Genres: Art Duration: 57 minutes Subtitles: English Availability: Worldwide
This round-up of recent additions to the Canyon Cinema catalog includes a mix of new titles in distribution, new artists now represented by Canyon, and new digitizations.
Featuring films and videos by: Malic Amalya, Sandra Davis, Lawrence Jordan, Lynne Sachs, Rajee Samarasinghe, Barry Spinello, Paige Taul, and Al Wong
Lynne Sachs’ FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (US/Documentary) Review by Kat Sachs Monday, 6pm
In Horace’s Odes, one among many texts where this sentiment endures, the Roman poet wrote, “For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer.” It’s hardly an esoteric dictum, but nevertheless it’s duly reflected in experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ wholehearted documentary portrait of her father, Ira Sachs Sr. Something of a longstanding work-in-progress, the film draws from decades of footage shot by Sachs, her father, and her filmmaker brother, Ira Sachs Jr. (whose own 2005 film FORTY SHADES OF BLUE was inspired by the same so-called “Hugh Hefner of Park City”), plus others, documenting not just the sybaritic “hippie-businessman” patriarch, but also his numerous descendants. Sachs’ knotty chronicle reveals that her father has a total of nine children with several different women, two of whom the other siblings found out about only a few years back. (The film opens with Sachs brushing her elderly father’s hair, working out a particularly unpleasant snarl. “Sorry, dad,” she says. “There’s just one part that’s very tangly.” The irony is faint and benevolent, but present even so.) Sachs considers the enveloping imbroglio from her own perspective, but also takes into account the viewpoints of her eight siblings, her father’s ex-wives (including her own mother) and girlfriends, plus Ira’s mother, a gracefully cantankerous old woman in a certain amount of denial over her son’s wanton predilections and the role she played in his dysfunction. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO—the title an homage to Yvonne Rainer’s FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO…—is comprised of footage recorded between 1965 and 2019 and shot on 8mm, 16mm, VHS, Hi8, Mini DV, and digital; the fusion of all this material (by editor Rebecca Shapass) ranks among the most astounding use of personal archives that I’ve ever seen. It all exists in a state between documentary and home-movie footage, a paradigm that aptly reflects the conflict between reality and perspective, and the uncomfortable middle-ground that bisects the two. Sachs’ work often features her family, but this feels like an apotheosis of her autobiographical predisposition, likewise a question—why do the sins of the father linger?—and an answer. Among the most affecting scenes are roundtable discussions between the siblings where they consider revelations about their father and the implications of his actions. These scenes are heartrending not for their sadness, but rather for their naked honesty; it’s not just a film about a father who, but also a film about a love that defines a family. Sachs’ filmography is centered on infinite poetic quandaries (in voice over, she explores some of them here, such as when she muses on her father’s profession as a developer in Utah: “What happens when you own a horizon?”) and this feels like a logical conclusion to a lifetime of such profound impasses, though I’ve no doubt she’ll continue to probe life and its enigmas in a similarly masterful fashion. For all the suffering on display, Sachs has created an indelible work that, like those within it, perseveres by way of honesty and love. Followed by a post-screening conversation between Sachs and local filmmaker Lori Felker. (2020, 74 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker’s THE WASHING SOCIETY (US Documentary) Thursday, 6pm
Much like filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ acclaimed 2013 documentary hybrid YOUR DAY IS MY NIGHT, THE WASHING SOCIETY, a medium-length quasi-documentary she co-directed with performer-playwright Lizzie Olesker, penetrates the hidden worlds that exist adjacent to us. Just as in YOUR DAY Sachs explored the circumstances of immigrants living in “shift-bed” apartments in New York City’s Chinatown, she and Olesker here probe the mysterious world of urban laundromats, where workers—often immigrants or those from similarly disenfranchised groups—take on a task that’s historically been outsourced, at least in some capacity—that of washing and folding peoples’ laundry. The historical evocation is literal; the film’s title and one of its recurring motifs refer to a real organization from the 1880s called the Washing Society, which started in Atlanta and was comprised of washerwomen (most of them Black) who came together to demand higher pay and opportunities for self-regulation. A young actor, Jasmine Holloway, plays one such laundress, reading from texts written by the organization and whose presence haunts the modern-day laundromats. Soon other ‘characters,’ both real and fictitious, take their places in this mysterious realm, hidden away in plain sight. Ching Valdes-Aran and Veraalba Santa (actors who, along with Holloway, impressed me tremendously) appear as contemporary laundromat workers, representing