉ: LATIN AMERICAN FICTION INTO FILM

Latin American cinema has a long-standing love affair with literature, and some of its outstanding achievements have involved close collaboration between authors and film directors. "Fic/Ciné" features a combination of classic and contemporary films that interpret some of the most beloved literary works of the 19th and 20th centuries. Presented in collaboration with the Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to promoting and increasing the visibility of Latin American and Latino cinema. Co-sponsored by Bank of America, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Los Angeles County Arts Commission and The Walt Disney Company.

October 1, 8 p.m.
RAUL RUIZ: TRES TRISTES TIGRES
Chile, 1968, 35mm, 100 min., black and white

"Based on a melodramatic play by Alejandro Sieveking about the scheming of a group of lower middle class characters (including a brother who prostitutes his sister), Ruiz's first completed film was influenced by Nouvelle Vague models of decentered narrative and John Cassavetes' Shadows. An important theme is the everyday violence and moral cynicism typical of an alienated urban class who are neither proletarian nor part of Chile's Europeanized bourgeoisie. The film's temporal ambiguity, seeking to represent the suspended tempo of Chilean life, looks forward to Ruiz's later more stylized and cerebral projects."--Ian Christie

October 2, 2 p.m.
BUSI CORTES: EL SECRETO DE ROMELIA
Mexico, 1988, 35mm, 100 min., color

Busi Cortés worked as a journalist before transitioning into filmmaking in the 1970s. Cortés studied at the Mexican film school Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica-the training ground for other important feminist filmmakers such as Marisa Sistach and Gloria Ribé. In the words of film scholar Elissa J. Rashkin, "Cortés's adaptation of Mexican writer Rosario Castellano's 1964 short story 'El viudo Román' (published in English as 'The Widower Román') in El secreto de Romelia is a bold act of revision that, much like Matilde Landeta's La negra Angustias (1949), replaces a bleak, disturbing tale with a narrative that begins to imagine the possibility of healing and redemption." This story spans three generations of women and, while elaborating on a family history, comments on the social history of Mexico since the revolutionary years.

5:30 p.m.
ARTURO RIPSTEIN: I>EL IMPERIO DE LA FORTUNA
Mexico, 1985, 35mm, 130 min., color

"Arturo Ripstein's career spans three generations of filmmaking. His filmography includes 26 feature-length films to date and a score of short and medium-length projects, in narrative, experimental, and documentary genres. Ripstein's films irreverently work against the conventions of classic Mexican melodramas, focusing on desperately needy, vulnerable, jealous, ambitious, and self-destructive characters trapped in dysfunctional families and in impossible and doomed love. Since his first film, Tiempo de morir (1965), Ripstein has collaborated with leading Latin American literary 'boom' and 'post-boom' novelists and poets. Ripstein's work matured in his partnership with the screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego, who has written all his films since their collaboration began, including El imperio de la fortuna, a remake of the late ranchera (rural musical family melodrama) classic El gallo de oro." based on a work by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo]--Sergio de la Mora

8:30 p.m.
ADOLFO ARISTARAIN: ULTIMOS DIAS DE LA VICTIMA
Argentina, 1982, 35mm, 90 min., color

Adolfo Aristarain's masterful adaptation of the thriller by the novelist and political philosopher José Pablo Feinmann tells the story of the gentlemanly, middle-aged hit man Raúl Mendizábal (played by Federico Luppi), a character reminiscent of the laconic tough guys of Jean-Pierre Melville. As the paid assassin's curiosity about his employers and the intended victim slowly gets the best of him, his cool professionalism begins to crumble. Aristarain uses the gangster genre to portray a society that has lost its moral compass, where corruption is endemic and where anyone can be bought.

