All posts by lynne

PesaroFF57 – Meeting with Luca Ferri and Lynne Sachs

Sentieri Selvaggi 
June 24, 2021 
by Veronica Orciari
https://www.sentieriselvaggi.it/pesaroff57-incontro-con-luca-ferri-e-lynne-sachs/

The Bergamo director is in competition with a film dedicated to the monumental Brion Tomb by the architect Carlo Scarpa, also the work of the American director Lynne Sachs

“Postmodernism is evil, it is betraying all the rumors that were there before you, it is making a smoothie without putting anything personal in it” . Luca Ferri likes to provoke, there is no doubt. In competition with the thirteen-minute short film Mille Cipressi, the director explained its genesis and realization, also discussing the relationship between classicism and modernity. “When I went to the Brion Tomb for the first time I did not have a defined architecture in front of me and in fact I was unable to collect it all in the film” , said Ferri regarding the monumental building by the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, located in the cemetery of San Vito, in the province of Treviso. The short is punctuated by a female voice, that of Assila Cherfi, already present inColombi:  “I wanted the words to break away from the“ Scarpa man ”, using a female voice I wanted to enter a territory of non-emulation, to take the text to another level”.

UNICINEMA – A NEW UNIVERSITY IDEA 

“One of the things I share most about Scarpa’s speech is the criticism of everything that doesn’t fit into the classic. I find a lot of my vision in it, in my opinion there is no new, there is no experimentalism. There is only the possibility of entering a classic canon with its own style. ” Ferri did not mince words to describe his idea of cinema, a cinema (indeed, an art in general) that must necessarily deal with what preceded it: “You have to be aware of the past, a word that in this contemporaneity seems to be a dead word ” . According to the filmmaker, Scarpa’s thinking is lucid and theoretical and his architecture reflects the consequences and in this sense he is very close to this approach.

However, architecture is an element that needs time to be understood and admired, in this regard the director said he was amazed to have one day seen a group that remained inside the Brion Tomb for only 15 minutes. “I found it absurd, for art it takes time. Having made this film myself, I feel I have been disrespectful of a place that deserves even more time. This hit and run of culture is no good. ” Speaking of his cinema, Ferri concluded:“I believe that in all my films there is the comic, not the ironic. In serious and busy cinema, the comedian is always pornographic, it always seems that laughter, especially fat laughter, demeans you. Just think of experimental cinema, how seriously certain authors are taken. Experimental cinema adheres to the genre and for me it is reprehensible. “

The meeting was concluded by another protagonist of this year’s competition, Lynne Sachs, with her Film About a Father Who . An intimate and personal film about an important father figure, influenced by Film About a Woman Who , by filmmaker and choreographer Yvonne Reiner. “This film is an attempt to understand what it means to try to be a man today, putting anger on one side and forgiveness on the other,” said Sachs, who also explained how for her the reflection on the parent-child relationship is a constant in his life.“There were aspects of my family that I wanted to investigate, although there was a sense of ambivalence and shame inside me, there was an unease that needed to be analyzed. I have allowed myself to be vulnerable in two senses: form and content. Looking at my 80s footage I thought they looked awful when compared to the clean high definition images. But on the one hand we got tired of clean images and I’m happy to have embraced this work. “

“The Washing Society” Screening at Kinesthesia Moving Image Festival

Kinesthesia Moving Image Festival
16 – 18 July 2021
Middlesex University, London
https://kinesthesiafestival.org/

Program

Screening 1
Friday, 16 July, 6.30pm

Falling
Mary Trunk, United States, 2020, 05:19
Intertidal. Barene
Collettivo Confluenze Paloma Leyton & Lucrezia Stenico, Italy, 2019, 14:50 
We Are Ready Now
Jack Thomson, United Kingdom, 2020, 01:39
Unfurling
Alexa Velez, United States, 2019, 02:18

Screening 2
Saturday, 17 July, 12p

Reasonable Adjustments
Anna Macdonald, United Kingdom, 2020, 05:21
LAND/SCAPE
Michal Krawczyk, Italy, 2020, 07:10
Jam upload download upload jam
Sumedha Bhattacharyya, India, 2020, 06:00
notes on symptoms
Alice Gale-Feeny, United Kingdom, 2020, 12:51
This dance has no end
Fenia Kotsopoulou, Greece, 2018, 10:58

Screening 3
Saturday, 17 July, 4pm

WHITE CANE
Bo Lee Germany / Republic of Korea / Kenya, 2017, 08:16
the moon rises in four parts
Michaela Gerussi and Tracy Valcarcel, Canada, 2019, 10:00
Canis Major
Charli Brissey, United States, 2019, 10:00
Chickadee
Chan Sze-Wei, Singapore, 2018, 03:22
LIQUID PATH
Filomena Rusciano, Italy, 2013, 04:00

Screening 4
Saturday, 17 July, 7.45pm

The Washing Society
Lynne Sachs, Lizzie Olesker, United States, 2018, 44:00

Screening 5
Sunday, 18 July, 12pm

Far Flung Dances – II (The Wood)
Mary Wycherley, Ireland, 2020, 06:00
Water,logged
Sandra Alland, United Kingdom, 2020, 08:07
That’s how I remember her 
Naomi Midgelow, United Kingdom, 2020, 04:38
My Days
Katsura Isobe, United Kingdom, 2020, 05:18
Dirt
Helanius J. Wilkins, Roma Flowers, United States, 2020, 12:00