ethnicities that tend to dominate the profession. It’s unclear at first that Valdes-Aran and Santa are performing, especially as real laundromat workers begin to appear in documentary vignettes, detailing the trials and tribulations of their physically demanding job. The stories are different, yet similar, personal to the individuals but representative of a society in which workers suffer en masse, still, from the very injustices against which the Washing Society were fighting. The actors’ scenes soon veer into more performative territory, a tactic which Sachs deployed, albeit differently, in YOUR DAY IS MY NIGHT. Much like that film, the evolution of THE WASHING SOCIETY included live performances in real laundromats around New York City, some scenes of which, it would seem, are included in the film. There’s a bit of voiceover from Sachs, explaining the directors’ mission to go into many different laundromats, and from voice actors who read monologues that are tenuously connected to Valdes-Aran and Santa’s ‘characters.’ There are also visceral interludes involving accumulated lint that add another layer to the experimentation; there’s a bluntness to the filmmakers’ artistic ambitions, as with much of Sachs’ work, that makes the intentions discernible but no less effective. Sachs has previously employed egalitarian methods, such as considering the people she works with to be collaborators rather than subjects, cast, and crew. In a film about unseen labor, seeing that labor—notably in a self-referential scene toward the end in which a group of said collaborators prepare to exit a laundromat after shooting—is important. In light of what’s happening now, when so much essential labor is either coyly unseen or brazenly unacknowledged (or both), it’s crucial. Like the 1880s’ washerwoman, the victims (and, likewise, the combatants) of capitalism are ghosts that haunt us. Followed by a post-screening conversation between Sachs and Cine-File managing editor Kat Sachs. (2018, 44 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]
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Screening as part of a shorts program entitled “A Collection & a Conversation,” which includes Sachs’ short films DRIFT AND BOUGH (2014, 6 min, Digital Projection); MAYA AT 24 (2021, 4 min, Digital Projection); VISIT TO BERNADETTE MAYER’S CHILDHOOD HOME (2020, 3 min, Digital Projection) and SWERVE (2022, 7 min, Digital Projection).
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, Maxwell Courtright, Steve Erickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Raphael Jose Martinez, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Michael W. Phillips, Jr., Joe Rubin, Harrison Sherrod
:: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16 :: →
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The Flow Chart Foundation’s Text Kitchen is a series of hands-on workshops providing writers and other art-makers with opportunities for deep exploration into poetry and interrelated forms of expression.
UP NEXT:
Frames and Stanzas: Video Poems a virtual filmmaking and poetry writing workshop, with Lynne Sachs
Tuesday, February 28 & Tuesday, March 7 (registration includes both sessions) 6:30pm – 9:30pm (EDT) on Zoom
When award-winning Brooklyn filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs first discovered The Flow Chart Foundation’s enthusiasm for poetry as a conduit for an interplay with other artistic modes, she knew that we would be a great place to offer a workshop that would nourish a deeply engaged dialogue between the written word and the image.In this two-part virtual workshop, Sachs will share insights and experiences she has in bridging poetry with cinema. Participants will explore and expand the intersections between still/moving images and written/spoken words over the course of two three-hour evening meetings (participants must be able to attend both sessions). Lynne will guide the workshop on a creative journey that will include writing several poems in conjunction with shooting moving or still images. Lynne has always been fascinated by the conversation between large-scale public events beyond our control and our subsequent internal responses to those experiences. Her workshop will build itself around this public/private convergence.
We encourage those with backgrounds in either or both poetry and image-making to sign up. Participants will need only a smartphone for creating their short films. Because creative collaboration between participants is a vital part of the experience, Lynne will carefully pair participants based on a questionnaire sent after registering. Note that this is not a tech-focused workshop, though some basic tech instruction will be shared. Lynne’s virtual workshop will include the screening of some of her own recent short film poems, including “Starfish Aorta Colossus” and “Swerve” (2015, 2022 made with poet Paolo Javier), “A Month of Single Frames” (2019), “Visit to Bernadette Mayer’s Childhood Home” (2020), as well as excerpts from her feature “Tip of My Tongue” (2017). Join us in this 2-week multimedia investigation of the sounds, texts, media images, home-made movies, and sensory experiences that all come together in a video poem. We could not be more delighted to be launching the Text Kitchen workshop series with this event.
