Artists' Television Access

Author: Fara

  • Left Eye Cinema: 24 City

    24 City.jpg San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America  Jia Zhangke’s masterpiece 24 City 
    24 City twists documentary and fiction together through oral histories of three generations of people in Chengdu, China. It traces the history of a state-owned munitions factory under the CCP and its demolition to make way for luxury high-rise apartments. As the area’s history is literally wiped away, workers describe communal life and the city’s transformation. Jia mixes testimony from local workers and professional actors (including Joan Chen), complicating our ability to understand the past through these fragments.
    Attachments area

  • Alex Dabi Zhevi: ’National Theatre’

    Opening: Friday 2 November 6 to 9pm

    It’s a famed Bulgarian colloquialism to remark ‘oh, what a theatre!’ when bearing witness to conflict, the drama of politics or expression of passionate behaviour.

    ‘National Theatre’ is a result of works made in an extended period of residency in Alex’s mother nation of Bulgaria and expanded upon with his return to his nation of upbringing, Australia. The contradictions and possibilities of being influenced by both of these cultures simultaneously results in a questioning of the friction of differences and if any parity exists between them.

    The work employs conventions of slang, counterfeit methods of reproduction and user-generated data to make inquiry into the question of understanding what it is to be ‘other’ versus to ‘belong’.

    Alex Dabi Zhevi is best known for his analogue photography and independent publishing practices. This theatre of identity period has been a significant catalyst for a shift in his practice towards research, text and video-based works.

  • Duke & Battersby: Shit Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect (Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby in person)

    Dear Lorde (2015) by Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby

    SF Cinematheque presents:

    Working collaboratively since 1994, Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby create provocatively genuine video works which explore (and evoke) of states of emotional tenderness, empathy and grace. In their complexly confrontational use of such taboo tropes as cuteness, earnest direct address, emotive identification with animals and pop-cultural fixation, Duke & Battersby disarm viewers with sincere gestures of connection while reflecting on such topics as personal identity and empowerment, the social value of fragility and the withering of the concept of the divine in contemporary life. (Steve Polta)

    SCREENING: Dear Lorde (2015) a young-adult saga of self-exploration, involving fan mail sent to primatologist Jane Goodall, bishop Desmond Tutu and the New Zealand teen pop Star Lorde (among others); Here is Everything (2013) a video missive from the future (narrated by cat and rabbit) featuring deep thoughts on death, god and the attainment of grace; Dear Britney (2013), an epistolary repurposed music video by Ms. Spears and will.i.am; Perfect Nature World (2003) which explores a young girl’s sense of unworthiness in the face of the resplendent wonder of the natural world and a special work-in-progress screening of You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born, and You Are an Amazement Now.

    Admission: $10 General/$5 Cinematheque Members
    Advance tickets available here
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