Upcoming Screenings Online/Week of August 30th

 Top Picks for Art Online Week of August 30th

At Home With Mike Kelley: Day Is Done (2005/2006)
Mike Kelley Foundation and Electronic Arts Intermix/Online Film + Streaming Talk
August 27-September 9, 2020/ Free

Pushing through the giant steel and glass doors of a gallery I was engulfed in an alternate reality, a spinning suburban basement offset by high school musical sets and dizzying film projections. I came across framed yearbook photos (vintage from some weird irksome, outdated past) met with vibrant, gaudy, present-day recreated photos, the backdrops for the new scenes sitting idly by (a giant homemade rocket ship, a makeshift altar). Mike Kelley's installation Day Is Done reminded of the inherent dark side of genre/pop-art (and of America), the colors and iconography of everyday culture singed at the edges, lies hidden behind a facade of makeup, poorly crocheted dolls, homemade horse costumes: the artifice of life the fodder for even more artifice. The Mike Kelley Foundation, in conjunction with Electronic Arts Intermix, have been showcasing the artist's work online and this one is one not to miss. Moments of intense frivolity and epic myth-making stuffed with the nation's longing, eerily fitting for the times.

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Genre Film as Political and Social Commentary
Fantasia Film Festival hosted by Film Fatales/Zoom Webinar
August 30, 2020/Free with Registration

Genre cinema is generally described as films that deal with a specific set of expectations, an outline of who and what will unfold onscreen eases one into a nostalgia coma (think: most Westerns have a gunslinger. And a horse.). Genres often have a set of symbols whose meaning is maintained across films (the cowboy = freedom, the gun = power, the damsel in distress = generalized misogyny). But, sometimes a genre film will subvert stereotypes or play upon its expectations. One of my personal favorite examples of this is the grossly underlooked feminist rape-revenge, Indonesian Western Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts-- and yes, there are horses! Genre film can take on huge issues and wrap them in a warm familiar blanket making the questioning of oppressive and suppressive norms feel socially acceptable. Fantasia Film Festival is a genre film fest and, in conjunction with the filmmaker's collective Film Fatales, a stellar group of women horror directors (including Jennifer Reeder image above and Mattie Do image below) will hold an online discussion exploring the power of the genre film. 

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Crip Bits: #NoBodyIsDisposable Film + Panel
Sins Invalid/Online Screening + Talk
August 31, 2020/6pm PDT/ Free, Donations encouraged

Sins Invalid was established in 2006 and is a "disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ/gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid’s performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body, developing provocative work where paradigms of 'normal' and 'sexy' are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all bodies and communities." This event will screen a documentary about the group followed by a discussion with some of the performers. A range of topics will be covered in the conversation including climate chaos and the politics of disposibility-- the latter something that has been on my mind a lot lately as Covid-19 ravages from so many different angles of physicality (human, medical, economic, environmental).

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A Live Conversation on Mr. Soul!
Portland Museum of Art with Indigo Arts Alliance/Facebook Live Discussion 
September 2, 2020/7-8pmET/Discussion Free, Film Rental $12 

Soul! was a variety television show that aired on PBS in the late 60s, early 70s. The host was Ellis Haizlip, the first Black producer of WNET and the Uncle of the director of the film Mr. Soul! (2018). The amount of talent that came across Haizlip's stage is staggering. Toni Morrison made her debut here. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was cornered by the host on some of his beliefs. James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Betty Shabazz-- even Earth, Wind & Fire!-- all made appearances on this iconic show. The film, which is available to rent online via the Portland Museum of Art's website, is a fast-paced ride through its history and impact, its expression of the multitudes of Black culture a pure and vital thing celebrated through the work of the tv show and also through this film & talk. The lineup for this live discussion event is pretty damn stellar, featuring filmmaker Melissa Haizlip, musician/writer/storyteller/King of the Buskers Samuel James, Sonia Sanchez (the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia), Felipe Luciano (The Last Poets & The Young Lords Party), and Abiodun Oyewole (The Last Poets).