Screening 6
 Sunday, 18 July, 3.30pm

Chapter 2: A Wet Bio Coder
Better Lovers, Hsin-Yu Chen, United States, 2020, 8:28
SUNLESS
Corina Andrian (Red-Cor), Romania, 2020, 07:27
Observations
Davide Belotti, Belgium, 2020, 04:08
Lorelei – Persona
Gustavo Gomes, Germany, 2020, 07:03
Custard Is This (Custard at Dawn)
Emma Lindsay, United Kingdom, 2019, 03:15

About

Kinesthesia is a new moving image festival taking place at Middlesex University and online 16 – 18 July 2021.

Kinesthesia puts focus on the body as the agent of seeing rather than as an object of display, inviting audiences to experience film and moving image work from an embodied perspective.  

Initiated by artists Dominique Rivoal and Claire Loussouarn, this new festival has been curated and produced collectively by them, freelance film curator Gitta Wigro and co-directors of Independent Dance Heni Hale and Nikki Tomlinson. The contributing artists were found via an international open call, and selected by the festival team with guest panellist Adesola Akinleye.  

As a team we are exploring how film can be made and viewed kinaesthetically. Bringing together wide interests in dance, somatic practices, experimental film and sensory ethnography, Kinesthesia focuses on movement beyond visual impact and narrative, to consider the whole range of sensory experiences, including visceral, proprioceptive and haptic awareness.   This edition of the festival combines screenings, short workshops, installation and discursive sessions that attend to the subtler felt sense of the body. We are delighted that it will be framed by keynote speaker Karen Wood, author of Kinesthetic Empathy : Conditions for Viewing, who will speak about meeting points between screen-based practices, eco-somatics and empathy.  

We are excited to present a distinctive and truly international programme. We thank all the contributing artists, and and all those who submitted work through the call-out. We acknowledge that as a new festival with micro-funding, work is being contributed on a voluntary basis; this not-for-profit festival is also made possible through in-kind work by the whole festival team, and through partnership support from Middlesex University.  

Kinesthesia will take place in hybrid form; in person and online. In keeping with Covid-19 safety protocols, there is a limited capacity for in-person festival tickets. If circumstances allow, further tickets will be released in the coming weeks.   We look forward to welcoming you to Kinesthesia and to experiencing it with you, virtually or in person!

Kinesthesia team

Dominique Rivoal – dance and dance film maker and scholar
Claire Loussouarn – movement artist, filmmaker and anthropologist
Gitta Wigro – freelance dance film programmer and lecturer
Henrietta Hale – dance artist and co-director of Independent Dance
Nikki Tomlinson – co-director of Independent Dance

“A Month of Single Frames” Reviewed in Echinox– Romanian Cultural Magazine

“I am overwhelmed by simplicity”
By. Georgiana Bozîntan
JUNE 18, 2021
https://revistaechinox.ro/2021/06/i-am-overwhelmed-by-simplicity/

Echinox is a Romanian Cultural Magazine published by the students from “Babeş-Bolyai” University. It has been published since December 1968.

A Month of Single Frames is a short film by Lynne Sachs, released in 2019. The filming belongs to the director Barbara Hammer, who made it in 1998, during an artistic residency in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, when she lived for a month in a shack in the Duneshacks, without electricity and running water. The short film is a collage of the shots filmed there.

In voice-over , Barbara Hammer reads from the diary she wrote during her residency, describing how she feels, what she sees, recounts dreams or explains the process and filming techniques she uses, for example, to capture the light of sunrise, “This forever wonder of sunshine”, or to superimpose colored lights over the filmed landscapes.

In her speech there are also phrases that remain in your head like a poem: “I am overwhelmed by simplicity. There is so much to see ”. Nothing happens in the movie. Barbara Hammer just shows us what she sees in her time spent alone: a dragonfly, shadows, landscapes, blades of grass in the wind, clouds and planes crossing the sky, the sea, dunes, raindrops, lichens, insects, tree trunks, leaves, flowers , plastic toys.

Text also appears on the screen, as a dialogue between Lynne Sachs and Barbara Hammer, through which the intimacy between the two occupies the space of the film: “You are here. I am here with you ”,“ You are alone. I am here with you in this film. ”

Experimenting with filming techniques, the short film then increasingly turns into a meditation on the artistic view of nature, mediated by the camera and which Barbara Hammer questions, asking “Why is it I can’t see nature whole?” and pure, without artifice? ”

The film finally flows towards a discussion about time, about the process of aging and death, “the sadness of departure, the inevitable ending breath, […] the complete and thorough blankness”. As explained at the end of the short film, “in 2018, Barbara began her own process of dying by revisiting her personal archive”, and the film made by her friend is part of this process.

A Month of Single Frames is a short film about many simple and emotional things, but especially about how we perceive, through different artistic or emotional filters, the places where we live and how they are always changing.

