Queer Filters: Legacies and Artifacts (Filtres queer: héritages et artifices) Festival International du Film d’Amiens (FIFAM) Curated by Matthias Smalbeen, Caroline Alonso, Etienne Commaux, Louise Camerlynck, and Victor Berquez November 11, 2022 https://www.fifam.fr/en/
We are a group of five students in our second year of a cinema master’s degree in the UPJV’s University in Amiens (France). We have the opportunity to be charged by the FIFAM (Festival International du Film d’Amiens) and by its artistic director, Marie-France Aubert, to organize a carte blanche during the festival. Our screening will take place on the 12th of November and takes part in a partnership between our University and the festival.
So, we got the idea to show three works that could create a visual history of lesbian and queer films and representations.
We would love to show to the public during the festival A Month of Single Frames by Lynne Sachs.
English translation of poster:
CARte blanche M2 Cinema, UPJV
Caroline Alonso, Victore Berquez, Louise Camerlynck, Etienne Commaux, Matthias SMalbeen
A Month of Single Frames and Les Démons de Dorothy Followed by a discussion with Alexis Langlois
Queer filters: Legacies and Artifices
A Month of Single Frames, Lynne Sachs
“Barbara Hammer, famous lesbian experimental filmmaker, begins her own dying process by revisiting her personal archives. She donates some of her images, sounds and writings to filmmaker and friend Lynne Sachs and invites her to direct her own film with this material.”
Dorothy’s Demons, Alexis Langlois
“Director Dorothy is unleashing on a script, when a call from her producer breaks the mood: enough queer comedies, it’s time to start making mainstream films! To avoid sinking into despair, Dorothy seeks solace in the Romy the Vampire Slayer series.”
SATURDAY November 12, 4.45 p.m., Orson Welles cinema as part of FIFAM
Original French text:
CARTe blanche M2 Cinéma, UPJV
Caroline Alonso, Victore Berquez, Louise Camerlynck, étienne Commaux, Matthias SMalbeen
A Month of single frames et Les démons de Dorothy Suivie d’une discussion avec Alexis Langlois
Filtres queer : héritages et artifices
A Month of Single Frames, Lynne Sachs
“Barbara Hammer, célèbre cinéaste expérimentale lesbienne, entame son propre processus de mort en revisitant ses archives personnelles. Elle donne une partie de ses images, de ses sons et de ses écrits à la cinéaste et amie Lynne Sachs et l’invite à réaliser son propre film avec ce matériel.”
Les démons de Dorothy, Alexis Langlois
“La réalisatrice Dorothy se défoule sur un scénario, lorsqu’un appel de son producteur casse l’ambiance : assez de comédies queer, il est temps de se mettre à faire des films grand public ! Pour ne pas sombrer dans le désespoir, Dorothy cherche du réconfort dans la série Romy the Vampire Slayer.”
SAMEDI 12 Novembre, 16h45, cinéma Orson Welles dans le cadre du FIFAM
For thirty seconds, look at but try not to read the front page of any newspaper you can find in your home or on-line. Then, write two lines of poetry. Next, shoot a thirty (30) second video of anything but this newspaper using your phone’s camera.
We will watch the video and listen to the poetry (LIVE! read by you in class) simultaneously.
Arash Azizi | HOLY SPIDER — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM Arash Azizi is a writer living in New York City. He is the author of the book, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US and Iran’s Global Ambitions (Oneworld, 2020.) His writings on cinema, politics and history have also appeared in numerous outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is a regular at film festivals around the world and has covered every Cannes film festival since 2016. He has also written and produced movies which can be found on his IMDB profile. Into Schrodinger’s Box, a film he co-write and co-produced, is available to watch on Fandor via Amazon.
Savita Iyer Ahrestani | Editor of the Penn Stater magazine — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM Savita Iyer Ahrestani is the senior editor of the Penn Stater magazine, Penn State University’s alumni magazine. Before joining the Penn Stater in 2017, she was a freelance journalist for 14 years, writing on a wide range of topics for magazines and websites including VOGUEIndia, Teen Vogue, Yahoo Life, SELF.com and Refinery 29’s U.K. edition. Born in Calcutta, India, Savita grew up in Geneva, Switzerland and has been living in State College for 10 years.
Elham Nasr | PSU post-doc, from Iran — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM Ellie Nasr has overcome lots of barriers to now be an international post-doctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University. Before coming to the US, despite all limitations for women, she was an independent entrepreneur in Iran, focusing on environmental education and facilitating the relationship between nature and modern society. She has always been interested in empowering young girls through nature-related experiences to make them competent to release from restrictive stereotypes for women in traditional societies.
Maryam Shahri | Instructor & researcher, PSU Dept of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, from Iran — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM An instructor and researcher with Penn State’s department of agricultural and biological engineering specializing in public sustainable behavior and sustainable governance.
Nargess Kaviani | Endocrinologist with Geisinger, from Iran — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM My name is Nargess Kaviani. I am born and raised in lran, in a secular family. After graduating from medical school with honors, l moved to US to pursue my postgraduate trainings. I did my residency and fellowship training in NY state and after completing my fellowship moved back to State College with my family and started my new job as an endocrinologist in Geisinger.
I am the CEO and founder of a nonprofit organization called MDSPS, Medical Doctor Suicide Prevention Services. I love art, outdoors, hiking, cooking, socializing with friends and family, as well as reading and writing.
Storai Jalali | Editorial Assistant, PennStater Magazine, from Afghanistan — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM A women’s rights activist who was working as assistant director for FRDO organization in Kabul, Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, she is a BBA Graduate from RANA university in Kabul, In April 2022 moved to State College with her husband and 2 kids, now working as Editorial Assistant for Penn State university (PennStater Magazine).