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Virtual Q&A with Werner Herzog
Film Forum at Home/Live Q&A via Youtube
Sept 2, 2020/6pm EDT/Free

Who doesn't want to hear the stern philosophical musings of Werner Herzog? His thick German accent punishing your inadequacies or questioning your motivations? I once heard him say the word "butterfingers" in a Q&A and it felt like some sort of soul-piercing critique of humanity and lust. He. is. a. legend. This Q&A is in conjunction with Film Forum's screenings of Herzog's latest Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (2019). In the film, Herzog embarks on a journey following his late friend Bruce Chatwin who, on his deathbed, gifted Herzog his rucksack, well-worn from his life as a travel writer, journalist and novelist. Sheffield born, Chatwin traveled to far flung places such as Patagonia and the hinterlands of Australia. His death was a complicated affair, secretly suffering from AIDS and other ailments, his sexuality obscured, his diagnosis deflected (including increasingly tall tales as to how he fell ill on his adventures, one of which included contracting a fungus in a bat cave). Chatwin is the ultimate Herzog-ian anti-hero: an unfinished end, a fierce passion, a mortal anguish turned into rebirth and immortalization through film.

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Please send recs for upcoming weeks to: donnak3[at]gmail[dot]com

Upcoming Screenings Online/Week of August 23rd

 Top Picks for Art Online Week of August 23rd

Note: I'm disappointed now that museums are beginning to open in-person that online content is already starting to wane. I was excited to see so many big-name art institutions move online, it felt like a physical barrier had been broken, a small step towards dissolving some of the inherent elitist boundaries that plague access to the art/film worlds (well, for those with access to internet. And other technology.-- side-eye world, side. eye.). Sharing is caring. And also the dissolution of oppressive hierarchies that create structural inequality. :)

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Cinema-19 commissioned by Usama Alshaibi and Adam Sekuler

Anthology Film Archives, co-presented w/Zeitgeist Theatre and Lounge & Northwest Film Forum/Online Screening

August 19-Ends Fall 2020/Free

A series of 190 second short films from 14 filmmakers in response to Covid-19. The lineup captures the early ache of the pandemic with a mix of claustrophobia, clawing anxiety, trippy night terrors, windows & screens frames to the world, the collective turning inward followed by an outward expression of pain and protest. Each vision is highly individual but shares in the creepy commonality of an unprecedented real-life horror film invisibly unfolding in the world outside. The films are presented in one long stream with no credits separating them adding to the sense of endless, existential dread as days bleed into one another, the calendar a formless blob as lives are flattened out into a strange, forced simulacra-- great curation!

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From the Vaults 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Collection of online streams

New Films added each month of 2020/Free

To celebrate the Metropolitan Museum of Arts' 50th Anniversary they have been reaching into their video vaults each month to present a handful of work, a huge range of work from process videos, to archival memories, to full-on video art pieces. One of this week's additions is Shorelines (1977) by Al Jarnow, an experimental, animated trip to the sea in which shells and rocks and sand and seaweed flicker onscreen, dancing in a frame-by-frame ballet that makes me long for the Summer days of dense wet sand under my feet, when my only fear was of sunburn and riptide (not maskless humans shoulder to shoulder spreading droplets). While exploring this trove of films I got swept up in a piano player speaking on his creation of a score for a silent film, a film from 1972 that documented educational experimental-happening-performance-art visits from area children and also a film from 1926 titled The Pottery Maker, a beautiful, delicate black and white journey around the potter's wheel. Lots of treasures! 

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David Vaughan's The Dance Historian Is In: with host Joanna Dee Das

New York Public Library, Jerome Roberts Dance Division/ Online Zoom screening and talk

August 26, 2020/1-2pm ET/Free  w/Eventbrite Registration

David Vaughn was the Merce Cunningham Dance Company archivist who, from 2012-2017, held monthly screenings of his favorite dance films from the collection of the New York Public Library. Vaughan passed away in Fall 2017 but the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the library continues to hold screenings in his honor hosted by an array of special guests. This month Joanna Dee Das will screen and speak on the dance work of Katherine Dunham, the subject of her award-winning book Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (2017). Dunham's life spanned careers and interests, each overlapping one another as a social pioneer, anthropologist, author, educator and dancer. Her outspoken activism spanned her entire adult life: during the tours of her dance company in the 40s and 50s she would often refuse to perform in places that practiced segregation, at the age of 83, in 1992, she went on a 47-day hunger strike to protest the treatment of the Haitian boat refugees, a culture whose Vodun dance she studied extensively. I think I need to read this book.