Sphere Festival: Cinema Garage with Lynne Sachs

Cinema Garage with Lynne Sachs – Sphere
spherefestival.com
July 18, 2021

In focus: Film About a Father Who
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 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 centre of the frame yet privately ensconced in secrets. In the process, Sachs allows herself and her audience inside to see beyond the surface of the skin, the projected reality. As the startling facts mount, Sachs as a daughter discovers more about her father than she had ever hoped to reveal.

Since the 1980s, Lynne Sachs has created cinematic works that defy genre through the use of hybrid forms and cross-disciplinary collaboration, incorporating elements of the essay film, collage, performance, documentary and poetry. Her highly self-reflexive films explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. With each project, Lynne investigates the implicit connection between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself.

The Artist : Lynne Sachs
From essay films to hybrid docs to diaristic shorts, Sachs has produced 40 films as well as numerous projects for web, installation, and performance. She has tackled topics near and far, often addressing directly the challenge of translation — from one language to another or from spoken work to image. These tensions were investigated most explicitly between 1994 and 2006, when Lynne produced five essay films that took her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel, Italy and Germany—sites affected by international war–where she looked at the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions. 

Over her career, Sachs has been awarded support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. Her films have screened at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Walker and the Getty, and at festivals including New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, Punto de Vista, DocAviv, and DocLisboa. Retrospectives of her work have been presented at the Museum of the Moving Image, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Festival International Nuevo Cine in Havana, and China Women’s Film Festival. Her 2019 film “A Month of Single Frames” won the Grand Prize at Oberhausen Festival of Short Films in 2020.  

Lynne Sachs’s catalogue is represented in North America by Canyon Cinema and the Filmmaker’s Cooperative with selected features at Cinema Guild and Icarus Films. Her work is distributed internationally by Kino Rebelde. In tandem with making films, Lynne is also deeply engaged with poetry.  In 2019, Tender Buttons Press published Lynne’s first book Year by Year Poems. 

In 2021, both the Edison Film Festival and the Prismatic Ground Film Festival at the Maysles Documentary Center awarded Lynne for her body of work in the experimental and documentary fields.

The Task of the Translator
By Lynne Sachs
10 min. 2010
Premiere: Migrating Forms Film Festival, New York, NY May 2010

Lynne Sachs pays homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” through three studies of the human body. First, she listens to the musings of a wartime doctor grappling with the task of a kind of cosmetic surgery for corpses. Second, she witnesses a group of Classics scholars confronted with the haunting yet whimsical task of translating a newspaper article on Iraqi burial rituals into Latin. And finally, she turns to a radio news report on human remains.

In “The Task of the Translator,” Lynne Sachs turns her original, probing eye to the ways in which we struggle to put words to the horrifying realities of War. In her subtle, trademark shifting between the intimate, personal space of a few individuals and the cavernous, echoing ambiguity of larger, moral questions, Sachs stakes out unsettling territory concerning what it means–what it feels like–to be made into unwitting voyeurs of Mankind’s most grotesque doings. At the same time we find she is also talking, with startling deftness, about the way that all artists are, in the end, engaged in the task of the translator: stuck with the impossible task of rendering imponderables, unutterable, and unsayables, into neat representations to be consumed, digested, perhaps discarded. We are not, however, left despairing; a pair of hands, caught again and again in the beautiful motion of gesticulation, is far from helpless or mute. This image captures, rather, the supreme eloquence of the effort to translate, and the poignant hope represented by this pungent, memorable film itself.”Shira Nayman author of The Listener and Awake in the Dark, both of which “ explore the havoc historical trauma plays with the psyche.

The Small Ones
By Lynne Sachs
3 min. colour sound 2007
(from 16mm and video)
Screenings: Tribeca Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Black Maria FilmFest (Award), Dallas Video Festival, Pacific Film Archive, MadCatFilm Fest

During WWII, the US Army Graves Registration Service hired the filmmaker’s Hungarian cousin, Dr Sandor Lenard, to reconstruct the bones–small and large–of dead American soldiers. This elliptical work, which resonates as an anti-war meditation, is composed of excerpts of Sandor’s letters to Sachs’ family, highly abstracted war imagery and home movies of children at a birthday party.

“Profound. The soundtrack is amazing. The image at the end of the girl with the avocado seed is so hopeful. Good work.” – Barbara Hammer, filmmaker

“Photograph of Wind”
by Lynne Sachs
16mm, b&w and colour, 4 min. 2001
SCREENINGS: San Francisco Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival

My daughter’s name is Maya. I’ve been told that the word Maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy. As I watch her growing up, spinning like a top around me, I realize that her childhood is not something I can grasp but rather–like the wind–something I feel tenderly brushing across my cheek.

“Sachs suspends in time a single moment of her daughter.” – Fred Camper, Chicago Reader

ABOUT SPHERE

https://spherefestival.com/

We strive to identify the problems of multidisciplinary objects and find a concrete and practical panacea with the extensive and experiential applications across the streams of science, art and social philosophy to construct an alternative culture in earth.