Toyosi Olanrewaju | Registered Nurse, from Nigeria — MON, OCT 31, 6:00PM As a Registered Nurse and experienced mental health professional with almost a decade of full-time work for the largest psychiatric hospital in Nigeria, Mrs. Olanrewaju also registered in 2019 to practice as a Mental Health Nurse in United Kingdom. She is currently United States Registered Nurse.
She started her education at the Oyo State College of Nursing and Midwifery, for her professional training in Nursing. Her passion for less privileged and underserved population motivated her to specialize in psychiatry/mental health nursing.
Thus, she chose to specialize in the field of psychiatry, and I proceeded to the School of Psychiatric Nursing, Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Aro-Abeokuta, Nigeria for her training in psychiatric/mental health nursing. Her quest for more knowledge also led her to University of Derby, United Kingdom where she earned a Bachelor of Nursing Sciences {BNSc} degree. She had several professional certificates, and she has attended conferences both at national and international level.
She is happily married with kids.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2022
Byron Hurt | HAZING — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, writer, lecturer, activist, Emmy-nominated TV show host, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Hurt is also a short video content creator for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Forward Promise program.
James Vivenzio | HAZING — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM
Dr. Stevan Veldkamp | Penn State’s Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM Dr. Stevan Veldkamp leads Penn State’s Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform – where he sets and implements a national research agenda collaborating with scholars here and nationwide on studies to eradicate hazing and hazardous behaviors, strengthen leadership education, and monitor the state of Greek life. With a career spanning three decades, Dr. Veldkamp has directly advised students in all Greek life traditions and is a frequent campus and headquarters consultant. A first-generation college student, Steve is a two-time graduate of Grand Valley State University and holds a doctoral degree from Indiana University in Higher Education and Student Affairs.
Tierra Williams | Vice President, State College Chapter, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority — TUE, NOV 1, 6:00PM Tierra D. Williams is a Mississippi Native hailing from Thee Jackson State University majoring in Speech Communication with a Theatre concentration. Tierra has always had a love for the arts, and throughout high school she participated in Speech & Debate, Poetry Out Loud, and acted in various plays. In college, she landed the lead role in the play RUINED by, Lynn Nottage, and was nominated to go to Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) in Roanoke, Virginia- where she placed as a semi-finalist. In March of 2022 she hosted the “Women’s Voices”, where she sang and danced as the MC. She is a Blacktivst and an Actorvist and is unapologetic about both, and uses her talent to address local and national issues. She moved to State College in 2018, where she got involved with plays written and directed by Charles Dumas. and poetry events led by Cynthia Mazzant or Elaine Medar-Wilgus. She also began her Vegan Bakery and sells goods at Webster’s Bookstore & Cafe. She received a grant from 3 Dots Downtown to start her own show “Black Tea” a community engagement show meant to spark dialogue around difficult conversations. With Pablo Lopez, filmmaker and creator of Dark Mind Productions, Tierra’s dream became reality. She then began hosting events for National Black Poetry Night, Politic & Poetry, and other workshops. Tierra is determined to make a space for Black Art on every stage, “By any means necessary.”
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2022
Bhawin Suchak | OUTTA THE MUCK — WED, NOV 2, 6:00PM An educator, filmmaker, and founding member/co-executive director of Youth FX, a media arts organization focused on empowering young people of color in Albany, NY and around the world by teaching them creative and technical skills in film and digital media.
Fritz Bitsoie | THE TRAILS BEFORE US — WED, NOV 2, 6:00PM Fritz Bitsoie is a Diné Director from Gallup, New Mexico and a graduate of the film program at the University of New Mexico. In his first short film, The Trails Before Us, Bitsoie aims to reclaim the Western film genre as a way to share contemporary stories about the Native American experience.
Lynne Sachs | SWERVE — WED, NOV 2, 6:00PM Sachs is an experimental filmmaker and poet based in Brooklyn. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in each new project.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2022
Art Johnston and Pep Peña | ART AND PEP — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM They are civil rights leaders whose life and love is a force behind LGBTQ+ equality in the heart of the country. Their iconic gay bar, Sidetrack, has helped fuel movements and create community for decades in Chicago. But, behind the business and their historic activism exists a love unlike any other.
Mercedes Kane | ART AND PEP — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM Mercedes Kane is forever fascinated by the human experience and the many ways to explore and express that experience. She most recently directed WHAT REMAINS: THE BURNING DOWN OF BLACK WALL STREET (director, 2021) about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
Martine N. Granby | NO SIREN LEFT BEHIND — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM Martine N. Granby is a nonfiction filmmaker, producer, video journalist, and an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut. She has worked as a documentarian, producer, editor, video journalist, and educator.
Shirin Barghi | NO SIREN LEFT BEHIND — THUR, NOV 3, 6:00PM Shirin Barghi is an Iranian journalist, audio producer and documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. She currently works as a Senior Producer for BRIC TV, where she covers issues of social justice, immigration, inequality and more.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2022
Mykyta Kozlov | KLONDIKE — FRI, NOV 4, 6:00PM After graduating from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Mykyta Kozlov started to work in the cultural industries, from GogolFest Contemporary Art Festival to Molodist Kyiv IFF, Odesa IFF and Toronto IFF. Eventually, he shifted to the production side working as 1st Assistant Director in commercials, TV series and films. In 2021, he started his career as a producer mainly focusing on creative documentaries.