October 3, 4 p.m.
SILVIO CAIOZZI: CORONACION
Chile, 2000, 35mm, 140 min., color

Chilean filmmaker Silvio Caiozzi's relationship with José Donoso's writing began with the video Historia de un roble solo ("Story of a Lone Oak," 1982), an adaptation of one of the writer's stories. The two went on to write the script for La luna en el espejo ("The Moon in the Mirror," 1990), which Caiozzi directed and which collected a dozen international prizes (including the best actress award at the International Film Festival of Venice). In Coronación, Caiozzi's third adaptation of Donoso's work, Don Andrés, the elderly heir of the formerly wealthy Ábalos family, feels that he has uselessly dedicated his life to reading and searching for the reasons for existence. When he hires a 17-year-old farm girl to care for his senile grandmother, Don Andrés cannot conceal the dark, shameful desires he feels for the girl. His psychological breakdown is inevitable, along with the deterioration of the Ábalos mansion.

7:30 p.m.
HECTOR OLIVERA: NO HABRA MAS PENAS NI OLVIDO
Argentina, 1983, 35mm, 80 min., colorf

Héctor Olivera brings the political satire of the late novelist Osvaldo Soriano to the screen in this comic tale of civil strife and factionalism. As one group, claiming loyalty to the strongman Juan Perón, makes war on their former colleagues, another group of Peronistas joins them and the inhumanity and cruelty plummet to ever more depraved levels. A telling allegory for any and all wars, the motley assortment of imbeciles, drunks and sadists proclaim their loyalty to the nation and its heroes as they proceed to torture and murder one another with poisons and excrement.

October 4, 8 p.m.
JON JOST: SIX EASY PIECES
USA, 2000, DV, 68 min., color.

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENING SERIES: The celebrated director of All the Vermeers in New York, Frame Up and London Brief comes to REDCAT to screen Six Easy Pieces, a digital compilation of abstract meditations on architecture, ego and our fleeting place in history. According to Jost, the video essay is "a collection of shots and sequences that seemed to find themselves together by a kind of gravitational attraction. The work is intended as a kind of sampler of the potential aesthetic range of DV and consumer-level NLE [non-linear editing] systems."

Preceded by:

CHHATTISGARH SKETCHES
India/USA, 2004, DV, 78 min., color

In this loose travelogue, Jost allows his trained video eye to roam the colourful streets and landscapes of Chhattisgarh, a province in northeastern India. Images are sometimes slowed down to their most essential movement and the light and colours are often reduced to a single "stroke of watercolour."

Jon Jost will be present at the screening

October 11, 2-5:30 p.m. and 7:30-10:45 p.m.
KEN JACOBS: STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH
USA, 1957-59/2003, 16mm transferred to DV, 402 min., black and white/color. Los Angeles premiere

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENING SERIES: One of the most original and radical American filmmakers, Jacobs is known for work ranging from Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (1969) to the Nervous System live projection performances of the late 1990s. Star Spangled To Death is his magnum opus, "the ultimate underground film" according to J. Hoberman of The Village Voice. First begun in 1957 as a romp starring Jack Smith and Jerry Sims, the 6-hour-42-minute-long epic is a devastating, altogether mesmerizing critique of mainstream American culture as revealed through a cavalcade of found films salvaged from mid-20th-century dustbins. The film is a bracing corrective tonic to the unchallenged control of media in shaping our opinions and ideals. Jacobs describes it as "a social critique picturing a stolen and dangerously sold-out America, allowing examples of popular culture to self-indict." Star Spangled to Death was first shown to great acclaim at last year's New York and Rotterdam film festivals.

The Los Angeles premiere, screened in two parts in the afternoon and evening, is presented on the occasion of Indigenous Peoples Day.