“A Month of Single Frames” at Short Waves Festival (Poland)

Short Waves Festival – Online Program Guide
06/02/2021
https://shortwaves.pl/en/13-short-waves-festival-online-program-guide/

A Month of Single Frames will be featured in the program “The Art of Looking (Sztuka Patrzenia)” on June 16, 2021

There are a lot of quotes and comments about art being a mirror that reflects society. However, as cliche as that might sound, there is a grain of truth in this statement. The five films presented in this program are a proof that art does not only serve the masses but also individuals. From a very personal video diary of a queer artist, an insane journey through the history of mankind, to the AI humanoid that questions the state of gender equality – all of them thoroughly analyze the Self through many different creative forms. Subtle and intimate stories mix with broad perspectives on the art industry driven by the same phenomenon: passion for observing the human beings.

01. Shānzhai Screens, France 2020. Documentary. 23′. Director: Paul Heintz

02. AIVA, Germany, Bulgaria 2020. Animation/Experimental. 13′. Director: Veneta Androva

03. La Chute (The Fall), France 2018. Animation. 14′. Director: Boris Labb 

04. Ella i jo, Spain 2020. Fiction. 20′. Director: Jaume Claret Muxart

05. A Month of Single Frames, United States 2019. Documentary. 14′. Director: Lynne Sachs

13. Short Waves Festival – Online Program Guide

Short Waves Festival is being presented in a hybrid format again, and we would like to invite all our audience members who cannot join us locally in Poznań to discover our carefully selected program via the Filmchief Hub platform. The online program allows our viewers to choose from over 120 films divided into multiple sections.

We are going to welcome you with a unique program section: Mirror Mirror: Look at me. The protagonists of selected short films are going to help us explore online reality, take a closer look at human ways and consequences of social media immersion present in our everyday life. The festival motto is also going to be examined in the Polish Experimental Film Competition section – 15 films that fit perfectly into the online context, exploring the relationship between a human being, their physical presence and the Internet – the world that is elusive, strange and familiar at the same time.

So you’d like to learn more about Austrian cinema? We’re on it! We will be presenting a program of 17 films for an entire week, curated by Peter Schernhuber – the director of Diagonale, an Austrian short film festival. Take in the essence of cinematography delivered by our neighbors who are a bit further away – placed at the intersection of various film styles, smoothly engaging both analog and digital structures, presenting a spectrum of subjects associated with historical and interpersonal relationships.

We must mention our four special programs – Spotlight contains four film sets presenting the works of local and international artists. We are going to watch animated films created by Piotr Bosacki – experimental artist whose strength lies in his ability to analyze familiar objects in an unconventional way. We are also going to have a close encounter with Lithuanian cinema while watching a retrospective of films created by Laurynas Bareiša – editor, director, and cinematographer who meticulously examines our complicated morality. For dance fans – a set of French films produced by an institution that supports dance cinematographers – DAN.CIN.LAB, productions that analyze global social processes through physical expression. We are also going to familiarize ourselves with subtle and intimate cinema of Kino Rebelde – a film agency from Spain that combines the beauty of film poetic and deep social engagement with a particular skill that is going to leave you in awe!

To cool off a bit and give in to sweet, chill vibes, try out our entertainment section that is going to be touching, hilarious and full of ironic commentaries on the contemporary world. Every two days, we are going to present a new film set: Comedy Shorts with its dark humor, Horror Shorts with its delirious journey into the depths of human psyche, Queer Shorts that scream: we’re proud of who we are!, and Kinky Shorts taking a closer look at our sexual needs. And on top of that – Awesome Shorts: Here and Now – a set of the most colorful and fresh music videos prepared by our programmer Anna Golon!

Together with Cinema in Sneakers, a film festival for children and youth, we have prepared a program dedicated to our younger audience – SWF for Kids, consisting of film journeys that are going to allow us to take a closer look at important subjects such as otherness, independence and equality.

After our Award Ceremony that is going to be streamed live on the platform, the winning titles are going to be available in the SWF Awarded section, presented online in three sets – find out which films have been selected, not only by our international jury, but also the audience in Poznań – and rate them yourselves!

If you have purchased access to This is Short platform, you’re also going to have access to Four Perspectives on Solidarity: Women’s Rights are Human Rights, a program that explores the concept of solidarity by presenting films touching upon the subjects of gender equality and fight for women’s rights. In addition to that, we are going to host two industry meetings inspired by the idea of solidarity: a case study of gender inequality in the film industry and a discussion panel on the future of film festivals.

Most films are going to be available without geoblocks, with Polish and English subtitles, SWF for Kids films will be presented with a Polish dubbing speaker and subtitles in English.

In Poznań or ONLINE – let’s meet at Short Waves Festival!

About Short Waves

Short Waves Festival is one of the most significant Polish festivals presenting exclusively short films.

It’s a constellation of cinematic events scattered around Poznań’s urban landscape. Competition screenings are its core – sets of short films encompassing five categories: International Competition, Polish Competition, Dances with Camera, Urban View and Polish Experimental Short Film Competition.

Short Waves Festival additionally presents unconventional screening selections such as Comedy, Horror and Kinky Shorts, focus program (including geographic focus – we will be presenting the cinematography of Austria during the 2021 edition), industry segment, audiovisual events, music events. It also reaches beyond the screening room: open airs, clubs, art galleries, theatres and Poznanians’ private gardens known as Random Garden Cinema series. Thanks to the continuation of the new hybrid form introduced in 2020, those seven days of June are going to consist of events and screenings taking place both offline in Poznań as well as online.