Yuliya V. Ladygina | Assistant Professor of Slavic and Global & International Studies PSU — FRI, NOV 4, 6:00PM Yuliya V. Ladygina’s research in Eastern European literatures and cultures focuses on questions of cultural memory and cultural exchange. She is the author of Bridging East and West: Ol’ha Kobylians’ka, Ukraine’s Pioneering Modernist (2019), and she is currently working on her second book project, The Reel Story of the EuroMaidan and Russia’s War on Ukraine, which examines the post-2014 cycle of Ukrainian war films and their perspective on the hybrid nature of modern war and its mediatization. Before joining Penn State, Ladygina was a Research Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Williams College, and a Teaching Assistant Professor of Russian and Humanities at The University of the South (Sewanee).
Ido Glass | DEAD SEA GUARDIANS — FRI, NOV 4, 8:00PM Ido Glass is a graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem (1994).He has been creating, editing, writingscripts and working as a freelance director.He specializes in documentaries dealing with social, human and historical issues surrounding Israeli society.
Shaina Feinberg | MY MOM’S EGGPLANT SAUCE — FRI, NOV 4, 8:00PM Shaina Feinberg is a filmmaker from New York City. She specializes in micro-budget filmmaking. Her first film, The Babymooners, blends documentary and narrative fiction and was picked up for distribution by Screen Media.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2022
Arno Michaelis | REFUGE — SAT, NOV 5, 1:30PM Arno was a leader of a worldwide racist skinhead group and a lead singer of the hate-metal band Centurion, which is still popular with hate groups today. Single parenthood, love for his daughter, and the forgiveness shown by people he once hated all helped to turn Arno’s life around.
Mubin Shaikh | REFUGE — SAT, NOV 5, 1:30PM Mubin Shaikh is a deradicalized former extremist turned undercover human source for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and police agent with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET – Toronto).
Tierra Williams | The 3/20 Coalition — SAT, NOV 5, 1:30PM Tierra D. Williams is a Mississippi Native hailing from Thee Jackson State University majoring in Speech Communication with a Theatre concentration. Tierra has always had a love for the arts, and throughout high school she participated in Speech & Debate, Poetry Out Loud, and acted in various plays. In college, she landed the lead role in the play RUINED by, Lynn Nottage, and was nominated to go to Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) in Roanoke, Virginia- where she placed as a semi-finalist. In March of 2022 she hosted the “Women’s Voices”, where she sang and danced as the MC. She is a Blacktivst and an Actorvist and is unapologetic about both, and uses her talent to address local and national issues. She moved to State College in 2018, where she got involved with plays written and directed by Charles Dumas. and poetry events led by Cynthia Mazzant or Elaine Medar-Wilgus. She also began her Vegan Bakery and sells goods at Webster’s Bookstore & Cafe. She received a grant from 3 Dots Downtown to start her own show “Black Tea” a community engagement show meant to spark dialogue around difficult conversations. With Pablo Lopez, filmmaker and creator of Dark Mind Productions, Tierra’s dream became reality. She then began hosting events for National Black Poetry Night, Politic & Poetry, and other workshops. Tierra is determined to make a space for Black Art on every stage, “By any means necessary.”
Shaheen Pasha | assistant teaching professor of journalism, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications — SAT, NOV 5, 3:30PM Shaheen Pasha, an assistant teaching professor at Penn State, is a co-founder and co-executive of an initiative called the Prison Journalism Project. The non-profit organization gives a voice to people behind bars who want to learn and share their experiences from inside their cells.
Divine Lipscomb | State College Borough Council member — SAT, NOV 5, 3:30PM “I am a native New Yorker. Born, bred, fed,” says Divine Lipscomb. Recalling his childhood in Brooklyn, he sees a kid “buried in trauma,” struggling with addiction, and who was a “prime candidate” for gang membership. By age 16, he had two felony arrests for armed robbery and was sentenced to four years in state prison — 15 months of which he spent in solitary confinement. Not surprisingly, reentry into society was difficult: “You come home the same age you were when you went in. So, mentally I was 16 when I came home — in a grown man’s body.”
After his release, despite setbacks and relapses, he found success as an entrepreneur. The self-sufficiency and freedom he felt inspired his vision for Corrective Gentlemen, Divine’s non-profit organization. Its mission is to provide support and mentoring for returned citizens, a term Divine prefers to “former inmate.” He also returned to school. At Penn State, Divine is a rehabilitation and human services major and works as the special projects coordinator for PSU’s Restorative Justice Initiative. In addition, he volunteers at the local drop-in shelter to support returning citizens and is active in organizations that allow his experience to lend a voice to the unheard. In 2020, his academic achievements and advocacy were honored: Divine was awarded PSU’s 2020 “Outstanding Adult Learners Award” and the Rock Ethics Institute’s 2020 “Stand Up Award”.
Today, Divine wears many hats: student, husband, father, advocate, entrepreneur, public speaker, board member, volunteer, teacher, executive director, and returned citizen. He has his eye on law school and hopes to one day sit in public office.
Keith Wasserman | DEAR ANI — SAT, NOV 5, 6:00PM For twenty years Keith Wasserman has made and delivered elaborate art mail packages-all in the hopes of befriending his muse. Dear Ani explores what can happen when you present your truest self, and risk total failure. It is an intimate account of psychotic mania, personal mastery, and creative triumph.
Micah Levin | DEAR ANI — SAT, NOV 5, 6:00PM In 2006, Micah founded the creative content studio, Movie Magic Media, where he and Keith have collaborated on dozens of short films, music videos and feature films. Together they made their Tribeca Film Festival debut in 2015 with the climate themed sci-fi short film, Grow.
