Cinema and Archive Program

ACCENTS: Avant-Garde and Artists’ Cinema from Latin America
Curated by Mónica Savirón
Presented by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies
Filmmaker Mónica Savirón shares a selection of works by artists who have raised unique and distinctive voices in Latin America’s avant-garde cinema. From influential feminist film pioneer Narcisa Hirsch to the contemporary celluloid-based portraits of Azucena Losana, ACCENTS provides a kaleidoscopic, intersectional, and multi-lingual approach to cinema. Just as in the work of poet and activist Victoria Santa Cruz, also included in the program, these films connect to ideas of racial and gender equality, memory, and people’s revolution. Screening super-8mm and 16mm films on video, from 1975 to 2018. Presenting work by Annalisa D. Quagliata, Narcisa Hirsch, Victoria Santa Cruz, Paz Encina, Azucena Losana, Adriana Vila Guevara, Valentina Alvarado, and Mónica Savirón. Mónica Savirón in attendance! (50 min)

The Atomic Café (1982)
Directed by Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty & Pierce Rafferty
Presented by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies
The Atomic Café takes viewers on a darkly comic tour of the American psyche during the first 15 years of the nuclear age. With the benefit of a quarter-century of hindsight, the film artfully juxtaposes various audio and visual primary sources from the 1940s and 1950s, such as news reports, military training films, and commercials. This documentary vividly demonstrates the power of archives by using them to expose the U.S. government’s attempts to downplay the horrors of atomic warfare. Moreover, it indicts a public all too eager to believe that a World War III would be just a minor inconvenience in the Eisenhower Era’s consumerist idyll. Part of UC Film series Archives in Motion: Film Documents. (88 min)Introduction by Matthew Bauman, PhD Candidate, Dept. of German Studies, University of Cincinnati

Conversation with Miranda July: Cinema and the Archive
In 1995, artist, filmmaker, and writer Miranda July started Joanie 4 Jackie (formerly known as Big Miss Moviola), a DIY feminist film distribution system. According to July, “Over eight years I compiled and distributed more than 150 movies made by women and girls; I mailed VHS tape compilations via the U.S. Postal Service and drove around the country with a video projector, creating an audience for something I wanted more of.” Recently, The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles acquired the Joanie 4 Jackie archive, which includes videos, documentation, and print materials. FotoFocus and The Mini Microcinema present Miranda July in conversation with Kelly Gallagher (Filmmaker, Curator, and Assistant Professor of Film at Syracuse University, NY) for a conversation on the history and legacy of Joanie 4 Jackie. Introduction by C. Jacqueline Wood, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Director of The Mini Microcinema.

Ephemeral
Composed by dream tiger
Liz Wolf (dream tiger) premieres Ephemeral, a new musical composition in the theme of sound perception. A multi-sensory experience to be performed live in three movements, with accompanying archival films collaged together and shown in tandem with the performance. The musicians, who will be staggered around the room, may play fragments of the composition in sequence, simultaneously, or in contrast, thus creating interesting acoustic effects for the audience. (60 min)

Everybody Street (2013)
Directed by Cheryl Dunn
Everybody Street illuminates the lives and work of New York’s iconic street photographers and the incomparable city that has inspired them for decades. The documentary pays tribute to the spirit of street photography through a cinematic exploration of New York City, and captures the visceral rush, singular perseverance, and at times immediate danger customary to these artists. The film follows such iconic photographers as Martha Cooper, Jill Freedman, Mary Ellen Mark, Jamel Shabazz, Ricky Powell and Boogie. (84 min)

Flood (2018)
Video Installation by Alice Pixley Young
Artist Alice Pixley Young mines the psychology of spaces, collaging video that recalls surrealism and fairytale. This collection of moments and experiences reflects upon the construct of memory and upon our relationship to the built and natural environment. (4 min loop)