October 18, 8 p.m.
KEN KOBLAND: BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS/THE ANGST ARCHIVE
USA, 2003, DV, 45 min., color. Los Angeles premiere

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENINGS SERIES: New York-based award-winning Ken Kobland has been making experimental films since the 1970s, and is also known for his multi-media collaboration with The Wooster Group. His new work, partially inspired by Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain is "a film about placelessness and Kobland's response to it -- to throw the net of his soul wide, wider, over everything. Always two steps ahead of the viewer, the filmmaker weaves together images and sounds that didn't seem to belong together before, resulting in a sprawling work that is part confession, part provocation and part meditation on technology consumption and spiritual death," writes Isaac Mathes in the Cinematexas Festival catalogue. Kobland describes the piece as "a rumination, a series of borrowed 'dialogues' out of an ongoing argument with myself... that uses landscapes as provocations, as sites of contemplation. And between the landscape and the thought, i.e. between the radical presence of the physical world and the idea there is, more often than not, a distance, disbelief or irony".

Kobland, who has has received awards and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation on the Arts, the D.A.A.D. Berliner Kunstprogramm, the International Center for Video Creation in Montbéliard, France, the Jerome Foundation, and the American Film Institute, will also screens a selection of earlier films and videos.

Ken Kobland will be present at the screening.

October 25, 8 p.m.
PHILLIP RODRIGUEZ: LOS ANGELES NOW
USA, 2004, DV, 60 min., color. World premiere

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENING SERIES: Phillip Rodriguez's documentary looks beyond Baywatch and Blade Runner to create a fresh, candid portrait of Los Angeles. Formerly an empty, bucolic space, the city has become a disorienting megalopolis. Once the whitest city in America, it is now the most multicultural urban center in the world, where more than half of the population is Latino and 40 percent are foreign born. Yet its cultural transformation has gone largely overlooked by the entertainment industry that continues to churn out outdated images. Rodriguez's film incorporates creative visuals and computer-generated imagery to evoke the many moods and rhythms of Los Angeles and includes interviews with Los Angeles residents such as radio host Renán Almendárez Coello, philanthropist Eli Broad, author Mike Davis, preservationist Jessica Hall-Valdés, actor Salma Hayek, cultural critic Norman Klein, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, hip-hop artist Medusa, historian Kevin Starr, and many others.

The film will be followed by a screening of Rodriguez's critically acclaimed documentary short, Mixed Feelings: San Diego/Tijuana (2002, 30 min) that explores the landscape and architecture between the U.S./Mexican border - making an innovative use of animation of architectural models, aerial photography, split screen and digital music.

Phillip Rodriguez will be present at the screening.

Presented in collaboration with the Independent Television Service, Latino Public Broadcasting, KCET and Loyola Marymount University.

October 31, 8 p.m.
ELECTION WEEK SPECIAL: WAR! PROTEST IN AMERICA,1965-2004

In the final run-up to the 2004 elections, Chrissie Iles of the Whitney Museum and Sam Durant of the CalArts School of Art are on hand to present a program of documentary and experimental films motivated by the political and social turbulence of the past 40 years--films engaged with civil rights, black power, personal liberation and political action. The program, which originates at the Whitney, includes work by by the New York and San Francisco Newsreels, Emile de Antonio, Peter Davis, Beryl Fox, Jean-Luc Godard, D.A. Pennebaker, Paul Sharits, Stan Brakhage and Carolee Schneemann, among others.

Films are also shown daily at the REDCAT Lobby from November 26 through the 31st. For information about presentations at the Whitney, which run through October 24, go to whitney.org.

November 1, 8 p.m.
YANG FUDONG: RECENT WORKS
Los Angeles premiere

JACK SKIRBALL SCREENING SERIES: One of the rising stars of the Chinese art world, the Shanghai-based photographer, film and installation artist, known for his moody, haunting black-and-white imagery, comes to REDCAT to present a program of recent works. Jane Perlez writes in The New York Times: "Part of the fascination surrounding Mr. Yang is founded on his place at the center of a digital whirlwind in China, where a new generation of artists have spurned the canvases of Mao-like heads. Instead, he is creating videos about personal feelings and anomie amid the warp-speed change in China." Yang's work includes films such as Estranged Paradise (China, 1997-2001, 35mm/video, 76 min., black and white), the first feature-length film released by a video artist in Shanghai, whose stunning aesthetics is influenced by Chinese painting; Liu Lan (2003m 35mm/video, 14 min, black and white); and Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Garden, a 5-part work-in-progress (planned to last up to 120 minutes) inspired by the gathering of talented intellectuals during the Wei and Jin dynasties.