Online Exhibition Presented by SFAA: “Labor and Immigration”

LABOR AND IMMIGRATION
Online Exhibition Presented by SFAA
June 2021
https://www.sfartistsalumni.org/2021-labor-and-immigration

SF Artists Alumni (SFAA)  is seeking submissions of image and video based works by SFAI alumni for the SF Artists Alumni’s exhibition project Labor and Immigration. This exhibition will take place over two months on the SFAA Instagram Exhibitions Platform @sfartistsalumni, starting in June and continuing through late July. Five of the participating artists will be invited to speak about their work in more depth in an open Zoom platform talk discussion on June 19th moderated by SFAA Exhibitions & Program Lead Beth Davila Waldman. All participating artists will be encouraged to attend and participate in a lively discussion surrounding this project.

Panel Discussion with Artists

On June 19th, 10 AM PDT, SFAA Exhibitions & Program Lead Beth Davila Waldman will lead a Zoom talk discussion with five of the participating artists, Lynne Sachs, Pablo D’Antoni, Rosario Sotelo, Irene Carvajal, Joshua Hashemzadeh, about their works. 

Register Here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkc-qvpjwpE9FSpry3r37DsZUO0hocBZ9l

Gallery

Featured Artists:
Ruth Chase, Orlando Lacro, Phil Pasquini, Margi Weir, Lynne Sachs, Sand Pitaru, Pablo D’Antoni, Martin Machado, Joshua Hashemzadeh, Wayne Levin, Eric Reyes-Lamothe, Rosario Sotelo, Eleni Exarchou, Chris Vena, Roberto Jackson Harrington, Judy (Zhu) Zhu, Mike Callaghan, Zimo Zhao, Guillermo Pulido, Gera Lozano, Rosario Sotelo, Oscar Lopez, Pamela Pitt, Irene Carvajal, Luba Zygarewicz, Cristina Velazquez, Nasim Moghadam.

Argus Courier: Answering unanswerable questions through art

Argus Courier
by CLARK MILLER
June 17, 2021
https://www.petaluma360.com/article/entertainment/answering-unanswerable-questions-through-art/?fbclid=IwAR0yzTPffW_3H-Eu–DxJ0gBh1e7s1vRUx_WgOZQ1bGLsgSqhSt1vWWICTY

When Petaluma artist Carol Ceres succumbed at 56 to cancer last January, the quick rise of COVID-19 prevented any public memorial or retrospective exhibit of her work. Now, thanks to a new group show at the Petaluma Arts Center, art lovers can meet Ceres through her work and that of her circle of mostly LGBTQ artists.

The show’s title, Undertakes to Answer, is a phrase taken from the poem “Conversation” by Elizabeth Bishop. When visitors step into the center’s lobby, the first thing they see is a large reproduction of the 12-line poem, which begins “The tumult in the heart keeps asking questions. And then it stops and undertakes to answer.”

This is the center’s first Pride Month-related exhibit.

“What I love about the show’s title is that there are so many unanswerable questions in the world, but art undertakes to answer them anyway,” said Brittany Brown Ceres, the spouse of the artist, who passed away just 20 days after her diagnosis. The Ceres’s moved to Petaluma with their two young children in 2017.

The subtitle of the show, which runs through July 10, is “LGBTQIA+ Artists (and Allies) of the U.S. West & East [Carol Ceres and Her Circle].”

It brings together 23 artists, with 37 works in varied media. While most of the artists in the show identify as members of the LGBTQ community, curator Jonathan Marlow urges visitors to not bring their preconceptions. The show is neither sexualized nor thematically about identity.

As a program director for the center, Marlow recruited Ceres to teach at summer art camps for several years. With assistance from painter Mary Fassbinder, he put together the show to pay tribute to both Ceres’ art and her character.

Marlow’s own background combines art and technology. Formerly of Seattle, he was one of the first 100 Amazon employees. He later moved to San Francisco, where he and two others founded Fandor, a subscription service and social video sharing platform that operated from 2011 to 2019. He now works in film distribution.

The heart of the show is the five-piece “Trust Series” by Ceres, which takes up much of a long wall in the gallery. Each painting features an intense closeup of two bodies, cropped to achieve a near-abstract quality. The images variously suggest caring, sensuality, grieving — and dance, appropriately enough, given Brown Ceres’ background as a dancer and choreographer.

There are three other pieces by Ceres in the show.

Bookending the long wall where “Trust” hangs, two large paintings by East Bay artist Christine Ferrouge evoke an aspect of LGBTQ culture that is finally in the ascendant — that of family and children. The Ferrouge and Ceres families were neighbors until the latter moved to Petaluma.

In “The Day After the Costume Party,” the artist’s two young daughters are joined by Ceres’ young daughter in a garden. Still in their costumes, the girls smile at the viewer, exuding camaraderie and joy.

The other Ferrouge painting, “The Huddle,” suggests the mystery of childhood. A group of five young girls, most with their backs to the viewer, conspire together while one of them keeps a watchful eye on us.