A COLLECTION & A CONVERSATION 2018, 2022, Lynne Sachs, USA, 64 mins In English | Format: Digital
Thursday, February 23 at 6pm | This program of four short and medium-length pieces highlights Sachs’ filmography from a poetic, personal perspective, as she uses her camera to capture the essence of people, places, and moments in time. The scope of this work includes DRIFT AND BOUGH (2014, USA, 6 min., No dialogue / Format: 8mm on digital), an assemblage of 8mm footage from a winter morning in Central Park. Set to sound artist Stephen Vitiello’s delicate and assured score, the contrasting darkness – of skyscrapers, fences, trees, and people – against bright snow, gives way to a meditative living picture. In MAYA AT 24 (2021, USA, 4 min., No dialogue / Format: 16mm on digital), Sachs presents a spinning, swirling cinematic record of her daughter Maya, chronicled at ages 6, 16, and 24. As Maya runs, she glances – furtively, lovingly, distractedly – through the lens and at her mother, conveying a wordless bond between parent and child, and capturing the breathtakingly quick nature of time. Presented for the first time publicly, in VISIT TO BERNADETTE MAYER’S CHILDHOOD HOME (2020, USA, 3 min., In English / Format: 16mm on digital), Sachs visits poet Bernadette Mayer’s childhood home in Queens to celebrate Mayer’s work, through a reverent, flowing collage. Queens, New York is also the backdrop for the poetry of Paolo Javier in SWERVE (2022, USA, 7 min., in various languages with English subtitles / Format: Digital), a “COVID film” that documents people emerging – cautiously, distanced, masked – from the global pandemic, finding their way in the liminal space between “before” and “after,” and connected by language and verse. In collaboration with playwright Lizzie Olesker, THE WASHING SOCIETY (2018, USA, 44 min., In English / Format: Digital) explores the once ubiquitous but now endangered public laundromat. Inspired by “To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War” by Tera W. Hunter, THE WASHING SOCIETY is an observational study of lather and labor, a document of the lives of working class women who – largely overlooked and underappreciated – load, dry, fold, and repeat. Post-screening conversation with Lynne Sachs.
Your films are often so collaborative in nature – inspired by or featuring poets, authors, fellow artists, musicians. How do you forge these partnerships? From the very beginning of my life as a filmmaker, I resisted the traditional, pyramid structure for the industry. If film is an art, why does it have to embrace this kind of corporate model? I never wanted to direct movies. I wanted to make films. Rigid hierarchies just seem anachronistic and patriarchal to me. When I work with other people on my films, I look for kindred spirits with a shared passion and enthusiasm. In 1991, I shot film of a dear friend rolling nude down a sand dune in Death Valley. She only agreed to take off her clothes if I would stand nude while doing the filming. I had to agree, of course. That was a collaboration for THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE. In 1994, I traveled with my Bolex, a cassette recorder and a notebook through Vietnam with my sister to make WHICH WAY IS EAST, an essay film constructed around our sometimes parallel, sometimes divergent perspectives. That was another collaboration. In 2006, I asked a former student to exchange letters with me as we both contemplated the fraught situation in Israel/ Palestine. Our epistolary exchange became the foundation for a collaborative writing endeavor. In 2018, artist Barbara Hammer asked me to work with film material that she had shot twenty years before. She knew she was dying and that our friendship could transform her images into a collaborative experience. I completed this cross-generational collaboration and called it A MONTH OF SINGLE FRAMES. Perhaps my most sustained collaboration has been with sound artist Stephen Vitiello. His deeply inventive approach to making music continuously reminds me of how lucky I am to live in a world with other creative people who find sustenance from the shared joy of making work. When I look at DRIFT AND BOUGH, YOUR DAY IS MY NIGHT, THE WASHING SOCIETY, TIP OF MY TONGUE, and FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO, I am reminded of our connections, what we did together and what I learned from this vital human being.
Who are your cinematic heroes? Sometimes a person is lucky enough to experience a hero and a mentor all wrapped into one. That is what happened to me. The first time I witnessed (as opposed to just saw) Bruce Conner’s iconoclastic and irreverent collage films in 1984 (A MOVIE, VALSE TRISTE, and CROSSROADS), I was transfixed. Never before had I imagined that a short, experimental film could be so radical, so rhythmic and so inexplicably resonant. I wrote to him a year later expressing an interest in working with him as an assistant in his studio in San Francisco. To my surprise, he said yes. Though I had little to offer except for curiosity and enthusiasm, I spent a year at his side, helping him organize his archive, parsing through letters he’d received from fans and driving him around in his convertible looking for Geiger counters with which to assess the radioactivity in his neighborhood. Not long after I completed my work with Bruce, I began a two year assistant position with Trịnh T. Minh Hà. Her presence in my life pushed me in completely different ways. As a filmmaker, poet, and cultural theorist, Minh-ha showed me how artists with cameras could analyze the way that they look at the world. She really introduced me to the idea of self-reflexivity in cinema. An artist’s embrace of words and images should bring together observation and introspection through a constant lens of doubt. I recorded sound on her films (SURNAME VIET GIVEN NAME NAM and SHOOT FOR THE CONTENTS) and assisted in her editing room. Other filmmaker heroes whose set my mind a-spinning, include: Peggy Ahwesh, Zeinabu Irene Davis, Maya Deren, Jeanne Finley, Christopher Harris, Su Friedrich, Zora Neal Hurston, Lucretia Martel, Yvonne Rainer, Julia Reichardt, Mark Street, Reverend L.O. Taylor, Kidlat Tahimik, and so many more.
