Sunday, December 10, 2017, 7:30pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Ism, Ism, Ism: Views from outside (La mirada foránea)
At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028
Filmmaker Dalia Huerta in person from Mexico!
Filmmaker Edgar Jorge-Baralt in person!
Homero Gonzalez, composer for Olvidó usted algo? in person!
INFO: www.lafilmforum.org, 323-377-7238
A traveling shot, in which the camera moves horizontally and smoothly through space, is a basic element of film language. This program takes traveling shots as its point of departure: the sensation of movement, displacement, exile, as well as not understanding what’s being said, being out of place, and entering into foreign exchanges. Leandro Katz takes a rigorous and deceptively simple approach to a roll of super-8 film shot on the periphery of an archaeological site in Guatemala. This modest short film joins the preoccupations of structural film, the fundamental tension between still photography and the illusion of cinematic movement, and the complex calendric calculations of the ancient Maya architects of the nearby ruins of Quiriguá. Dalia Huerta follows the circulation of commodities around the globe, especially th e archetypical Latin American export, the banana, and weaves together an idiosyncratic essay about the values associated with these objects, while Macarena Cordiviola takes the writings of French modernist poet Blaise Cendrars on a road trip and Edgar Jorge-Baralt travels t h rough Southern California, finding echoes of his home country, Venezuela.
Tickets: Free. Available in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at https://bpt.me/3172062 or at the door.
For more information: 323-377-7238 or www.lafilmforum.org
Screening:
Los Angeles Station
Leandro Katz, 1976, 10 min., 16mm transferred to digital, color, silent, Argentina/Guatemala/USA.
Portrait of a small community living by the railroad tracks in the banana plantation region of Quiriguá, Guatemala. Originally a single take, this film is composed of alternating equal numbers of moving frames and frozen frames as the camera tracks alongside the train station.
"Los Angeles Station is Leandro Katz's simplest, most direct and probably least ambitious film and yet in many ways it is his loveliest. The results of the systematically structured material is unexpectedly stirring. Because of the impersonal method of construction, the freeze frames are not the result of sudden sentimental tugs. The count sometimes falls very conveniently on an image of natural poses, strikingly set against the backdrop; but just as often, the freeze frame is of a bare wall or an alleyway. The mechanical tension between the handheld camera's panning and the systematic stops creates disarmingly simple, evocative effects. The freeze may halt a pan or simply congeal an already held moment. In the first case, an image often ends up de-centered, highlighting the broadside of the shack-like dwellings with their inhabitants crowded at the edge. Or, alternatively, a smiling boy, full of animate life and sensuousness, suddenly becomes an anthropological document, frozen evidence of a time, a place, and a culture." -- Tony Pipolo, Millennium Film Journal, © December 1980
Olvidó usted algo?
Dalia Huerta, 2012, 28 min., Super 8 transferred to digital, color, sound, Mexico
California premiere
Instructions for Staring at the Mirror
Edgar Jorge-Baralt, 2014, 22 min., 16mm transferred to digital, color, sound, USA
Ultimos Brillos
Macarena Cordiviola, 2008, 9:38, Super 8 transferred to digital, color, sound, Argentina
Soga de Muerto
Felipe Esparza, 2015, 6:26, digital, b&w, sound, Peru
Vertières I, II, III.
Louise Botkay, 2014, 10 min., sound, color, Super 8 transferred to digital, Brasil
Dalia Huerta is a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker. Registers art from and for artists and museums. Has made several formal film studies in Mexico, The Netherlands and Cuba. Was supported by CECA (Jalisco) in 2007 and 2010 on film and video making and won the grant for post production IMCINE 2015. Her work has been selected, exhibited and awarded at film festivals around the world.
Edgar Jorge-Baralt is a Venezuelan-born filmmaker based in Los Angeles who incorporates multiple formats in his practice. His work deals with the effect that spatial changes have on cultural and personal identity, perception, and social relationships. He revises these concerns through different formal variables, exploring multiple cinematic possibilities. The reshaping of landscape, whether through political circumstances or perceptual ones, parallels the ability of cinema to alter environments, creating experiences of heightened subjectivity. In his work, he attempts to destabilize rigid ways of understanding identity, landscape and viewership, while remaining grounded in materiality, research and/or oral history.
This sceening is part of Los Angeles Filmforum’s screening series Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Cine experimental en América Latina). Ism, Ism, Ism is an unprecedented, five-month film series—the first in the U.S.—that surveys Latin America’s vibrant experimental production from the 1930s through today. Revisiting classic titles and introducing recent works by key figures and emerging artists, Ism, Ism, Ism takes viewers on a journey through a wealth of materials culled from unexpected corners of Latin American film archives. Key historical and contemporary works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, México, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the United States will be featured. Many of the works in the series are largely unknown in the United States and most screenings will include national and area premieres, with many including Q&A discussions with filmmakers and scholars following the screening. The film series will continue through January 2018 at multiple venues, organized by Filmforum. www.ismismism.org
Ism, Ism, Ism is accompanied by a bilingual publication, Ism, Ism, Ism / Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Jesse Lerner and Luciano Piazza, editors, University of California Press, 2017) placing Latino and Latin American experimental cinema within a broader dialogue that explores different periods, cultural contexts, image-making models, and considerations of these filmmakers within international cinema. Available worldwide, https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520296084.
Ism, Ism, Ism is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Explore more at www.ismismism.org, lafilmforum.org, and www.pacificstandardtime.org.
Lead support for Ism, Ism, Ism is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.
Significant additional support comes from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
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This program is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation. 2017 is our 42nd year.
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