Emily, Tom, and Kari Whitehead | OF MEDICINE AND MIRACLES — SAT, NOV 5, 6:00PM Tom Whitehead, Kari Whitehead, and their daughter Emily are founders of the Emily Whitehead Foundation, which raises funds and awareness for pediatric cancer immunotherapy research.
Justin Zimmerman | SOLDIER, NOV 5, 8:00PM Justin Zimmerman, MFA in Film, is a nationally recognized comic writer, director and professor. His narrative and documentary work has appeared in over 200 film festivals across the globe and has been broadcast on national public television, where he won two international television awards. He’s also been the recipient of multiple grants and fellowships, he contributed a story to the Eisner Award-winning graphic novel Love Is Love, and his script and comic creations have been optioned on multiple occasions. You can see more of Zimmerman’s personal work at his website: www.brickerdown.com.
Tierra Williams | Former US Army Reserver — SAT, NOV 5, 8:00PM Tierra D. Williams is a Mississippi Native hailing from Thee Jackson State University majoring in Speech Communication with a Theatre concentration. Tierra has always had a love for the arts, and throughout high school she participated in Speech & Debate, Poetry Out Loud, and acted in various plays. In college, she landed the lead role in the play RUINED by, Lynn Nottage, and was nominated to go to Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) in Roanoke, Virginia- where she placed as a semi-finalist. In March of 2022 she hosted the “Women’s Voices”, where she sang and danced as the MC. She is a Blacktivst and an Actorvist and is unapologetic about both, and uses her talent to address local and national issues. She moved to State College in 2018, where she got involved with plays written and directed by Charles Dumas. and poetry events led by Cynthia Mazzant or Elaine Medar-Wilgus. She also began her Vegan Bakery and sells goods at Webster’s Bookstore & Cafe. She received a grant from 3 Dots Downtown to start her own show “Black Tea” a community engagement show meant to spark dialogue around difficult conversations. With Pablo Lopez, filmmaker and creator of Dark Mind Productions, Tierra’s dream became reality. She then began hosting events for National Black Poetry Night, Politic & Poetry, and other workshops. Tierra is determined to make a space for Black Art on every stage, “By any means necessary.”
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2022
Carleen Maur | TRACES — SUN, NOV 6, 11:00AM Carleen Maur is an experimental filmmaker living and working in Columbia, SC where she teaches at the University of South Carolina. She received her MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Iowa in 2017. Her work focuses on hybrid methods of both film and video that examine the intersections between gender, sexuality and camouflage.
Matt Whitman | THAT WAS WHEN I THOUGHT I COULD HEAR YOU — SUN, NOV 6, 11:00AM Matt Whitman (b. West Chester, PA) works with 16mm and Super8 motion picture film. His work has recently screened at the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS 2022, the 2022 Chicago Underground Film Festival, the 2022 Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, the 2022 Prismatic Ground Festival at Maysles Documentary Center, the 2022 Athens International Film and Video Festival, Fracto Experimental Film Encounter in Berlin, the Suspaustas Laikas traveling festival in cities across Lithuania, and at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York.
He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, currently films much of his work in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and has taught at Parsons School of Design since 2014.
Crystal Z Campbell | FLIGHT — SUN, NOV 6, 11:00AM Crystal Z Campbell (they/them), a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts, is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descents. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s recent works use underloved archival material to consider historical gaps in the narrative of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, revisit questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks’ “immortal” cell line, ponder the role of a political monument and displacement in a Swedish coastal landscape, and salvage a 35mm film from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn as a relic of gentrification.
A featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar programmed by Almudena Escobar López and Sky Hopinka. Campbell’s films and art have screened and exhibited internationally: MIT List Visual Arts Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, The Drawing Center, Nest, ICA-Philadelphia, Museum of Modern Art, BLOCK Museum, REDCAT, Artissima, Studio Museum of Harlem, Bemis, Project Row Houses, SculptureCenter, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, amongst others.
Honors and awards include a 2022 Creative Capital Award, Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center & David and Roberta Logie Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, Franklin Furnace, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and Black Spatial Relics.
Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, and Hyperallergic. Founder of the virtual programming platform archiveacts.com, Campbell is currently a Visiting Associate Professor in Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo. Campbell lives and works in New York & Oklahoma.
Berndt Mader | CHOP & STEELE — SUN, NOV 6, 1:00PM Berndt Mader is an Emmy Award winning film, television and commercial director. He has directed the feature films, Booger Red (2016) and Five Time Champion (2011). In 2021 Mader co-directed a television series for Discovery+ based on his film, Booger Red. In 2022, the comedy documentary he co-directed, Chop & Steele, premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. He is a co-founder of the Austin based production company, The Bear. Xander Chauncey | THE MOLOK — SUN, NOV 6, 1:00PM Chauncey’s career in the arts has spanned more than 20 years. He works as a writer, director, producer, actor, singer & dancer. No matter his role, Xander is a passionate storyteller and approaches the material from the inside out; connecting the emotional truth of the piece to his audience in every moment. Jorge
Antonio Guerrero | WE ARE LIVING THINGS — SUN, NOV 6, 3:00PM Jorge Antonio Guerrero (born June 28 1993) is a Mexican actor. He is most noted for his performance as Fermín in the 2018 film Roma, for which he was an Ariel Award nominee for Best Supporting Actor at the 61st Ariel Awards in 2019.
He has also appeared in the television series Luis Miguel: The Series, Narcos: Mexico, Crime Diaries: The Candidate, Sitiados: México and Hernán, and in the film Drunken Birds (Les Oiseaux Ivres). He received a Vancouver Film Critics Circle nomination for Best Actor in a Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2021, and a Prix Iris nomination for Revelation of the Year at the 24th Quebec Cinema Awards in 2022, for Drunken Birds.