What advice would you give to students studying film/filmmaking? Early in my career as a filmmaker, I gave up a volunteer job working for a the brilliant, progressive documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple to take a paid job with a commercial company making Marine Corp promotional videos. It was horrible, and I cried every afternoon sitting at the telephone answering calls. I was an unglorified secretary. In retrospect, I wish I had continued waitressing (even after I spilled an entire tray on a woman’s lap) to pay the bills so that I could keep my production assistant position on Kopple’s AMERICAN DREAM, where I would have learned more and been more inspired. Continue to make short films throughout your life as an artist. Making features can be a deeply meaningful and totally immersive experience, but the joy of coming up with an idea and then seeing it to completion over a few months or a year is equally profound. It’s like deciding between writing a poem or a novel. Both are worthy, but one is certainly more likely to be cheaper and more liberating to produce. Plus interest in short films is soaring these days! Being part of an artist community is as gratifying as establishing yourself as a successful filmmaker. Create a collective for exhibiting your work as well as those of other artist friends by curating programs in alternative spaces like garages, attics, backyards and basements. Support each other by telling your friends about grant opportunities, bringing cupcakes to their set, or teaching them how to use a Bolex 16mm camera. Show compassion to other artists by engaging with them around their struggles and their joys.
What is a memorable moviegoing experience you’ve had? I had always wanted to see Czech New-Wave filmmaker Věra Chytilová’s 1966 feature film DAISIES, a renowned, anti-authoritarian send-up of insatiable desires and female friendship. My own friend Kathy Geritz, now a curator at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and I got hold of a 16mm print and invited anyone who was interested to join us in a small theater. For weeks, we were giddy with anticipation. The day arrived and both of us set ourselves up in the projection booth, happy to be responsible for what we saw as a historical event, at least in our lives. Together, we swooned with excitement in the booth, completely taken with Chytilová’s brilliant direction. From behind the glass between the booth and the theater, we caught site of two arms flailing in the air. Only once the credits started to roll, and the audience began to exit the theater did we discover that a man in the room had had a disturbing and mysterious episode that involved loud grunting and running around the room during the film. I never figured out if he hated the film or was, himself, so deeply moved by the exhilarating performance of its two female stars that he too chose to let it all hang out.
What film do you watch again and again? I have watched SANS SOLEIL by Chris Marker at least 20 times. I discover something about the punctum in an image – the accident that pricks, as Roland Barthes might call it – in his discursive, layered, evocative, astute essay film every time I watch it.
Lynne Sachs: A Poet’s Perspective
Committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, experimental filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in each new project. Embracing archives, letters, portraits, confessions, poetry, and music, her films take us on a critical journey through reality and memory. Regardless of the passage of time, these films continue to be extremely contemporary, coherent, and radical in their artistic conception.
Lynne has produced over 40 films as well as numerous live performances, installations, and web projects. Over the course of her career, Lynne has worked closely with fellow filmmakers Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Chris Marker, Gunvor Nelson, Carolee Schneemann, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Sachs’ films have screened at MoMA, Tate Modern, Image Forum Tokyo, Wexner Center for the Arts, the New York Film Festival, Oberhausen Int’l Short FF, Punto de Vista, Sundance, Vancouver IFF, Viennale, and Doclisboa, among others. In 2021, Sachs received awards from both Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground Film Festival at the Maysles Documentary Center for her achievements in the experimental and documentary fields.
The Film Center, in collaboration with Conversations at the Edge and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation program, is honored to welcome Sachs to the Film Center in person for two evenings of her work, followed by in-depth conversations. Photo credit: Inés Espinosa López.
Lynne Sachs: A Poet’s Perspective Gene Siskel Film Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago December 23, 2022 Screenings on February 20 & 23, 2023 https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/lynnesachs
LYNNE SACHS: A POET’S PERSPECTIVE
Committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, experimental filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in each new project. Embracing archives, letters, portraits, confessions, poetry, and music, her films take us on a critical journey through reality and memory. Regardless of the passage of time, these films continue to be extremely contemporary, coherent, and radical in their artistic conception.
Lynne has produced over 40 films as well as numerous live performances, installations, and web projects. Over the course of her career, Lynne has worked closely with fellow filmmakers Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Chris Marker, Gunvor Nelson, Carolee Schneemann, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Sachs’ films have screened at MoMA, Tate Modern, Image Forum Tokyo, Wexner Center for the Arts, the New York Film Festival, Oberhausen Int’l Short FF, Punto de Vista, Sundance, Vancouver IFF, Viennale, and Doclisboa, among others. In 2021, Sachs received awards from both Edison Film Festival and Prismatic Ground Film Festival at the Maysles Documentary Center for her achievements in the experimental and documentary fields.