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Quest (2017) by Jonathan Olshefski

POV co-presented by Black Public Media/Online Streaming

Limited Run/Free 

Over eight years filmmaker Jonathan Olshefski embedded himself in the lives of the Rainey family in North Philadephia. Falling into scenes without notice, Olshefski's camera covers the most intimate moments of their lives, vivid scenes that span all kinds of social and political issues but also show a tender portrait of an all-American family, their conflict and pain but, even more importantly, their love. With brilliant editing from Lindsay Utz, this film is able to take spans of time and weave them into the type of film where one just feels like they are dropped into the lives of its subjects, dipping in and out of the mundane and the life-altering: an overarching sense of universal inhaling and exhaling. It's unclear how long this film will continue to stream online but it is one worth checking out, one that perfectly echoes a time, place and people through respectful, poignant filmmaking. 

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Hearts in Isolation by Various Artists
Studio Museum of Harlem, Expanding /Online Exhibition
Ongoing/Free

Yes, teenagers are all image-makers now. But, what sets this exhibition apart from Instagram and TikTok is the intention. This exhibition of high school and GED photographers is part of the Studio Museum of Harlem's Expanding the Walls program that is about "yearning and reaching to a new moment." It sees past the immediate present and focuses more on the connectivity inherent in image-making, the shared experience of exhibition, the world as it exists on two sides of the lens, the long tradition of photography-- technique and history. The program is deeply rooted in the archives of Harlem Renaissance photographer James VanDerZee whose work acted as a document of early 20th Century Harlem but also as a collaborative expression of cultural and personal identities. The end result of the Expanding the Walls program culminates in a group show, this year being presented online with the theme Hearts in Isolation. Seeing art that thinks twice before snapping with an understanding that images exist beyond today's (this hour's? minute's) feed, imbues these images with a sense of hope and pause, a future beyond the current competing crises and the 24-hr digital image cycle.

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Please send recs for upcoming weeks to: donnak3[at]gmail[dot]com

Upcoming Screenings Online/Week of August 16th

 Top Picks for Art Online Week of August 16th

Fortunes of the Forest: Divination, Dance, and Story with Dr. C.F. Black, Amaara Raheem & Caitlin Franzmann

New Museum/Online Zoom Webinar, Livestreamed Participatory Performance

August 18th, 2020/ 8pm ET/Free w/Registration

Ensayos: Passages is part of the New Museum's first Education and Public Engagement online residency program. As stated on their website, Ensayos is "a collective research practice initiated on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in 2010. Ensayos’ issue-based research methodologies arise from archipelagic delirium and are characterized by their sensuality and precariousness...Understanding environmental change requires sound science, while making choices about earth stewardship involves ethics, aesthetics and critical geopolitical perspectives." Their work and practice are pressing urgently on the present, it is reassuring to know that a team of cross-disciplinary researchers are out in the universe charting the interdependence of it all with rigor, beauty and an eye towards the future. In this online event, plants, rocks and insects native to the Karawatha forest in Australia grace a set of divination cards. These cards will inspire guided movement while the human/natural connection of the images are explored through words, drawing upon the audience to respond and follow in various ways-- the digital setting another rich layer to everyday bio-cultural interrelations so often overlooked. 

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100 Years | 100 Women 

The Park Avenue Armory, lead partner National Black Theatre, NYC cultural partners Apollo Theater, The Juilliard School, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, The Laundromat Project, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of the Moving Image, National Sawdust, NYU, & Urban Bush Women/Virtual Watch Party 

Aug 18th 2020/2pm ET/Free, Register@Eventbrite 

100 artists, activists, scholars and thinkers were asked to respond to the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, the addition to the Constitution that granted women the right to vote. This landmark celebration is filled with renewed meaning in the wake of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter, issues that are woven into the participants' responses. Hosted by New School professor (and much more!) Maya Wiley, this online program presents a short film from filmmaker Shola Lynch (Director of FREE ANGELA & All Political Prisoners), and also a portrait of 100 Indigenous Women of the Americas by Indigenous technologist/artist Joselyn Kaxhyek Borrero & Kasike (chief) of the Guainía Taíno tribal community, Roberto Borrero. In addition, as part of this virtual watch party, special guest appearances and a sneak peak of contributions from others will be revealed, including actress & activist Tantoo Cardinal, poet Rita Dove, author/writer Catherine Gray, and actress/model/creative/activist Jari Jones. The complete 100 Years | 100 Women project will be available via a digital archive that will launch following this online, live event (Side Note: I can't wait to see Deborah Willis' piece!) 