Andrew Li | WE ARE LIVING THINGS — SUN, NOV 6, 3:00PM Andrew K. Li is a filmmaker based in New York. A graduate of the MFA Film Program from Columbia University, his student film was shortlisted for a BAFTA nomination and films he produced have screened at festivals around the world including official selection at Cannes, SXSW, Deauville and Toronto IFF. He and his work have received fellowships from Producers Guild of America, EAVE, and IFP. Currently, he’s in production on Pet Shop Boys and developing feature film projects.
Nic Natalicchio | WATCHING THE WILDS — SUN, NOV 6, 3:00PM Professional filmmaker with over a decade of hands-on experience across multiple industries. He currently teaches in the Department of Cinema & Television at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. His debut short documentary film, The Tides That Bind, screened at over 25 festivals and won numerous awards.
Centre Film Festival – Pearl Gluck Director, Lynne, Fritz Bitsoie, Bhawan Sushak with host John Curley State College, Pennsylvania
They’ve got catfish on the table They’ve got Ghostwatch in the air
Hello! Thank you for signing up to, or stumbling on, this no-news-newsletter written by me, Ashley Clark. If you do choose to subscribe—and it’s free—you’ll receive bulletins about whatever’s on my mind: usually some combination of art/film/music/literature/football. If that sounds good, hit the button!
This week’s quick rec is “Freedom Flight”, the closing track from the 1971 LP of the same name by the American musician Shuggie Otis. Otis, who is of African American, Filipino, and Greek descent, is probably best known for his song “Strawberry Letter 23” which, as recorded by The Brothers Johnson and produced by Quincy Jones, was a big chart hit in 1977, and later featured on the score for Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997).
Anyway, “Freedom Flight” is wonderful: a near 13 minute instrumental soundscape of pealing horns, chiming guitars, and delicate, melodic bass noodling (my favorite kind.) I must confess I have no idea whether the songs’s title is inspired by the real-life so-called Freedom Flights (Los vuelos de la libertad) that transported Cubans to Miami in large numbers between 1965 to 1973, but either way, it’s a monumentally transporting and relaxing piece of music, and I’ve been listening to it a lot.
I had a very nice time at last week’s Indie Memphis film festival, which was celebrating its 25th edition. Highlights of my visit included a screening of Benjamin Christensen’s berserk witchcraft horror/essay film/comedy Häxan (1922) featuring a live, theremin-fueled, and curiously (but somehow appropriately) smooth-jazzy score; the good vibes/sounds/eats of the Black Creators Forum brunch; and the privilege of serving on the Departures (experimental/avant-garde film) jury alongside two people I greatly admire: writer/scholar Yasmina Price; and critic/filmmaker Blair McClendon. We handed out three awards: short film to Maya at 24by Lynne Sachs, mid-length film to Civicby Dwayne LeBlanc, and feature film to Cette Maison (This House)by Miryam Charles. We loved all three, and I would suggest keeping an eye out to catch any of them when and where you can.
If I’m being honest, though, my real high point of Indie Memphis was attending a rather unexpected late night screening of the television special Ghostwatch, a true oddity which was broadcast once on BBC1, on Halloween night of 1992… and never again.
Indie Memphis managing director Joseph Carr told me before the screening that he stumbled across Ghostwatch on streaming service Shudder a few years back, and was so shaken that he felt the need to share it with a wider audience. It also didn’t hurt that this year marked the thirtieth anniversary of its first and only broadcast. I’d read about the show in the past, and vaguely recall it airing at the time, but I hadn’t actually seen it until last week. I found it to be a staggeringly effective piece of television: intelligent, technically astonishing, and genuinely haunting. I’ve been turning it over in my mind since.
Now, there’s a reason why I’ve been so absurdly vague about what Ghostwatch actually is, and that’s because I think this is one of those rare occasions where, even thirty years after the fact, a spoiler alert is justified, and coming to it completely cold—opening yourself up to the world it creates, and imagining that you had tuned into that initial broadcast moments after the BBC announcer had cued up the show with some context—could be beneficial to your viewing experience.
That said, there’s plenty of information about the backstory, intent and legacy of Ghostwatch freely available online, and you’re welcome to look it up if you’re someone who prefers to have a little bit of foreknowledge. I assume my British readers are likely to be much more familiar with the show and its milieu than my American and other international readers. After you’ve watched, you may wish to check out this entertaining and informative episode of the “Criminal” podcast about the show (thank you to artist Onyeka Igwe for flagging that one for me!) And it’s also out on Blu-ray soon, too.
If you do check out Ghostwatch, let me know what you think, and if you saw it at the time it was first broadcast, I’d love to know what the experience was like. Until next week!
Mark Alice Durant Presents Maya Deren: Choreographed for Camera with Lynne Sachs, David Levi Strauss, and Laura Valenza
Thursday November 10th 7pm
McNally Jackson Seaport
RSVP Required — see below
Drama and myth frame the life and death of Maya Deren. Born in Kiev in 1917, at the start of the Russian Revolution, she died forty-four years later in New York City. In her brief life, she established herself as a pioneering experimental filmmaker, prolific writer, accomplished photographer, and crusader for a personal and poetic cinema. With its dreamy circular narrative and enigmatic imagery, her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), has inspired generations of artists, filmmakers, and poets. Deren collaborated with numerous mid-century cultural luminaries, including Katherine Dunham, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Anais Nin, and Gregory Bateson. In 1953, she published Divine Horsemen, a ground-breaking ethnographic study of Haitian religious culture. Although Deren completed only six short films in her lifetime, her impact on the history of cinema is immeasurable. She has become the patron saint of 20th century experimental film. The aura that suffuses Deren’s legend emanates from the power of her films, magnified by her bohemian glamour and visionary intelligence.