“Christine’s work is exploding in the art world,” said Brown Ceres. “It’s exciting to see.”

Petaluma artist Garth Bixler is represented by a series of color studies he has done during COVID-19. Previously on the center’s board of directors, Bixler is also an art collector, and several of the works he loaned the show are intriguing. There are three photos created by John Dugdale using an updated version of cyanography, a 19th century photographic technique. Instead of black & white, the images emerge in tones of blue. The effect is old-and-new and rather uncanny. In “The Stairway,” a ghostly shadow hovers near the top of a steep, plain stairway.

Bixler also loaned the show two works by David Linger, who achieves a similar old-new effect by silk-screening dim, dark photo portraits he took in Russia onto thin porcelain.

There are many such delights in the show.

“Lota and Bishop,” a small construction-collage by Barbara Hammer, pays tribute to the poet Bishop (1911-1979), who lived in Brazil with Maria Carlota de Macedo Soares for many years. Hammer, who died in 2019, and filmmaker Lynne Sachs, also created “A Month of Single Frames,” one of the two short films that run continuously in the background of the show. The other film, “Eastern State,” was made by Talena Sanders, an assistant professor at Sonoma State University.

Petaluma artist Robin Bordow’s large painting “23 Blue” suggests the ultimate diamond, cut with hundreds of facets to hypnotic effect. Bordow is the director-manager of City Art Gallery in Petaluma. She is also a professional drummer.

Ceres had many friends in the art world, several of whom are in the show. In addition to Ferrouge, there is Russell Ryan, with the painting “Deer Jawbone with Cast Iron Rabbit and Poppies,” and Oakland artist Hadley Williams, who has three abstract paintings on display.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Ceres attended the Art Institute of Chicago on scholarship and moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s, eventually becoming a member of City Art Gallery. She met Brittany Brown in 1998. When Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the legalization of gay marriage in February 2004, Ceres and Brown were 11th in line to get married. The couple spent a decade in Oakland, where their children were born.

During the pandemic, Ceres painted at the dining room table every day.

“Up until a few weeks before her terminal diagnosis and despite COVID, Carol was also teaching art to the Grant Elementary kids here in our open-air driveway,” said Brown Ceres. “I was thrilled for her to be using art as healing, weaving her painting in between school and meals with our kids.”

Initially, she assumed this daily art meditation was primarily a coping mechanism during such a stressful period.

“At the time, I did not understand that it was a part of her dying,” said Brown Ceres. “But then again, she was such a unique soul and never failed to surprise us — especially with her profound wit and imagery. What was so important to Carol was that young artists, especially LGBTQ artists who may feel marginalized, have the chance to make art.”

Throughout her life, Carol Ceres’ goal, remarked Marlow, “was always to help younger, emerging artists find their way in a competitive art world.”

To that goal of supporting artists, as part of the Undertakes to Answer show, there will be a panel discussion at the center on June 19 at 2 p.m. Several artists will discuss how the artist makes the work and the work makes the artist. The Zoom-platform panel will be moderated by Josephine Willis, a niece of the Ceres family and an art student in Milwaukee.

Inspired as it is by the work and legacy of Carol Ceres, the gathering of artists to discuss what art matters seems a fitting and appropriate way to honor someone who was constantly inspired by and actively inspired others, though her art and through the example of how she lived her life.

“You never know when a piece of art will influence or change someone,” said Brown Ceres. “If it changes one person’s life, doesn’t that matter?”

Clint Roenisch Gallery presents “A Month of Single Frames” as a part of the exhibition “A Temple Most August”

10 June – 1 September
https://clintroenisch.com/

Clint Roenisch Gallery is pleased to present our summer group show, A Temple Most August. The exhibition brings together artists from London, Vienna, Moncton, Brussels, Toronto, Santa Fe, Montreal and Brooklyn, presenting paintings on silk and linen, glasswork, photography, an amphora, photocollage, textiles, embroideries, and a mesmerizing film. After a trying winter and reluctant spring the exhibition heralds the unfurling of more canicular days, verdant and open, the senses receptive. In 1672 a haiku master in Edo began to attract a steady following of disciples, who supplied him with a small hut in which he could write and teach. A banana tree, exotic to Japan, was planted in front of the hut, and pleased the poet so much that he took for his writing name “Bashō,” the Japanese word for “banana plant.” 

“Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!”

– Bashō, circa 1688

Featured Artists
Abdul Sharif Baruwa
Anna Torma
Emma Talbot
Heather Goodchild
Jennifer Murphy
Lorna Bauer
Lynne Sachs
Sarah Cale
Willard van Dyke

#ATempleMostAugust

Cinema Parallels (Bosnia) Presents a Focus on Lynne Sachs

Cinema Parallels
June 10- 12, 2021
Curated by Adriana Trujillo
https://cinemaparallels.com/en/program/

Edition 2021

The most important question for us in a post-pandemic period was: Do we really need a film festival?

Even when we haven’t return to a total recover, we still need vaccination the total of our population, people are now suffering so many losts, and the virus is still out there.

But the answer to all of this is questions is yes! we need to make reality, the festival again here in Banja Luka. If we believe in images as a language of encounter, in the role of the independent voices and the power of the community, then a film festival is not a distraction or a non-essential activity. It’s actually a necessary coming together.