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A Conversation with Katrina Dodson

The Paris Review/ Women in Translation Month event, Instagram Live

August 20, 2020/7-8pm EST/Free

O! A rare conversation with a real live translator! The power of the translator has always been of interest to me. The meaning of every foreign film I've ever watched can change drastically based on the simplest of decisions gracing the bottom of the screen, even more so in literature without the image to guide. Translation has always felt immediate, mutable and alive but it can also be a monolithic thing: there can be huge historical implications for simply using the wrong word. Translators across media are powerful conduits and artists in their own right, a fact that Issue. no. 233 of The Paris Review, The Art of Translation, makes very clear. Katrina Dodson is a translator and professor in the graduate writing program of Columbia University. Her work is comprised of translations from Portuguese of Clarice Lispector's The Complete Stories and Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma, The Hero With No Character. Dodson will also be adapting her own translation journal from her time on Lispector, a fascinating look at personal process that I can't wait to read (if it is available in English. Or verrrry elementary French). 

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BlackStar Film Festival 

Online Film Festival (Some Drive-In Events Offline in Philadelphia, PA)

August 20-26th/Day Passes $5, Festival Pass $100, Panels Free 

Founded in 2012, BlackStar Film Festival takes place annually in Philadelphia. The fest focuses on the stories of Black, Brown and Indigenous people from around the world, presenting films, panels and parties that celebrate visual and storytelling traditions. The lineup for this festival never disappoints featuring a slate of visionary emerging filmmakers but also showcasing established voices, conversing on the state of contemporary creativity and society. The festival will take place online with a few films screened live at the Philly Drive-In in conjunction with the Philadelphia Parks & Recreation Department. My personal calendar includes documentary features Through The Night (about a 24-hr daycare) & Coded Bias (which explores the racial bias found in facial recognition algorithms) and also the panels Nonfiction Vernacular and Collaboration (a look into the ongoing movement to #decolonize documentaries & how this is/can be accomplished) and Troubling the Frame, Troubling the Terrain (a look at aesthetic, practical and ethical concerns found at the borders of geopolitics and film). I've never been able to make it out to this superbly programmed fest so it going online makes it a do not miss!

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Animation Block Party 2020

BAM/Online Screenings + Parties w/Live Drawing + Comedy
August 21-23rd 2020/ Free, Suggested Donation to Black Lives Matter of Greater NY or City Harvest for Covid-19 support

I think the first time I encountered Animation Block Party was as part of a Rooftop Films screening, packed shoulder to shoulder somewhere high above the New York Streets on a muggy, cloudy night. Luckily, this year anyone anywhere can view most of the fest's lineup online at home! Animation Block Party always combines a broad array of styles (from hand-drawn to computer-generated) and genres (from Animation for the Kids to Experimental, Graphic Design & Music Videos) but it also illustrates a wondrous, eclectic global lineup steeped in long, storied, culturally specific traditions of the art form. This year's opening night will commence with a Picture This! LIVE party with live comedy and live drawing! Though one can't exactly re-create the experience of BAM or Rooftop films at home, the fest does  a Saturday night 16mm tele-stream from Cartoons on Film, a broadcast of uniquely New York classic animations from the early 20th Century to give you your NY fix! Please reference their day-by-day program for date, time, event & viewing specifics! 

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Please send recs for upcoming weeks to: donnak3[at]gmail[dot]com

Upcoming Screenings Online/Week of August 9th

Top Picks for Art Online Week of August 9th 

The Magical Negro-Online Discussion with Naima Ramos-Chapman
Color Positive/Discussion, Instagram Live 
August 9, 2020/9pmET/Free

Naima Ramos-Chapman's short film debut And Nothing Happened (2016) is a singular film. Its tone and the depths it explores in its short 15minute runtime are incomparable-- just watch it, don't make me try to explain its utterly astounding, surreal beauty and pain. Since that film Ramos-Chapman has been pretty busy: she's made other shorts, music videos, was part of the Bric TV series Brooklyn Is Masquerading as the World, was part of HBO's Random Acts of Flyness and, most recently, seems to have had something to do with the Louis Vuitton/Virgil Abloh show (that show though, let's talk)? There is a long tradition of women in experimental film coming from the world of dance (Maya Deren!) and it is obvious in Ramos-Chapman's work as a deep sense of time, space and body sit on the edge of every cut and shot. Also, I don't know why Showtime isn't moving forward with How to Make Love To A Black Woman (Who May Be Working Through Some Sh*t) (Exec Produced by Lena Waithe, written by Casallina “Cathy” Kisakye w/a Ramos-Chapman directed pilot) but: that is a mistake. 

