Blog

 MARK STREET’s NYC + GLENNA ALLEE’s HANFORD + PAUL ECHEVERRIA’s DETROIT +
Our second LOCUS FOCUS is plotted out along three axes. Mark Street returns from NY with his 100 Sides of a Sphere book-launch and a few new movies: After the gloriously granular revival of his 16mmWinter Wheat, he unspools a sneak peak at Work Songs (inspired by StudsTerkel) and premieres Morning, Noon, Night; Water, Land, and Sky, on the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The program’s 2nd component is a bundle of briefs on the “Nuclear West”, anchored by (in person) Glenna Cole Allee’s Hanford Reach, a cautionary montage on the most toxic plutonium dump in North America. Glenna’s landscape is extended south to the Trinity Site by Georg Koszulinski’s New Mexico Death Wish Diatribe (world premiere), and even to the Mexican frontier by Laura Poitras’Triple Chaser (narr. David Byrne), on the sleazy dealer whose weapons are used against the refugees on the desert border. Our 3rd vector points to famously failed Detroit—Paul Echeverria’s Glitchtown, Dustin Dehah’s God Is an Artist (on Shephard Fairey’s mural), and an exc. from Sabine Gruffat’s I Have Always Been a Dreamer. Come early for Sharon Trahan’s space-time samples of the SaltonSea! *$7.77

Concept, Director and Editor Documentary, PanteA Bahrami, 2008, 106 minutes, in Persian with English subtitles

Thirteen female political prisoners explain their experiences in an Iranian prison. Three generations of women describe their stories of the last 50 years…

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About the Filmmaker: 

PanteA Bahrami is an internationally recognized documentary filmmaker with a doctoral degree in Film Studies from the University of Dortmund and the Institute of Theatre, Film and Television, Cologne University, Cologne, Germany. Her Ph.D. dissertation on the subject women in Iranian film was titled, “The Feminine Role in Iranian Films: A Comparison of the Identity of Women Before and After the Revolution.”

She began her career as a documentary filmmaker in 1998 and has made 20 films during the past 15 years among them “Islam: My Identity or the Reason for My Escape,” was selected for the 11th Women’s Film Festival, Feminale, in 2002; “Playing with Fire,” was awarded the Erasmus-Euro Media Siegel Prize in 2007; and “From Scream to Scream,” was nominated for the Julian-Bartel Award in 2007. Many of her works have been shown at various international film festivals around the world.

A former political prisoner who spent 4 years of her life in the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran, her latest documentary films focus primarily on the issues of human rights, women’s rights, and political freedoms, particularly in the Islamic countries.

Her documentary, “And in Love I Live,” (2008) was produced on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the 20th anniversary of the mass execution of political prisoners in Iran in the fall of 1988.

She works as a journalist and radio producer for Radio Zamaneh, based in Amsterdam, mainly covering human rights, culture, labor, and women’s issues. She has also worked as a journalist for Ruhe Welle and WDR (German Radio and TV), and as a producer for the Persian TV Program, “Ressaneh,” broadcast by Florian TV in Dortmund. She developed and implemented the project, “Integration of Refugees in Europe” in 1999 when she lived in Germany (1988-2005). Sixty percent of the project was financed by the European Union.

 IGGY’s PUNK + HARRY PARTCH + THE RESIDENTS +
AnOther annual habit here is honoring those artists who are exploding the definitions of musical genres! Showcased is the 16mm screening of Stephen Pouliot‘s The Dreamer That Remains, on Harry Partch, the free-thinking beatnik who grew from hobo to new-instrument builder. PLUS: In Iggy Pop’s paean to the Punk Revolution, Penelope Houston and Johnny Lydon reflect on the Sex Pistols’ final performance at our own Winterland. Outsider Music jam-packs the rest of the program: Sun Ra (as seen by both French TV and Soda_Jerk), Andre Perkowski’s In Between Dreams (with local eyeballs The Residents), Bill Daniel’s Butthole Surfers in Houston and Sonic Youth in NY, the BBC’s Throbbing Gristle, Ben Folstein’s Where Do Babies ComeFrom?, Tribe 8, Wesley Willis, Matmos, and even more outlandish Soundies and Scopitones. Free LPs!