We want to make sense of our moment, and to try to re-imagine how important is the art in our past time of isolation, in our daily life and in our dreams of a common future.

See you in the cinema soon, and please:

Don’t forget your mask!

About selection

The selection of this year proposes a fluid cartography that explore our current situation as humans. It is more than evident that the pandemic changed the whole society and these dramatic changes and new scenarios also affect films, cinemas and the way “we see”. The current situation with Covid-19, will also be reflected in this year’s festival program, not only in terms of safety measures and limited audience, but also in the form we propose the narrative of this edition that we name it: Re-imagine audio-visions: The present as our future.

For the image of this edition (the poster) we selected the portrait the now famous cover of the Italian magazine La Domenica del Corrier (16, December of 1962), by Walter Molino, where we can see a saturated street of New York, with people in their individual transportation, in a kind of an “individual-personal bubble”, that is actually a “singoletta” (personal bicycle), imagined by Molino as a solution for traffic, but with the pandemic and the social isolation in context, we cannot avoided to connected his retro-futuristic creative projection of our surreal present, here is why we re-call the edition; The present as our future. With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.

With this premise in mind, our selection departs precisely from the future. The first day of Cinema Parallels, we will open with: Space Dogs režija: Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, followed by Lúa vermella režija: Lois Patiño, both films projecting contexts in resemble mirror format, we will see realities from an equidistant visualities.

The second day of the festival we will have Srećan Božić, Yiwu (Merry Christmas, Yiwu) režija: Mladen Kovačević, followed by LYNNE SACHS TRIBUTE with the Washing Society, Tornado, The Small Ones and E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo. The second day we are focused on a retro-visor mirror, about our social and geo-political contexts, and the last day of festival is dedicated to the personal, to our bodies, to our house and intimate spaces, this day we take “our dressing mirror”, we will project Things We Dare Not Do, režija: Bruno Santamaría.

We will close with a regional documentary selection of shorts that we name PARALLELS JOY: Sunce, vrati se (Sunshine, Come Back) režija: Milica Jokić, Korijeni režija: Stefan Tomić, Osamdeset dinara (Eighty Serbian Dinars) režija: Inma de Reyes, University of Disaster and Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow režija: Radenko Milak and Zašto mama vazda plače? (Why is Mom Always Crying?) režija: Karmen Obrdalj.

The pandemic has severely hit the entire audiovisual sector and the situation remains critical in many places, therefore, it is important to organize a film festival, but also, is important to support international and local filmmakers and films. We think in the cinema as a place of resistance; we believe that seeing a movie with other people in a theatre is a powerful and irreplaceable experience, and also is a key place for the encounter with other visions and expand our points of view, at the end, is all about to be exposed to different contexts, realities and images, and from there try to understand us more and more as society, as humans.

See you at the cinema!

Adriana Trujillo

Program

Thursday, June 10

18.00 Festival Opening

18.15 Space Dogs / Dir. Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter / 91 min. / 2019 /Austria – Germany

(Q&A: with Simon Peter, Sound Designer of the film)

20.30 Red Moon Tide Dir. Lois Patiño / 84 min. / 2020 / Spain

Friday, June 11

18.00 Merry Christmas, Yiwu / Dir. Mladen Kovacevic / 94 min. / Serbia
(panel discussion with representatives of the Confucius Institute, University of Banja Luka)
20.30  FOCUS ON LYNNE SACHS
 The Washing Society / 44 min. / 2018 / United States
 Tornado / 4 min. / 2002 / United States
 The Small Ones / 3 min. / 2006 / United States
 E•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo / 5 min. / 2021 / United States

Saturday, June 12

18.00 Things We Dare Not Do / Dir. Bruno Santamaría / 75 min. / 2020 / México
20.00 PARALLELS JOY: DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM SELECTION

 Sunshine, Come Back/ Dir. Milica Jokic / 12:23 / 2017 / Serbia
 The Roots / Dir. Stefan Tomic / 15:40 / 2020 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Eighty Serbian Dinars / Dir. Inma de Reyes / 10 min. / 2019 / Serbia
 University of Disaster / Dir. Radenko Milak / 13:21 / 2017 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Dreaming of Prey to Grasp Shadow / Dir. Radenko Milak / 6:45 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Why is Mom Always Crying? / Dir. Karmen Obrdalj / 15:38 / 2019 / Bosnia and Herzegovina
(Q&A: Panel with short film directors, producers, artist and filmmakers)

About Cinema Parallels

Cinema Parallels is devoted to supporting independent and innovative films, screening cinema of the real in all it’s forms and diversity, through a special curatorial selection of international and regional contemporary films in the heart of the Balkans.


Cinema Parallels will celebrate its second edition during spring in Banja. Cinema Parallels is organized by Video Kabinet developed with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Srpska Republic and in partnership with Gradsko Pozorište Jazavac.

Background

The art should ask questions, for which there are often no answers, that it is the basis for the exchange of ideas. Films encourages critical thinking, freedom of expression and creativity, and only then ceases to be goods and entertainment and become culture and art. A culture makes the identity of a city, state, or country. In this context, a festival of contemporary cinema is absolutely necessary for Banja Luka as a epicenter of the Republic of Srpska.