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Film at Lincoln Center Talks-Virtual with Amy Seimentz
Film at Lincoln Center presented by HBO/Online Talk
August 11, 2020/5pm ET/Free, Submit questions via Twitter or Instagram before + during #AskFLC

Amy Seimentz is an exceptional actress whose name listed in a project's credits always validates the work, she tends to steal the scene even with the tiniest of roles. Seimentz is also a director with such projects as her feature directorial debut Sun Don't Shine (2012)  and her television directorial debut The Girlfriend Experience (an anthology based on Steven Soderbergh's film of the same name). Her latest offering, the psychological thriller She Dies Tomorrow starring equally as prolific actress Kate Lyn Sheil, is being touted as the perfect movie for the times. The film revolves around a contagious omen that convinces its host of their impending death, a chain reaction of doom that feels all too familiar right now. This conversation is part of Film at Lincoln Centers' free Talk series which, like most of the film world has gone virtual. She Dies Tomorrow is currently available on-demand through Neon.

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At Home With Mike Kelley: Kappa (1986) by Mike Kelley, Bruce + Norman Yonemoto 
Electronic Arts intermix & the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts/ Online Screening + Conversation with Curator Andrea Lissoni and Artist Bruce Yonemoto
August 11, 2020/5pmPT/Free

The images and descriptions of this one are creepy af. Mike Kelley plays the mythic amphibious Japanese imp Kappa (who legend has it is known for love of cucumbers, sumo...and organ-stealing anal play?) while his co-star, Warhol & Corman fave Mary Woronov, plays Hollywood exploitation vamp Jocosta. Their characters swirl through narrative archetypes and sexualities, reciting dialogue pulled from Freud, Buñuel, pop culture and other sources as they play out the myth of Oedipus siphoned through a Japanese folk story and modern film iconography. The end result sounds like an eerie collage full of symbol swapping, myth-playing and psycho-sexual channel surfing. Following the screening of the film artist Bruce Yonemoto and Artistic Director of Haus der Kunst, Munich Andrea Lossini will host a conversation.  

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Frieze, August: Sessions-Watch: I May Destroy You
Frieze/Zoom Webinar
August 12, 2020/6pm London (1pmET)/Free w/Registration

Freize Sessions is an online discussion series that consists of the magazine's editors and writers speaking on films, books and music. Attendees are encouraged to send in questions ahead of time for the panel of guests to respond to. This session focuses on Michaela Coel's episodic I May Destroy You. The show takes place in London where Arabella, a social-media-famous author thanks to her debut novel Chronicles of a Fed-Up Millennial, pieces together her hazy memories of a harrowing night out with friends. I just began the series and I don't want spoilers so I'm staying away from the internet to learn more about the show (the plot and production) but, what I do know, is that Coel, the show's writer, co-director & star, has managed to perfectly portray a sense of trauma and millennial-angst a mix of human, digital and social issues melding into one's perception and memory. It also has a great soundtrack.

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Art Institute Chicago Virtual Lecture: El Greco Ambition and Defiance
Art Institute Chicago/Online
August 13, 2020/5pmCT/Free, Space is limited, Details TBA day of lecture

Theotokópoulos aka El Greco aka The Greek aka The Hustler (okay, that last one is mine) was born in Crete in 1541. His career is one that seems to confuse art historians as he traversed a lot of boundaries. He worked tirelessly to gain patronage and excel at his craft, moving around Greece, Italy and Spain and through artistic traditions such as Byzantine iconography and Italian Renaissance. The Art Institute Chicago's exhibit El Greco: Ambition and Defiance is on display at the museum featuring over 57 works from around the world. As part of the exhibit Rebecca Long, Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture will discuss El Greco's unrelenting pursuit of fame and his unique, confounding style.

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MoMA Virtual Views: Film Vault Summer Camp with Curator Rajendra Roy & Director Todd Haynes
MoMA/Live Q&A + Online Screenings
August 13, 2020/8pm EDT/Free, Qs can be submitted in advance via online form


The MoMA Film Study Center is a resource for film scholars and researchers, hosting around 200 appointments a year for those in need of their vast archive. But, due to the pandemic, in-person interactions are hampered so, to counteract the state of things, MoMA is opening their film vault to the public online! Each Thursday in August a selection of materials will be available to screen online-- the access that Covid is bringing about never ceases to amaze me! On August 13th, MoMA Film Curator Rajendra Roy will be joined by auteur Todd Haynes to look into the ways in which restored and archival material can inspire filmmakers, a fact so evident in Haynes lush period pieces like Carol (2015) set in the pastel shadows of 1950s New York and Velvet Goldmine (1998) set in the illustrious shimmer of 70s glam.