Yang's work has been exhibited at Documenta 11 (Kassel), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Venice Biennale, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), among others; it is currently featured in the Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Renaissance Society (Chicago), the Liverpool Biennial and is included in the exhibition Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia at the San Diego Museum of Art, opening on November 6.

Yang Fudong will be present at the screening.

The screening at REDCAT is organized in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum, the San Diego Musuem of Art and ShanghART Gallery.

November 12-14
L.A. FREEWAVES FESTIVAL:HOW CAN YOU RESIST?

The ninth biennial edition of the internationally renowned festival of independent film, video and new media aims to engage the public's growing skepticism about commercial media and create a consensus for change beyond the outcome of the 2004 elections. Featuring more than 150 works, this year's festival expands its reach to include artists from Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, China and the Middle East in order to emphasize the interconnectedness of struggles taking place throughout the world.

Resistance has many incarnations in this year's festival. Some works take viewers on an intimate journey through addiction, sexuality, and suffering; while others challenge us to consider such politically-charged issues as security, paranoia, and moral culpability in a time of war.

Unlike previous Freewaves festivals, all of this year's events will be concentrated in downtown Los Angeles. We hope that by drawing attention to the local debate surrounding downtown's transformation, Freewaves can help people recognize the interconnectedness of struggles taking place throughout the world.

Programs are curated by a team that includes award-winning filmmaker Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself) of the CalArts School of Film/Video. In addition to the presentation at REDCAT, the festival, which runs from November 5 through the 27th, features weekend programs at MOCA at the Geffen Contemporary, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and various venues in Chinatown. For complete program and venue information, visit freewaves.org.

L.A. Freewaves is funded by the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, California Community Foundation, Getty Grant Program, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The James Irvine Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Pasadena Art Alliance and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

November 12, 7:30 p.m.
STRIP/TEASE
Curated by Douglas Chang

This program explores the process of layering in all of its paradoxical, obscuring, ambiguous and alluring manifestations. At a time when nakedness is coveted but nudity condemned; when WMD remain perpetually out of reach, hidden somewhere in a gaping desert of perhaps, the ultimate aphrodisiac may be the search for truth itself.

Featuring works by: Alinah Azadeh, Eliza Barrios, Caitlin Berrigan, Francois Bucher, James Duesing, Kristina Faragher, Kent Lambert, Annmarie Lanesey, Eric Saks, Alex Stikich and Tobias Tovera.

9:30 p.m.
THE POWER OF AMERICAN IMAGERY
Curated by Guillermina Zabala

Deconstructing America, decomposing America, deciphering America, decoding America, de-symbolizing America and re-editing America. Stereotypes, icons, symbols, idols, political figures, slogans, media and commercials play an intricate, dangerous, and often subliminal role in American life. What kind of information is battering at our collective consciousness? This group of artists experiments, both intellectually and mechanically, with various pieces of appropriated media and original footage, creating a unique and surreal look. The results suggest that manipulated video work may be more real than "reality."

Featuring works by: Thomas Aigelsreiter, Mark Boswell, Norman Cowie, John Davis, Jim Finn, GNN, Les LeVeque and Joon Soo Ha and Aaron Valdez.

November 13, 3 p.m.
A TASTE OF THE PAIN OF OTHERS
Curated by José Roca

Video cameras are no longer solely a tourist fixture; they have become so commonplace in both domestic and working environments that each and every aspect of our daily life is being documented in some way. In this context, the boundaries of "reality," "documentary," "historical fiction" and "sociological field work" have blurred, casting a veil of suspicion over all that we see: Are we witnessing something, or is it being staged for us? Does it make a difference? "A Taste of the Pain of Others" brings together works that simultaneously entice the viewer to delve into someone else's tragedy, while maintaining a degree of strangeness and/or repulsion.