This is the first full biography of Deren. Based on years of research, interviews with some of Deren’s closest collaborators, and generously illustrated with film stills and photographs, author Mark Alice Durant creates a vivid and accessible narrative exploring the complexities and contradictions in the life and work of this remarkable and charismatic artist.
We recommend that guests wear masks on the night.
Mark Alice Durant is an artist and writer living in Baltimore. He is author of Maya Deren, Choreographed for Camera, 27 Contexts: An Anecdotal History in Photography, and co-author of Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology, and the Paranormal. His essays have appeared in numerous journals such as Aperture, Art in America, Photograph Magazine, Dear Dave, and many catalogs, monographs, and anthologies including Rania Matar: She, Seeing Science: How Photography Reveals the Universe, and Vik Muniz Seeing is Believing. He teaches in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Maryland and is publisher / editor of Saint Lucy Books.
Lynne Sachs is a filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn. Her work explores the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. Lynne embraces hybrid forms in her essay films, experimental documentaries, and performances. With each project, she investigates the connection between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself. Recently, Tender Buttons Press published Lynne’s book Year by Year Poems.
David Levi Strauss is the author of Co-illusion: Dispatches from the End of Communication (MIT Press, 2020); Photography and Belief (David Zwirner Books, 2020, and in an Italian edition by Johan & Levi, 2021); Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow (Aperture, 2014); In Case Something Different Happens in the Future: Joseph Beuys and 9/11 (Documenta 13, 2012); From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010), Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, with an introduction by John Berger (Aperture, 2003, 2012 and in an Italian edition by Postmedia Books, 2007) and Between Dog & Wolf: Essays on Art and Politics (Autonomedia, 1999 and 2010). From 2007–21, Strauss directed the graduate program in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts, New York, US.
Laura Valenza is a film editor at the Brooklyn Rail. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming at Literary Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Coast, and Cream City Review.
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A Reality Between Words and Images: Films by Lynne Sachs
At the center of Lynne Sachs’s short film Task of the Translator (2010), a group of classics scholars are translating a contemporary New York Times article about Iraqi burial rituals into Latin. Sachs’s intimate camera probes the faces and scribbling hands of the instructor and her students as they wring the right words out of each other (cadaver for dead body, vestigia for footsteps, but aegritudo for grief? Maybe luctus instead.). Sachs uses sound poignantly—fading and layering the scholars’ suggestions, affirmations, and nervous laughter so that the exercise feels arduous and drawn out. As form changes, can meaning remain? It’s a question for translators and experimental filmmakers.
Task of the Translator is one of six films in “A Reality Between Words and Images: Films by Lynne Sachs,” a program screening at e-flux Screening Room. Though not explicitly about translation, a number of the other films in the program deal with how meaning is communicated and what can stand in the way of its conveyance. In The House of Science: A Museum of False Facts (1991), Sachs explores the representation of women in science and art through a collage of home movies, original narration, and found footage and audio. Detailing misconceptions, humiliations, private rituals, and even a bit of wry humor, the film showcases how the changing female body is willfully denied understanding in a patriarchal society.
Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam (1994) is a diaristic travel film that switches between the perspective of Sachs, a brief visitor to Vietnam, and that of her sister Dana, who has been in the country for a year. Sachs layers gorgeous footage she shot on a northward trek from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi with poetic narration and subtitled conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends. Sachs initially tries to make sense of Vietnam through an understanding of the war. But as the film and her trip wears on, and Dana’s more nuanced observations take over the narration (including a moving anecdote about the region’s seasonal fruit cycle), Sachs develops a meaningful account of experiencing a place as it is.
In Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor (2018), Sachs visits a trio of filmmakers in their own spaces: Carolee Schneeman in her 18th-century farmhouse, Barbara Hammer in her New York studio, and Gunvor Nelson in her childhood village in Sweden. Through these brief portraits, Sachs communicates something essential about these artists (Hammer’s boundless energy, for instance) and how their personalities influence the language of their cameras.
In contrast to much of the other work in the program, Window Work (2000) feels purely experiential. Shot on video, a woman sits near her window, drinking tea, reading the paper, cleaning. Passages of time elapse in idleness without narration; instead the sounds of running water, a child playing, and a passing jet drone on. Two boxes dot the video image, hurling abstracted images onto the screen—taken from celluloid home movies. Though Window Work features two distinct film languages, it resists translating between them; it doesn’t attempt to parse out a mode of communication. Daylight beats on the window, and its glass becomes a mirror. In its iridescent reflection, the viewer understands solitude, reminiscence, the heat of the sun she’s felt before wherever she is.
“A Reality Between Words and Images: Films by Lynne Sachs” screens tonight, October 27, at e-flux Screening Room as part of the series “Revisiting Feminist Moving Image.” Filmmaker Lynne Sachs and her collaborators Kristine Leschper and Kim Wilberforce will be in attendance for a conversation.