The Film Center, in collaboration with Conversations at the Edge and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation program, is honored to welcome Sachs to the Film Center in person for two evenings of her work, followed by in-depth conversations. Photo credit: Inés Espinosa López.
2020, dir. Lynne Sachs USA, 74 min. In English / Format: Digital
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8mm and 16mm film, videotape, and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings. With a nod to the Cubist renderings of a face, Sachs’ cinematic exploration of her father offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory, views of one seemingly unknowable man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame, yet privately ensconced in secrets. With this meditation on fatherhood and masculinity, Sachs allows herself and her audience to see beneath the surface of the skin, beyond the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, she discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal. (Cinema Guild)Post-screening conversation with Lynne Sachs.
2018-2022, dir. Lynne Sachs USA, 64 min., In English / Format: Digital
This program of four short and medium-length pieces highlights Sachs’ filmography from a poetic, personal perspective, as she uses her camera to capture the essence of people, places, and moments in time. The scope of this work includes DRIFT AND BOUGH (2014, USA, 6 min., No dialogue / Format: 8mm on digital), an assemblage of 8mm footage from a winter morning in Central Park. Set to sound artist Stephen Vitiello’s delicate and assured score, the contrasting darkness – of skyscrapers, fences, trees, and people – against bright snow, gives way to a meditative living picture. In MAYA AT 24 (2021, USA, 4 min., No dialogue / Format: 16mm on digital), Sachs presents a spinning, swirling cinematic record of her daughter Maya, chronicled at ages 6, 16, and 24. As Maya runs, she glances – furtively, lovingly, distractedly – through the lens and at her mother, conveying a wordless bond between parent and child, and capturing the breathtakingly quick nature of time. Presented for the first time publicly, in VISIT TO BERNADETTE MAYER’S CHILDHOOD HOME (2020, USA, 3 min., In English / Format: 16mm on digital), Sachs visits poet Bernadette Mayer’s childhood home in Queens to celebrate Mayer’s work, through a reverent, flowing collage. Queens, New York is also the backdrop for the poetry of Paolo Javier in SWERVE (2022, USA, 7 min., in various languages with English subtitles / Format: Digital), a “COVID film” that documents people emerging – cautiously, distanced, masked – from the global pandemic, finding their way in the liminal space between “before” and “after,” and connected by language and verse. In collaboration with playwright Lizzie Olesker, THE WASHING SOCIETY (2018, USA, 44 min., In English / Format: Digital) explores the once ubiquitous but now endangered public laundromat. Inspired by “To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War” by Tera W. Hunter, THE WASHING SOCIETY is an observational study of lather and labor, a document of the lives of working class women who – largely overlooked and underappreciated – load, dry, fold, and repeat. Post-screening conversation with Lynne Sachs.
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
Food brings us together. It can be the connector needed to form relationships both romantic and platonic–and for some, food can be their calling in life. Swerve uses food to bring together five unique individuals (and an audience) as they navigate the streets of Queens. While food is ultimately the catalyst for their journeys, each of them speaking in verse, expressing themselves in an incredibly effective way, lets emotion rise to the surface as they make an impression on viewers around the world.
While Swerve is technically a documentary, it plays
out in a way that allows it to appear like a narrative and an artistic version
of the real world. We see the subjects of the film navigating Queens both above
and below ground, on the crowded streets amongst thousands and alone at a
table. The juxtapositions created throughout the course of Swerve
open the world’s eyes to the diversity of not just New York City, but the rest
of the globe as well. Viewers are invited back into the world that they already
know, but it shows it from a series of angles by which they may not have
already been familiar. These angles are literal and figurative, and each one
plays an integral role in the reception of the film.
As these literal camera angles take form throughout the film, viewers see exactly what Director Lynne Sachs wants them to. When she wants viewers to see the hustle and bustle of the busy streets, that’s what they see. When she wants them to understand the mental and emotional statuses of the five subjects, they do; and when she wants them to feel relaxed, one with the sometimes calming sentiments present in Swerve, that’s exactly what they feel. Sachs is a brilliant creator who knows the ins and outs of developing something that can and will appeal to the masses. Her prowess in this respect is uplifting and full of passion, and she does a spectacular job of bringing her vision to life in Swerve.
I often struggle with documentaries that have parts written for
them, as I tend to want these films to happen naturally rather than being
manipulated into something that forces an agenda. Swerve has
verse written for it, and the individuals on screen are tasked with presenting these
lines in a fashion that mirrors the visuals and the sentiment present in the
film. For the first time I believe that the script written for a documentary is
not only acceptable, but essential. It works wonders for the film, and it
brings everything to life in a vibrant and infectious fashion.
