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