Freedom Over Fear: Susan Stein’s Feminist Avant-Garde Cinema
Curated by Mónica Savirón
Presented by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies
At age 17, artist Susan Stein was the workshop coordinator at the London Filmmakers’ Co-operative. In 1979, with Lis Rhodes, Felicity Sparrow, Annabel Nicolson, Tina Keane, Mary-Pat Leece, and Joana Davis, she co-founded Circles, the first feminist distribution network for film, video, and performance. Her 16mm films are driven by a female voice, her own, that speaks up against forced, abusive, fear-based structures. In her work, she examines language in the context of the femme-led writings and political movements of the time, and in contrast with the grainy imagery of her sensitive cinematography. With a precise layering of reworked sequences containing photo collages, newspaper cutouts, poetry, essays, and personal and archival footage, Stein reflects on concepts of female incarceration, invisibility, servitude, and silence. After 30 years working for BBC News as a camerawoman, Stein is coming full-circle with a new film in preparation. This is the first time that her work is shown in the United States. Freedom Over Fear is the first retrospective of her avant-garde films. Curated and presented by Mónica Savirón, in attendance! (76 min)

A German Youth (Une jeunesse allemande) (2015)
Directed by Jean-Gabriel Périot
Presented by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies
A German Youth tells the story of the Red Army Faction—a revolutionary terrorist group active in West Germany in the 1970s—through its images. The film was produced entirely by editing together pre-existing visual and sound archives, such as television footage, early experimental short films by the first generation of film students in Berlin, and documentary and feature films of the time. Focusing on the relationship between aesthetics and politics and seeking out filmmaking’s radical potential, the film engages with the archive and investigates the ways in which its own radical potential may be actualized today. Part of the UC Film series Archives in Motion: Film Documents. (German and French with English subtitles) (93 min)Introduction by Dr. Svea Braeunert, Department of German Studies/Film and Media Studies, University of Cincinnati

The Green Fog (2017)
Directed by Guy Maddin
Presented by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies
Using footage showcasing San Francisco, The Green Fog is a filmic tribute to the Bay Area in the form of a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It revisits the close relationship between the city and Hitchcock’s movie through a montage of studio classics, 1950s noir; documentary and experimental films; and 1970s prime-time television. The only original content is the eponymous fog that Maddin has integrated into some of the scenes. Together with a score performed by the Kronos Quartet, the fog adds to the alienating effect of the montage, allowing viewers to engage with the various filmic archives and their mutual associations. Part of the UC Film series Archives in Motion: Film Documents. (63 min)Introduction by Dr. Todd Herzog, Department of German Studies/Film and Media Studies, University of Cincinnati

Joanie 4 Jackie 4 Ever
Curated by Kelly Gallagher
Kelly Gallagher presents on the importance and lasting impact of Miranda July’s Joanie 4 Jackie (J4J) project, exploring the original Chainletter Tape series as well as delving into contemporary projects today in which the feminist DIY community-building spirit of J4J lives on. Featuring films by original J4J filmmakers: Ximena Cuevas, Mary Billyou, and Kara Herold. Kelly Gallagher in attendance! (60 min)

Lil’s + Lils – Films for Kids
Stop Motion Focus (Tots)
The Mini Microcinema presents a selection of short animated films for children. The special FotoFocus edition of Lil’s aims to teach children about the principles of photography and filmmaking by focusing on stop motion animation. The 30-minute program includes work from the UK, Belgium, and Taiwan. The “Tots” edition is appropriate for all ages. Arrive early to enjoy free Lil’s Bagels and coffee from Iris Bookcafé.Presenting work by Kirsten Lepore, PES, Robert Loebel, Hui-ching Tseng, Studio Creature, Steve Boot, and Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar. (30 min)

Stop Motion Focus (Tweens)
The 45-minute program includes work from the UK, Hungary, and Latvia. The “Tweens” edition is appropriate for ages 8 and up. Arrive early to enjoy free Lil’s Bagels and coffee from Iris Bookcafé. Presenting work by Paul Bush, Rhiannon Evans, Péter Vácz, and Evalds Lacis. (45 min)