Rhyme plays a pivotal role in the reception of Swerve,
as it becomes the most inviting part of the entire film. Creating rhyming
poetry that has a genuine purpose and a profound effect on those involved can
be challenging, but this team has managed to create something meaningful beyond
the visuals, something that surely resonates with viewers.
Swerve is
powerful, full of passion, energetic, honest, and relatable. It never loses its
vigor, and it never loses focus–keeping viewers intrigued from beginning to
end. It’s smooth sailing throughout the course of Swerve, and
anyone that has time to watch this short documentary will certainly gain
something positive along the way.
Directed by Lynne Sachs.
Starring Emmy Catedral, Ray Ferriera, Paolo Javier, Jeff Preiss,
Inney Prakash, & Juliana Sass.
The
18th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival, kicking off Sept. 15, will
feature a handful of award-contending documentaries fresh off showings at
Telluride and the Toronto film festivals. The Maine-based festival will unfold
in a hybrid format, with both in-person events over a three-day period
concluding Sept. 18, and online screenings available from Sept. 15 to Sept. 25
to audiences across North America.
This
year’s CIFF highlights include the U.S. premiere of Tamana Ayazi and Marcel
Mettelsiefen’s Netflix release “In Her Hands,” which follows one of
Afghanistan’s first female mayors during the months leading up to the Taliban
takeover the country in 2021; Chris Smith’s “Sr.,” centered on the life and
career of Robert Downey Sr. and his relationship to his son, Robert Downey Jr.;
and Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” about Manhattan Project physicist,
Soviet spy and University of Chicago alum Theodore Hall. Each of the three
featured documentaries will have made its world premiere before CIFF, at
festivals in Toronto, Telluride and Venice, respectively.
The
fest will also offer a special sneak preview of Patricio Guzman’s “My Imaginary
Country,” which chronicles the recent protests in Chile in which millions took
to the street to demand democracy, dignity, and a new constitution.
It
is also teasing “a special secret screening” which will be the opening night
film, with little additional information besides the fact that it is a new film
by an Academy Award-winning director that will be in attendance.
Located
in a small, remote village on the coast of Maine that is two hours from a major
airport, CIFF
has become an Oscar campaign hotspot in recent years. Last year, Oscar
contending docus including “The Rescue” (Nat. Geo), “Procession” (Netflix),
“Ascension” (MTV Documentaries), and “Flee” (Neon) all screened at CIFF, where
the who’s who of the doc community — including Oscar winner Alex Gibney,
Cinetic Media founder and principal John Sloss and former Sundance Institute
CEO Keri Putnam – come to celebrate the fest.
“Much
of our slate this year will be brand new to audiences in the U.S. or North
America, and one of the greatest things we can do as a festival is to build
buzz and momentum for (films) here,” says Ben Fowlie, executive and artistic
director of the Points North Institute and founder of CIFF. “This means getting
filmmakers to Maine for their in-person screenings and connecting them with
attending industry and press.”
All
told, the 2022 fest will include 34 features and 40 short films from over 41
countries. Over 60% of the entire program is directed or co-directed by BIPOC
filmmakers; this is the sixth consecutive edition that the festival has reached
gender parity within the program.
“This
year’s program celebrates the diversity of voices and forms in documentary and
cinematic nonfiction,” says Fowlie. “This year’s program emphasizes the
international that represents the ‘I’ in CIFF and reminds us time and again of
the limitless creative potential and potency of the documentary form.”
Alex
Pritz’s “The Territory,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There,” and
Margaret Brown’s “Descendant” are among the Sundance 2022 docus screening at
CIFF. Jason Kohn’s “Nothing Lasts Forever,” which premiered at the Berlin Intl.
Film Festival in February and Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s “Subject,” which
debuted at Tribeca Festival in June, are also part of this year’s lineup.
“We
were drawn to films that were aesthetically and politically urgent, that
transformed us and that transported us somewhere new as viewers,” says Fowlie.
“We are always looking for films and filmmakers that are taking creative risks
and pushing the boundaries of traditional cinematic language with bold,
singular visions. For all of the selected work, it is important for us to have
an understanding of the film and filmmaker’s relationships with the
communities, contributors, and collaborators involved.”
A
program of Points North Institute, CIFF will also present two world premieres:
Mike Day’s “Cowboy Poets,” about American national cowboy poetry gatherings and
“Lily Frances Henderson’s “This Much We Know,” about the investigation of Las
Vegas teenager Levi Presley’s suicide, which leads to the story of a city with
the highest suicide rate in the country, and a nation scrambling to bury
decades of nuclear excess in a nearby mountain.
