Artists' Television Access

San Francisco Cinematheque presents:

Pakistan and a radical interrogation of the documentary form. They write: “The scars of colonialism, partition and subsequent post-colonialist ventures of improvement run deep in Karachi. Representations of Pakistan by Western media portray a rogue state, suffering from conflict, extremism, natural disasters and sporadic martial law, made more fearsome by its nuclear status. [We] seek to discover the patterns of everyday life, and how to represent them in this environment.” Equally incisive—if less reverent—in its questioning of the representation of “otherness,” Steve Reinke’s The Mendi, views a CBC ethnographic doc through the eyes of a sullen ‘70s teenager. Also screening is Jonathan Schwartz’ drifting yet troubled travelogue Nothing is Over Nothing, described by Schwartz as “a series of portraits, gestures, light captured, divisions recorded and lines collected in Jerusalem.”  (Steve Polta)