Stop Motion Focus (Teens)
The 60-minute program includes work from Sweden, Luxembourg, and Germany. The “Teens” edition is appropriate for ages 12 and up. Arrive early to enjoy free Lil’s Bagels and coffee from Iris Bookcafé. Presenting work by Nicki Lindroth, Joan C. Gratz, Kirsten Lepore, Carlo Vogele, and Alejandra Tomei & Alberto Couceiro. (60 min)

memento mori (2012)
Directed by Dan Browne“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patent labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”—Jorge Luis BorgesA meditation on (im)mortality, mediated by a lifetime’s compendium of images, memento mori is a layered time-lapse exploration of the total photographs captured over the course of the filmmaker’s life—over 120,000 in total. This all-seeing archive is blended into permutations and combinations of subjects, objects, percepts, dreams, and experiences to form an encyclopedic index of the possibilities of sight. (28 min)

Nature as a Metaphor for Economic, Emotional and Existential Horror (2016)

Video Installation by Stephanie Barber
Artist and Filmmaker Stephanie Barber presents a looped meditation on the collision of human domestic spaces and wildlife, embodied in the running tiger. The work was an essential element of an installation Barber constructed in the summer of 2016 for the Baltimore Museum of Art titled Nature as a Metaphor for Economic, Emotional and Existential Horror. It is clear, the grace and beauty of the moving animal, fast and steady through the design magazine photographs. There is the stark relief of ‘animal’ against ‘civilization’; the rush towards (or away?) from extinction; an implicit metaphor of class; the meditative suggestion of eternally running, moving, stepping through; the counterbalance of these pruned domestic spaces, so set and stable and fixed to the idea of actuality. (8 min. loop)

pure&magicalpussypower: a documentary on Joanie 4 Jackie (2010)
Directed by Vanessa Haroutunian
pure&magicalpussypower is a documentary about the history and impact of Joanie 4 Jackie, an all women’s video chainletter project started by artist and filmmaker Miranda July in the 1990s. Bard student Vanessa Haroutunian stumbled across Joanie 4 Jackie when it was in a period of repose—a pile of forgotten boxes in a room. Just a few years before, Bard students had actively been making Chainletter compilations… but those students had all since graduated. Haroutunian’s excavation of Joanie 4 Jackie became her senior thesis, pure&magicalpussypower: a documentary on Joanie 4 Jackie. She also helped reestablish the J4J Tutorial at Bard, a credited class whose students digitized most of the material that is the basis for the J4J website. (40 min)

Still Processing: Photography and the Moving Image
Curated by C. Jacqueline Wood
Oftentimes, experimental film and media makers use photographic archives as both objects (and subjects) in their work. The printed, tangible photograph is not only a referential visual device, with the ability to call on a historical moment passed, but calls on the viewer to consider the similarities and differences between the mediums themselves. Still Processing: Photography and the Moving Image is a program of short films that explores the use of the photograph in various ways: as a visual source, storytelling device, or aesthetic strategy. Presenting work by Stephanie Barber, Harun Farocki, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Ariana Gerstein, Karø Goldt, and Shelly Silver. (60 min)

The Take Over Chainletter
Curated by Kelly Gallagher
In the spirit of Miranda July’s powerful Joanie 4 Jackie Chainletter Tapes, we bring a new program of contemporary films and videos exploring the auto-biographical, confessional, diaristic, humorous, transgressive, subversive, tactile, tender, loud, and quiet aspects of our lived experiences. In the 1998 Cherry Cherry Chainletter, Miranda July wrote: “These tapes have eaten together won races together learned fucking together and now they want to illuminate each other on your TV.” The videos in The Take Over Chainletter are now winning races together too and are eager to illuminate each other and their viewers. Together we can make and share our movies with each other. Together we can take over cinema. Presenting work by Spencer Williams, Kelly Gallagher, Carrie Hawks, Desiree Dawn Kapler, Thirza Cuthand, Nazli Dincel, and Vashti Harrison. (72 min)

Through the Lens of Time (2018)
Directed by Ann Segal
Through the Lens of Time is the third in a series of video documentaries Ann Segal has produced for FotoFocus since 2014 that delve into the minds of well-known Cincinnati image makers. The trilogy began in 2014 with Conversations With Photographers, and was followed by Conversations With Photographers/From Bauhaus to Our House (2016-2018). In Through the Lens of Time, Segal shares the experiences and influences that led her to pursue a lifelong career in photography, interspersed with many images she has created over the years. “My role as a photographer is to re-imagine stories from the collective memory so that people who see my images might reconnect with their own interior landscapes, memories, and yearnings.” (20 min)