The
festival will present seven North American premieres, including “Foragers” by
Jumana Manna, recent Locarno premieres “It Is Night in America” by Ana Vaz and
Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s “Matter Out of Place,” as well as “Polaris” by Ainara
Vera, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
In
honor of Diane
Weyermann, the industry veteran and former chief content officer at
Participant who died in October 2021, CIFF will screen several of the last
films she executive produced, including James’ “A Compassionate Spy,’ Geeta
Gandbhir and Sam Pollard’s “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” and
Margaret Brown’s “Descendant.”
For
the third consecutive year, CIFF will present its filmmaker solidarity fund.
The fund will provide $300 honoraria to all feature and short filmmaking teams
participating in the virtual festival. This year also marks the return of
in-person panels and masterclasses through the festival’s Points North Forum
program, which will feature conversations around the ethics of film financing,
an exploration of experimental filmmaking about the climate, a masterclass led
by veteran editor Maya Daisy Hawke and a special performance lecture on
sensorial cinema led by award-winning Iranian artist Maryam Tafakory.
The
forum program will conclude with a “town hall” gathering of the documentary
community following the screening of “Subject,” which explores the life-altering
experience of documenting one’s life on screen through the participants of five
acclaimed docus.
The
2022 festival will run concurrently with Points North Artist Programs, a
fellowship that supports early- and mid-career filmmakers. This year 21 projects
will be supported through four fellowship programs.
A complete list of the program’s features and short can be found below.
Features Program
“5 Dreamers and the Horse” “A Compassionate Spy” “After Sherman” “All Of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars” “All That Breathes” “Burial” “Cowboy Poets” “Crows Are White” “Day After… “ “Descendant” “Detours” “Dos Estaciones” “Foragers” “Geographies of Solitude” “Herbaria” “I Didn’t See You There” “In Her Hands” “It Is Night in America” “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” “Matter Out of Place” “My Imaginary Country” “Nothing Lasts Forever” “Polaris” “Rewind & Play” “SR.” “Subject” “Terranova” “The Afterlight” “The Territory” “This Much We Know” “What We Leave Behind”
Shorts Program
“Aralkum” “The Ark” “The Artists” “Belongings” “Bigger on the Inside” “Brave” “Call Me Jonathan” “Congress of Idling Persons” “Constant” “Dapaan” “Deerfoot of the Diamond” “Echolocation” “Everything Wrong and Nowhere to Go” “Fire in the Sea” “The Family Statement” “The Flagmakers” “Irani Bag” “La Frontiere” “Handbook” “Life Without Dreams” “Lungta” “Masks” “Moune O” “Murmurs of the Jungle” “My Courtyard” “Nazarbazi” “One Survives by Hiding” “Pacman” “Paradiso” “Seasick” “Solastalgia” “Somebody’s Hero” “The Sower of Stars” “Subtotals” “Swerve” “Unsinkable Ship” “Weckuwapok” “Weckuwapasihit” “When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood”
I can’t say I’m all that well versed in interpreting the structural and tonal elements of poetry. But when they’re distilled through the formal elements of cinema, it becomes more understandable to me. Lynne Sachs’ “Swerve” (2022) is heavily informed and inspired by the poetry of Filipino immigrant and former Queens-resident Paolo Javier, particularly those in his book O.B.B. (Original Brown Boy). Mixing the free-flowing and expressionistic words of Javier with several characters hanging around food hall stalls, a park, and basketball courts, Sachs gives a strangely hypnotic look at a time during the pandemic when people were okay with going outside and being among others but still encased in a bubble with their own thoughts.
The seven-minute experimental film begins in the Hong Kong Food Court in Elmhurst, Queens. One character (played by Inney Prakash) converses with a kid about his favorite school activities. He then goes around looking at the offerings at the stalls and recites lines from Javier’s poems. Another character (played by Jeff Preiss) reads more lines while sitting on a bench in the Moore Homestead Playground, located across the street from the food court. Others (played by ray ferriera, Emmy Catedral, and Juliana Sass) converse in various places within this small enclave during the film. This patch of Queens is like a microcosm of the world. All the dialogue recited in the film, both in Tagalog and English, serves a basis for exploring the way that human connection changed because of the pandemic.
Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes’ The Tsugua Diaries (2021), another wonderful experimental non-fiction made during the pandemic, examined the passage of time in isolation, with a cast and crew maintaining a secluded area that felt detached from the rest of the world. However, the characters in “Swerve”are surrounded by people, and while the culture of Queens remains a unique part of the film and Javier’s poetry, the necessary precautions of the pandemic are everywhere and instantly, globally recognizable. Sachs’ camera, in motion constantly, rolls around, tracks, and dollies to and from its characters. The liveliness of the park and the empty seats at a restaurant offer a glimpse of a transitory period in which the pandemic is ongoing, but the inherent need for other people, for some joy, was bringing life back to Elmhurst.