Cinema Parallels born in 2019, with the main idea to develop a place to share, an encounter of unique points of views that are been able to question our world. We are dedicated to program and support moving-image works with singular voices in productions from all around the world in different formats, capturing reality from a different perfective and a wide range of contemporary non-fiction, and bring this productions to the city.

Last year, our festival, like all other cultural projects was postpone.

We explored the possibility of a virtual encounter, buy finally we decide to continue in 2021. We wait until now to recover experiences, audience and images, with the firm and original purpose to keep confronting our world. Believing that films are a point of encounter and a universal language, keeping the idea that in our unprecedent time, conversations and encounters are now act of resistance.

Cine-File on Onion City Experimental Film Festival & “Maya at 24”

Cine-File
Friday, June 4 – Thursday, June 10 2021
by Marilyn Ferdinand
https://www.cinefile.info/

ONION CITY EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL

The Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival, presented by Chicago Filmmakers, opens on Wednesday and runs through June 13 with a mix of online screenings and in-person events. While all of the online group screenings are available for the full length of the festival, we are splitting our reviews over this week’s list and next week’s, based on when the Q&A sessions are scheduled; check next week’s list for additional reviews. The full schedule and more info are here.

Program 1: Family Time Changes

Available to view between June 9 – 13; purchase tickets here

The vagaries of memory and assumptions made in the absence of real information are the subjects of director Paige Taul’s TOO SMALL TO BE A BEAR (2020, 5 min). Taul interviews her sister Jessie about their father, a short man nicknamed Cub who lost his chance to play professional baseball because he missed the bus going to the Negro League tryout. As Jessie theorizes that this unrealized ambition made him give up on his life, we see archival footage that focuses on No. 15 of the Indianapolis Clowns, a team that played in the style of the Harlem Globetrotters. His clowning seems to stand for the hopeless man who became a drunk over his missed opportunity. When Taul turns to her mother for reminiscences about her husband, the film cuts in and out as Dorothy tries to remember who played which positions. All that remains for her is the enjoyment baseball brought to the community. Luis Arnías’ MALEMBE (2020, 12 min), filmed in both Venezuela and the United States, is a memory film of a South American immigrant to the U.S. In Venezuela, we see a young boy in a soldier’s uniform in front of a bronze bust of some long-ago hero; is he a stand-in for Arnías? A parade, some elderly women sitting in a sunbaked courtyard, an abandoned ballpark with the sound of voices and crowds of years past—all give way to a winter scene, and a white woman and a young girl shoveling snow, and Arnías’ beloved tropical fruit frozen and unpalatable. As he chokes on some seeds, he spits out his tongue, his native language no longer acceptable in a country where his people clash with the police. With AVANTI! (2020, 8 min), EJ Nussbaum takes a short dive into the world of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist founder of the Italian Communist Party who was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascists in 1926 and died a few days after his release in 1937. In three vignettes, Nussbaum dramatizes Gramsci’s poetry and philosophical writing. Most touching are his letters to his son, Giuliano, whom he never met, and his meditation on whether loving the masses is really possible if one doesn’t love someone personally. Amusingly, he criticizes the quality of the photos his wife sends him, but admits they are still of interest to him. Amber Bemak and Angelo Madsen Minax’s video TWO SONS & A RIVER OF BLOOD (2021, 11 min) considers containers—pyramids, empty rooms, wombs—and how they are filled. The sexy beginning celebrating procreation and the anticipation of new life gives way to a sad, matter-of-fact consideration of emptiness. In the final scene, the filmmakers affirm that life goes on. In MAYA AT 24 (2021, 4 min), Lynne Sachs turned a fanciful gaze on her daughter, Maya Street-Sachs, through images she filmed in 2001, 2013, and 2019 running and spinning. The black-and-white images are overlaid with created film dust and pops, as well as intricate, animated designs that suggest the increasing complexity of the person Maya has become. Loving and beautiful, Sachs’ short is mesmerizing. In BORDER (2020, 5 min), Bryan Angarita recalls the day his brother was denied entry into the United States and how their mother visits him in the border town where he lives. The opening image of a tree-lined river viewed through what appears to be a screen window becomes obscured as the lines of the screen shift and reconfigure themselves as a border fence, a gun sight, a target, and other forms. The plain, black-and-white title cards seem devoid of emotion, but the Google Earth logo in the corner of many of the images speaks to the constant surveillance Angarita senses. LETTER FROM YOUR FAR-OFF COUNTRY (2020, 18 min) puts director Suneil Sanzgiri and his father together through Zoom and text messaging to discuss their family history, specifically, Prabhakar Sanzgiri, a writer, activist, and Communist Party leader in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Inspired by a prose poem written in the form of a letter, the director writes to his long-dead relative with news and questions, particularly about the 1989 rebellion in Kashmir that led to the death of Safdar Hashmi, a communist playwright and director, and the disappearance and murder of thousands of people. History, Sanzgiri says, runs through the personal lives of those who live it. His mission is to discover some kind of truthful continuity through art. [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Artist Q&A for Program 1 is on Wednesday, June 9 at 7pm; register here.