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  • Carnatic @ ATA: Gautam Tejas Ganeshan & New Directions

    GautamTejasGaneshanSouth Indian music gets re-upped.
    Original songs along traditional lines
    + improvisations backed by

    • tambura drone lutes
    • mridangam double drum
    • ghatam clay percussion
    • and projections by Parker Higgins

    Gautam Tejas Ganeshan has performed widely in the SF Bay Area since 2004, including at the SFMOMA, BAM/PFA, SFJAZZ, Asian Art Museum (SF), Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley, and more, as well as having given workshops at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Stanford Jazz Workshop, and guest-lectures for music courses at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. He is the founder and director of the Sangati Center, a non-profit chamber music concert series in San Francisco that has hosted more than 400 public chamber concerts in SF, Oakland, and Berkeley since 2006, and has earned support from the NEA, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, and more. In 2013 Gautam was awarded the Creative Work Fund, supporting the creation of a song cycle entitled “Story of This Place,” and has received a number of commissions, including “By Daylight” at the ODC Theater, “Silhouette of Songs” by the LEF Foundation, and “New Directions in Indian Classical Music” by the San Francisco Foundation in 2008.

    Projection of Pomological Watercolors (by Parker Higgins)

    Parker Higgins (@xor), an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been working to liberate the USDA’s pomological watercolor collection. That’s fruit paintings – 7,584 of them, commissioned by the federal government between 1886 and 1942, and now made (more) available through an FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act). Parker recently unleashed a new Twitter bot (@pomological) that tweets from the collection every three hours, bringing these beautiful images with serious historical significance to timelines everywhere.

  • The Fall of the I-Hotel & Anatomy of a Mural

    fall of I hotel

    The Fall of the I-Hotel

    (Curtis Choy, 1983) 58 minutes

    Just about every San Franciscan knows where Noe Valley and the Mission are, but what about Carville, Irish Hill, or Manilatown? The names of these lost San Francisco neighborhoods are reminders that seemingly-robust communities can be transformed at the whim of powerful real estate and corporate interests. The Fall of the I-Hotel chronicles the final months of Manilatown, the stretch of Kearny Street that housed a huge population of Filipino immigrants for much of the twentieth century. Its last major remnant, the International Hotel at Jackson Street, was demolished in 1977 after years of community resistance. Its residents, mostly Filipino and Chinese seniors, struggled to save their homes, aided by extensive support from church and community groups, activists, and residents citywide. This film not only documents the culmination of a decade-long battle to save the International Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.

    Filmmaker Curtis Choy beautifully lays out the history and way of life of the Manongs [Filipino elders] living in the hotel through interviews and archival photographs, then guides a vérité immersion in the protests themselves. The nighttime cinematography, though barely discernable in existing video transfers, is extraordinarily rich on the 16mm print we’ll be showing. The film’s depictions of evictions, police/protestor face-offs, and the forced transformation of a neighborhood make The Fall of the I-Hotel as relevant as ever today.

    If Wayne Wang’s 1982 Chan Is Missing marked the beginning of Asian-American narrative filmmaking as a force on the national cinematic scene, then The Fall of the I-Hotel was a similar catalyst for Asian-American documentary. Its director Curtis Choy had made humorous and serious short films for many years, and also worked as cinematographer and sound mixer on other films (including Chan Is Missing) while also documenting the events leading up to the I-Hotel’s final days.

    preceded by:

    Anatomy of a Mural (Rick Goldsmith, 1982)
    San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center has been a neighborhood mainstay for nearly forty years. This exquisite documentary reveals the collaborative process of the three local artists tasked with creating the intricate mural enveloping the building’s upper portion.

  • Keith Wilson: THE TREE

    ATA Window Gallery presents: Keith Wilson THE TREE
    Closing Reception: Wednesday, February 3rd, 6-9PM
    tree_tied_up_01
    ARTIST STATEMENT:
    THE TREE is a short observational documentary film, displayed on a simple monitor atop a bed of freshly mulched San Francisco Christmas trees. The film is a cyclical tale about the life, death and rebirth of one noble fir Christmas tree from the foggy hills of the Bay Area. From its unceremonious planting to its ornament-decorated state in a San Francisco living room to its surprising resurrection and repurpose, the film follows a ubiquitous yet under-examined staple of Western culture.

    In the year 2254, I hope that a curious anthropologist robot stumbles across the film and is baffled and amused by the ritual it documents. I want them to ask, “why did the humans cut down a tree, bring it inside, hang weird shit from it and then discard it after a month?” Hopefully THE TREE will provide clues – but not firm answers – as to why the ritual existed and what function it served.

    Back in 2015, the installation will, perhaps, catch the attention of a phone zombied pedestrian and encourage them to download the ecological, social and religious applications of the many no-longer-needed trees found on January sidewalks.

    BIO:
    Keith Wilson is a filmmaker, cinematographer and visual artist based in San Francisco. His film work has been screened at Sundance, the Berlinale, South by Southwest and the U.S. National Gallery of Art. His photography and artist books have been exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery, the Brandhorst Museum of Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. He is the co-creator of the book GAY MEN DRAW VAGINAS (2014). Keith grew up on a cul-de-sac in suburban Atlanta and has an MFA in film production from the Radio-TV-Film Department at UT-Austin.