In “Swerve,” Sachs separates her depiction of the pandemic from other pandemic-related films by considering how our communication with one another shifted in isolation, presenting a new challenge when we went back to socializing. The poetry — recited both on camera and as voiceover — metaphorically stands in for the characters’ internal monologues. Thoughts within our own minds become the new formal ways of keeping a conversation going. When communication is severed for so long, when dialogue doesn’t happen as naturally or as organically anymore, words become puzzles, swerving in our heads until we can make sense of them again. In the film, characters are often observing other people without talking to them. In turn, when a character recites dialogue aloud, others observe them on the peripheries. We hear what these characters have to say, but behind the masks that define the times, we don’t actually see them talking to each other.
Likewise, the film focuses on the two things many of us found solace in to replace our lack of contact with others — art and food. Characters write, eat, hang out, and think through words in poems. To combine these universal elements of social living with the distinct rooted identity of Javier’s poetry is a fascinating experiment. To see the words of a Filipino artist recited by people of different backgrounds makes one consider what being part of the community in Queens means. The film’s formal choices combine two or more elements into one — Tagalog and English language, dialogue and voiceover, conventions of documentary and experimental filmmaking, super 8mm film and digital. At its seams, “Swerve”tries to flow as freely as the writing that inspires it. It is a hard film to grasp on just one watch and it means a lot for a film, in such a short amount of time, to find its way to make sense of jumbled words and new rules of the world we live in using our love for art, food, and identity as guiding stars.
ENTRE NOS (Paola Mendoza & Gloria La Morte, 2009) / SWERVE (Lynne Sachs, 2022) Museum of the Moving Image 35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria Friday, July 15, 7:15, and Sunday, July 17, 1:30, $15 718-777-6800 movingimage.us
The
Astoria-based Museum of the Moving Image’s monthly “Queens on Screen” series —
which is not about royalty or LGBTQIA+ issues but comprises films set in one of
the most diverse areas on the planet — continues July 15 and 17 with two works
set in the borough. Up first is Lynne Sachs’s seven-minute Swerve, in which artist and curator Emmy
Catedral, blaqlatinx multidisciplinary artist ray ferreira, director and
cinematographer Jeff Preiss, film curator and programmer Inney Prakash, and
actor Juliana Sass recite excerpts from Pilipinx poet Paolo Javier’s O.B.B. (Nightboat,
November 2021, $19.95).
Illustrated
by Alex Tarampi and Ernest Concepcion, the book, which stands for Original
Brown Boy, consists of such sections as “Aren’t You a Mess,” “Goldfish Kisses,”
“Restrained by Time,” and “Last Gasp.” New Yorkers Catedral, ferreira, Preiss,
Prakash, and Sass share Javier’s words as they wander around Moore Homestead Playground and Elmhurst’s HK
Food Court. “The words each operate on their own swerve, from music that would
play in the background and from overheard conversation outside my window, on
the subway, at the local Korean deli,” Javier says at the beginning, writing in
a notebook.
The
film was shot in one day in August 2021, during the Delta wave of Covid-19, so
many people are wearing masks, and the food court is nearly empty; when Prakash
orders, a plastic sheet separates him from the employee. The performers recite
the poems as if engaging in free-flowing speech; words occasionally appear on
the screen, including “free emptiness,” “unknown thoroughfare,” and “hum your
savage cabbage leaf.”
Experimental
documentarian Sachs (Film About a Father Who,Investigation
of a Flame), who was the subject of a career retrospective at
MoMI last year, captures the unique rhythm of both Javier’s
language and the language of Queens; Javier and Sachs will be at the museum to
discuss the film after the July 15 screening.
Swerve will be followed
by Paola Mendoza and Gloria La Morte’s Entre Nos, a
deeply personal semiautobiographical story in which Mendoza stars as a
Colombian immigrant whose husband deserts her, leaving her to raise two
children in Queens. The film is shot by Oscar-nominated cinematographer
Bradford Young (Arrival,Selma), who makes the borough its
own character.
In
a director’s note, Mendoza explains, “Throughout my childhood my mother worked
countless double-shifts at the toilet bowl cleaners business and flipping
burgers at local fast food restaurants near me. We never talked about the
roaches in the house or the yearning to see our family back in the country and
culture of Colombia. Instead we had to learn to smile through the grit, the
trial of tears, and dealing with heartache. As the years passed, I came to a
sublime new realization that our story was not unique. Thousands of immigrant
mothers, for hundreds of years, have endured problems when trying to adapt to
their new immigration in the USA. My mother, like those before her, have
overcome all that remains for exactly the same reason, to build the foundation
for a better life for their children.”