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Guggenheim- Summer of Know: For Freedoms featuring Eric Gottesman, Hank Willis Thomas,  Michelle Woo & Claudia Peña
Guggenheim/Online Conversation
August 13, 2020/2pm ET/Free, RSVP for reminder 

For Freedoms was founded by artists/thinkers Eric Gottesman, Hank Willis Thomas, and Michelle Woo in 2016 and is a platform "for creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action...As a nexus between art, politics, commerce, and education, the platform aims to inject the anti-partisan critical thinking that fine art requires into the political landscape through programming, exhibitions, and public artworks." Guggenheim's Summer of Know conversation series looks to process contemporary issues through the lens of art, For Freedoms are co-curators for the 2020 edition. These Guggenheim hosted conversations are designed to "spark cross-disciplinary dialogue and debate, these discussions feature contemporary artists, practitioners, and thought leaders who are at the forefront of the ideas, organizing, and actions most urgently impacting society and culture today." This is the inaugural event of the 2020 series and will be livestreamed via the Guggenheim's Youtube channel. 

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Flaherty x Boulder: Unwriting the Disaster curated by Devon Narine-Singh, Suneil Sanzgiri & Alia Ayman
Mimesis Documentary Festival, Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media & Flaherty/Online Screening + Q&As
Festival Screenings August 12-18, 2020/$10 per program, fest pass $25
Live Q+As August 14, 2020/6-6:40pm + 7-7:40pm MT
Live Q+As August 15, 2020/10-10:40am + 11-11:40amMT

A new initiative from the documentary media arts organization The Flaherty and the University of Colorado Boulder (home to the Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media and also the Brakhage Center-- wth is up with Boulder?) called Flaherty x Boulder (F x B) will hold its premier event this week at the Mimesis Documentary Festival. Two film programs will feature line ups of films culled from the 66-year history of the Flaherty Film Seminar, expertly curated by Flaherty NYC Programmers-in-Residence Devon Narine-Singh, Suneil Sanzgiri, and Alia Ayman. The shorts blocks are titled Unwriting the Disaster and are themed around the question of how documentary approaches the crises of cultural turning points. In times of conflict or upheaval, nonfiction filmmakers could so easily be drawn to the flames but, as evident in these online programs, there are many ways to process, create, inhabit, rebirth and inscribe the seemingly catastrophic.

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Please send recs for upcoming weeks to: donnak3[at]gmail[dot]com

Upcoming Screenings Online/Week of August 2nd

Top Picks for Art Online Week of August 2nd 

Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018) by Rosine Mfetgo Mbakam

POV/Feature Film, Public Broadcast + Online Stream

August 3, 2020/Broadcast Premiere 10pm ET/Free

In the Brussels district of Motange, Sabine runs a hair salon. Like most hair salons, her space is a hub of friendship, gossip, and support, in this case, solidified by the shared migrant experience of Sabine and much of her clientele. In this cinema-verite chamber film, the director observes but is also brought into the fold of the space, filming for a year through many lash extensions and immigration rumors while also processing her own ex-pat status as a Cameroonian woman in Belgium. The complicated relationship with homeland and home unfold as many other forces tug at the lives of the women within. The othering of the migrant experience is also captured as tourists and locals gawk through the window of the salon, cultures in flux from both sides of the glass.

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After Civilization by Various Artists
Maysles Documentary Center/Online Screenings + Zoom Q&A
Zoom Q+A: August 4, 2020/7pm ET/Free, RSVP
Screening: Ends August 15, 2020/11:59pm ET/Free

This group of short and feature on-demand films thinks about the future. After all of the falls, the sinking, the collapsing: what will rise? These docs range in form but seem to favor boundary-pushing styles, a curatorial choice that takes advantage of the online streaming scene as seated, ticketed theaters aren't easily able to accommodate non-traditional film lengths and aesthetic risk-taking. These films offer speculative futures through experimental means using modes like science fiction and archival manipulation to predict the end of world as we know it and the beginning of a brave new one. On August 4th, a live Q+A will take place with some of the line-up's filmmakers, Nicole Macdonald (A Park for Detroit), Hannah Jayanti (Truth or Consequences), G. Anthony Svatek (.TV), Christina Battle (Bad Stars and Water Once Ruled) and Zack Khalil (INAAT/SE).