Featuring works by: Brooke Alfaro, Monika Bravo, Juan Manuel Echavarría, Carlos Garaicoa and Iván Marino.

5 p.m.
INHERITANCE
Curated by Julie Lazar

"Inheritance" offers a mixed palette of programs imbued with bitter sweetness, humor, frustration, sadness and tragedy. As the stories unfold, we observe familiar connecting threads, obstructing knots, or irregularities among the characters that indicate how personal choices and acts can have effects on the larger socio-political circumstances of the world we share.

Featuring works by: Cynthia Greig and Richard H. Smith, Trevor Fife, Melinda Morey, Helena Muskens & Quinrine Racké, Ruth Pringle and Richard H. Smith.

7:30 p.m.
INTER-STATE: VIDEO ON THE GO
Directed by Juan Devis
Freewaves TV Premiere

After more than 15 years of media programming at art venues and on billboards, the Web and public TV, Freewaves opens up the black box.

Freewaves' new TV pilot follows four Los Angeles-based artists--Rubén Ochoa, Yoshua Okón, Rubén Ortiz-Torres and Jones Sanchez--as they negotiate and reimagine, from conception to realization, a unique vision of Los Angeles.

Familiar in its tone, Inter-State reveals how art practices, as much as any other profession, rely on instinct, personal histories and a persistent effort to understand what lies outside the artist's studio.

A reception, featuring the artists, director and crew, follows the screening.

10 p.m.
UNTITLED ENGAGEMENT
Curated by Bill Kelley Jr.

Earlier this year, in a series of not-so-coincidental events, above the raging glory of Super Bowl patriotic undercurrents, a black woman revealed her breast... and the genie of media stupidity was unleashed. The way we as Americans inconsistently engage with sexuality--our consent of Janet Jackson's lyrics, our outrage at her breast--reveals the true power of images and adds fuel to the fire of engagement.

Featuring works by: Brook Alfaro, Caitlin Berrigan, Enid Baxter Blader, Micaela O'Herlily, John Richey, Jacqueline Salloum, Jim Skuldt and Tobias Tovera.

November 14, 5 p.m.
OVER AND ABOVE
Curated by November Paynter

These video works investigate the way inhabitants of rapidly expanding cities use their built environment to their full potential in ingenious and often extreme ways. Repurposing of exploitative spaces change the way they are perceived, sliding them from insignificant to utopian. In these works, we view the creation of personal space as people appropriate their physical surroundings for purposes that are often at odds with original intentions of local authorities, builders, designers and residents.

Featuring works by: Can Altay, Atlas Group, Osman Bozkurt, Neutral and Solmaz Shahbazi.

7 p.m.
SECURITY BLANKET
Curated by Mike Blockstein

In "Security Blanket," moments that once were politically charged now seem innocent; time-honored anthems are turned on their heads; and the past is used to comment on an uncomfortable present. In an age of heightened security, these works question just what exactly constitutes personal and collective security.

Featuring works by: David Barker, Carola Dertnig, James Elaine & William Basinski, Bryan Konefsky, Kayo Nakamura, Jeroen Offerman, Aaron Valdez and Erika Yeomans.

9 p.m.
POSTCARDS
Curated by Thom Andersen

Jonathan Rosenbaum once wrote that a movie that mattered to him was like "a letter from a friend who lived far away but knew exactly what I was thinking." In this sense, these short films and videos are like postcards, records of journeys we are fortunate to receive.

Featuring works by: Anna Abrahams & Jan Frederik Groot, Bryan Boyce, Robert Frank, Gerard Holthuis, Eveline Ketterings, Nicolas Provost, Julie Speechley and Guido van der Werve.