Francis X. Clines of The New York Times described the film as “a documentary about the protest events that made Catonsville, Maryland, an unpretentious suburb on the cusp of Baltimore, a flash point for citizens’ resistance at the height of the war. . . . Sachs found assorted characters still firm to fiery on the topic. She came to admire the consistency of the mutual antagonists in an argument that still rages (today).”[1] Michael O’Sullivan of The Washington Post wrote that Sachs “uses a mosaic technique and seemingly random shots of plants and houses to create a moody, subjective portrait of an era as much as a group of people.”[2] Molly Marsh of Sojourners magazine called the film “wonderfully intimate; Sachs brings the camera within inches of her subjects’ faces, capturing their thoughtful reminisces and personal regrets.[3] Fred Camper of the Chicago Reader called it a “poetic essay” with “no omniscient narrator talking down to the viewer . . . while “images like a newspaper going in and out of focus remind us that shifting contexts alter our understanding of complex events.”[4]
Lee Gardner of the Baltimore City Paper wrote that “Sachs cannily avoids the usual documentary dance of talking heads and file footage by interspersing impressionistic shots. (The film) provides a potent reminder that some Americans are willing to pay a heavy price to promote peace.”[5]
The annual film festival honors the best of their 25th anniversary year.
The 25th Indie Memphis Film Festival concluded last Monday with a film that made a case for the importance of the 1970 Blaxploitation wave, and a film that proved its point. Is That Black Enough For You? is the first movie by Elvis Mitchell, a former New York Times film critic and cinema scholar turned documentary director. Mitchell traced the history of Black representation in film from the era of silent “race” pictures and D.W. Griffith’s pro-KKK, proto-blockbuster Birth of a Nation through the foreshortened careers of Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge to the wave of low-budget, Black-led gangster, adventure, and fantasy films which started in the late 1960s and crested with The Wiz. Films like Superfly and Coffy, Mitchell argues in his voluminous voice-over narration, presented the kinds of rousing heroes that attracted film-goers while the New Hollywood movement presented visions of angst-filled antiheroes.
Blaxploitation films also introduced a new kind of music to films and the concept of the soundtrack album, which was often released before the movie itself in order to drum up interest. The prime example was Shaft, which featured an Academy Award-winning soundtrack by Isaac Hayes. Mitchell introduced the classic with Willie Hall, the Memphis drummer who recorded the immortal hi-hat rhythm that kicks off Hayes’ theme song. Mitchell revealed in Is That Black Enough For You? that Hayes had been inspired by Sergio Leone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West, and the score he penned for Shaft still holds up, providing much of the detective film’s throbbing propulsion.
The winners of the competitive portion of the 2022 film festival were announced at a hilariously irreverent awards ceremony Saturday evening at Playhouse on the Square. After a two-year hiatus, Savannah Bearden returned to produce the awards, which were “hosted” by Birdy, the tiny red metal mockingbird which has served as the film festival’s mascot for years. But amidst the nonstop jokes and spoof videos, there were genuinely touching moments, such as when Craig Brewer surprised art director and cameraperson Sallie Sabbatini with the Indie Award, which is given to outstanding Memphis film artisans, and when former Executive Director Ryan Watt was ambushed with the Vision Award.
The Best Narrative Feature award went to Our Father, the Devil, an African immigrant story directed by Ellie Foumbi. Kit Zauhar’s Actual People won the Duncan Williams Best Screenplay Award. The Documentary Feature award went to Reed Harkness for Sam Now, a portrait of the director’s brother that has been in production for the entire 25 years that Indie Memphis has been in existence.
The Best Hometowner Feature award, which honors films made in Memphis, went to Jack Lofton’s The ’Vous, a moving portrait of the people who make The Rendezvous a world-famous icon of Memphis barbecue. (“We voted with our stomachs,” said jury member Larry Karaszewski.) The Best Hometowner Narrative Short went to “Nordo” by Kyle Taubken, about a wife anxiously waiting for her husband to return from Afghanistan. Lauren Ready earned her second Indie Memphis Hometowner Documentary award for her short film “What We’ll Never Know.”
In the Departures category, which includes experimental, genre, and out-of-the-box creations, This House by Miryam Charles won Best Feature. (This House also won the poster design contest.) “Maya at 24” by legendary Memphis doc director Lynne Sachs won the Shorts competition, and “Civic” by Dwayne LeBlanc took home the first trophy in a new Mid-Length subcategory.
Sounds, the festival’s long-running music film series, awarded Best Feature to Kumina Queen by Nyasha Laing. The music video awards were won by the stop-motion animated “Vacant Spaces” by Joe Baughman; “Don’t Come Home” by Emily Rooker triumphed in the crowded Hometowner category.
Best Narrative Short went to “Sugar Glass Bottle” by Neo Sora, and Best Documentary Short went to “The Body Is a House of Familiar Rooms” by Eloise Sherrid and Lauryn Welch.
Some of the Special Awards date back to the origin of the festival in 1998, such as the Soul of Southern Film Award, which was taken by Ira McKinley and Bhawin Suchak’s documentary Outta The Muck. The Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award went to Me Little Me by Elizabeth Ayiku. The Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award went to Eric Younger’s Very Rare.
The IndieGrants program, which awards $15,000 in cash and donations to create short films, picked Anna Cai’s “Bluff City Chinese” and A.D. Smith’s “R.E.G.G.I.N.” out of 46 proposals submitted by Memphis filmmakers.
The 25th Annual Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2022 Award-Winners, Including Ellie Foumbi’s Best Narrative Feature OUR FATHER, THE DEVIL and Reed Harkness’ Best Documentary Feature SAM NOW
Indie Memphis Film Festival, presented by Duncan-Williams, Inc. and Duncan Williams Asset Management, is pleased to announce this year’s award-winners. The awards show, sponsored by Eventive, was held in-person in Memphis, as well as online, on the evening of October 22th. The awards were presented by festival staff, as well as members of the awards juries. The 2022 festival screened over 184 feature films, shorts, and music videos, with most screenings followed by in-person filmmaker Q&As.