Arakimentari (2005) by Travis Klose presented by Khalik Allah
Maysles Documentary Center/Online Feature Film Screening, Under the Influence Series
July 22-August 5, 2020/Free

Also at The Maysles Documentary Center, a new online series has been launched called Under the Influence, a series that looks to documentarians and other figures to learn about what they find inspiring. In this installation, photographer and filmmaker Khalik Allah presents the 2005 film Arakimentari, a portrait of Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki remains a controversial figure due to his erotic flair (and his predilection towards abusive/exploitative studio practice). Though probably best known for his more pornographic tendencies, Araki's bold visions move beyond this realm an aspect that this doc seems to cover in detail. Though I'm not familiar with this film or subject, Khalik Allah's work is something I do know about, a deft, deep eye capturing a fearless essence in his photographs and documentaries, check out his work too.

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Exploring the VSW (Visual Studies Workshop) Archive: Early Video Art: Community Media in Western NY
Hosted by Bay Area Video Coalition & VSW/ Screening, Q&A + Zoom karaoke
August 5, 2020/5-6pm PT/Free, Eventbrite Registration

The VSW archives are home to a few thousand videotapes of NY community access programs hailing from the 1970s-90s. For those unfamiliar, community access was like the youtube of tv where nearly anyone could have their own show about anything. One of my personal favorite encounters w/community tv was BCAT in the mid-2000s where I came across a show titled Philosophy and Karate which, in addition to the show's namesake features, also featured dance remixes of classical music and green screen backgrounds of a pre-9/11 skyline. Like most community access, it was an intense, totally infectious passion project. VSW has been archiving this trove of artists and thinkers with the help of BAVC's Preservation Access Program that offers subsidies for digitization projects. This evening of clips will be hosted by Tara Nelson from VSW and Morgan Morel from BAVC who will announce and provide context for clips while also discussing the preservation and archiving process. Naturally, Tara also has a karaoke bar in her basement so, that too.

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Uniqlo Tate Late: Nights In, Andy Warhol
Tate Modern, sponsored by Uniqlo/Online Event
August 6, 2020/7pmBST(2pm ET USA)/Free
A recording of the event will be available until August 13, 2020

Nights In features two simultaneous livestreams from the Tate Modern, competing line ups of talks, workshops, DJs, screenings, and more which one can pop between. This particular edition is an exploration of Andy Warhol to celebrate the museum's current exhibition. What caught my attention about this event was author Olivia Laing, whose 2016 book The Lonely City is a meditation on loneliness including a section on Warhol's relationship to the feeling evidenced in his personal memorabilia collection (did his cookie jars fill the void?). [Side note: Though I haven't read this book, Laing's 2018 novel Crudo was one of the best things I have ever read-- a fictional imagining of Kathy Acker with precise, whiplashing sentences that struck me deeply with their pure, graceful rethinking of words.] Other highlights of this event include a discussion with Warhol collaborator (to say the least) Laurie Anderson, a screening of the short film Happy Birthday, Marsha! (an ode to queer activist, Stonewall instigator Marsha P. Johnson) and a re-invention of Warhols's screentests updated from Studio 54 to the interior of the Queer South Asian Bollywood night known as Hungama.

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Freshbuzz (www.subway.com) (2013/14) by Cory Arcangel
Screen Slate, Rhizome/Online Screening + Twitch Q&A
August, 6, 2020/4pmET/Free
Patreon members have post-show access

Imagine an internet world prior to data being oil (or whatever)? A place where websites were limited to the abilities of html & css (or something)? Back in 2013/14 pioneering digital artist Cory Arcangel did a project where he slowly explored corporate websites, recording his desktop deep-surfs. The project brings up all kinds of deep (web) thoughts on the early formation of digital identity, the idea of corporations as human-digital beings, the complications of archiving a fleeting medium and a lot more. To accompany this screening of Arcangel's archeologic dig through Subway sandwich shop's website, the artist will take part in a Q&A moderated by critic, programmer and co-founder of Light Industry, Ed Halter. This post is not sponsored by Subway. In fact, the smell of Subway bread has always made me a little nauseous.

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