Jury Award highlights include Best Narrative Feature for OUR FATHER, THE DEVIL (Dir. Ellie Foumbi, $1K cash prize), Best Documentary Feature for SAM NOW (Dir. Reed Harkness, $1K cash prize), Best Hometowner Feature for THE ‘VOUS (Dir. Jack Lofton’s, $1K cash prize – World Premiere), Best Departures Feature for THIS HOUSE (CETTE MAISON) (Dir. Miryam Charles, $500 cash prize), and Best Sounds Feature for KUMINA QUEEN (Dir. Nyasha Laing, $500 cash prize), among others.
The festival also awarded two yet-to-be-produced short films with Indie Grant prizes: “Bluff City Chinese” (Dir. Anna Cai) and “R.E.G.G.I.N.” (Dir. A.D. Smith). These films from Memphis-based filmmakers were chosen by a jury and were each awarded with $39K; grant support comprised of $15K cash provided by sponsor Mark Jones and $24K of cash-equivalent rentals and donations provided by sponsors Firefly Grip & Electric, LensRentals, Music + Arts Studio, and VIA. Three winners will each receive grant packages worth $13K.
The Festival Awards, decided by Indie Memphis Festival staff, include the Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award for ME LITTLE ME (Dir. Elizabeth Ayiku) and the Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award for VERY RARE (Dir. Eric Younger – World Premiere), among others.
Audience Awards will be announced following the festival.
2022 Indie Memphis Film Festival Jury & Festival Award-Winners
Winners by Category
JURY AWARDS
Narrative Features Awarded by Jury Members Marlowe Granados, Doreen St. Félix
Best Narrative Feature, OUR FATHER, THE DEVIL (Dir. Ellie Foumbi) – $1K Cash Prize
Duncan Williams Best Screenplay Award, ACTUAL PEOPLE (Dir. Kit Zauhar) – $1K Cash Prize, sponsored by Duncan Williams, Inc.
Documentary Features Awarded by Jury Members Brooke Marine, Tara Violet Niami, Tchaiko Omawale; Sponsored by Classic American Hardwoods
Best Documentary Feature, SAM NOW (Dir. Reed Harkness) – $1K Cash Prize
Special Jury Mention for Revolutionary Cinema, SILENT BEAUTY (Dir. Jasmin Mara López)
Special Jury Mention for Transcendent Cinema, OUTTA THE MUCK (Dir. Ira McKinley, Bhawin Suchak)
Hometowner Awarded by Jury Members Jessica Chriesman, Brandon Harris, Larry Karaszewski; Sponsored by Tennessee Entertainment Commission
Best Hometowner Feature, THE ‘VOUS (Dir. Jack Lofton) – $1K Cash Prize
Best Documentary Short, “The Body is a House of Familiar Rooms” by Eloise Sherrid + Lauryn Welch – $500 Cash Prize
IndieGrants Awarded by Jury Members Mandy Marcus, Soraya McDonald, Maria Santos; Sponsored by Mark Jones with rentals and donations provided by Firefly Grip & Electric, LensRentals, Music + Arts Studio, and VIA.
“Bluff City Chinese” (Dir. Anna Cai)- $15K Grant ($7.5K cash, $7.5K In-Kind Filmmaking Services)
“R.E.G.G.I.N.” (Dir. A.D. Smith) – $15K Grant ($7.5K cash, $7.5K In-Kind Filmmaking Services)
Poster Design Awarded by Jury Members Brittney Boyd Bullock, Coe Lapossy, Mia Saine
THIS HOUSE (CETTE MAISON) (Dir. Miryam Charles)
FESTIVAL AWARDS
Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking
ME LITTLE ME (Dir. Elizabeth Ayiku)
Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker
VERY RARE (Dir. Eric Younger)
Soul of Southern Film Award
OUTTA THE MUCK by (Dir. Ira McKinley, Bhawin Suchak)
Diovanna, a dancer realizes her transfemme identity through a choreographic journey of self-discovery, celebration, and the poetic metaphor of a flower coming to bloom.
Producer:Susan O’Brien, Elizabeth Raia, Giselle Byrd, Margaret Montavon
FREE NOIR PAPILLON
A short dance film about a mother’s relationship to her pregnancy, as she deals with fear and hope about bringing a black baby boy into the world in 2020.
Pandrog is an exploration of the subversiveness of the gender binary within the confines of Blackness. It is about Black people escaping the terms and identities created by western imperialism.
May We Know Our Own Strength’ is an abstract and expressionistic narrative document centered around artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s similarly-titled piece exploring collective healing after sexual assault within AAPI communities, created tragically in the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings. In the spirit of the installation itself, ‘May We Know Our Own Strength’ recreates the process of trauma, the hurdles of healing, and the strength that can be found in sharing and community.
A voice creates a meditative portrait of two tropical landscapes-separated by 100 miles of ocean-and two men dancing at twilight; the distance of their bodies both measured and infinite.
Lynne Sachs films her daughter Maya at 6, 16 and 24. At each iteration, Maya runs around her mother, in a circle – clockwise – as if propelling herself in the same direction as time, forward.
Ad meliora, or “towards better things” combines hundreds of separate images that create a deep meditation on being, creativity and nature; a mandala of forms that becomes highly symbolic of life, death, yesterday, now, and the next moment. Flowers, plants and textures were photographed in places such as nature conservatories, cultivated gardens, vacant properties and parking lots. The familiar landscape appears molten, luminous and renewed. Ad meliora is suggestive of adaptation, resilience and transformation.
