You shall possess the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second and third hand . . . . nor look through the eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the specters in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Minong, I slept. Vera Brunner Sung. Color 16mm silent film. 5 minutes. 2010.
On the remote wilderness island called Minong (Isle Royale), remains of human industry are absorbed into the forest and shoreline. An inquiry into the push and pull between people and nature, land and sea, intimacy and vastness.
Piensa en Mi. Alexandra Cuesta. Color 16mm sound film. 15 minutes. 2009.
Moving from east to west and back, the windows of a bus frame fleeting sections of urban landscape. Throughout the day, images of riders, textures of light and fragments of bodies in space come together to weave a portrait in motion; a contemplative journey of public transport in the city of Los Angeles. Isolation, routine and everyday splendor, create the backdrop of this journey, while the intermittent sounds of cars construct the soundscape. Daily travel is captured in the details.
OPENING. Madison Brookshire. Color 16mm film, sound and silent with live music. 25 minutes. 2007.
Music performed by Ezra Buchla, Laura Steenberge and Tashi Wada.
OPENING reveals the city in the landscape and the landscape in the city. The images come from in-between spaces, such as off-ramps and back alleys. Instead of stitching these unlike things together, the cuts create space and emphasize distance. Three musicians playing very clear, quiet, long tones accompany the film. The indeterminacy of the music provides a stark contrast to the fixed nature of the film print.
— Intermission —
Merciful Men. Ben Rodkin. Black and white digitized super-16mm with stereo sound. 11 minutes. 2011.
Mexican migrant farm workers in California’s Great Central Valley are followed on a summer day in 115-degree heat. The work is addressed as purely physical, human bodies moving against resistance. Rhythms in labor, in interaction, in landscape, in weather, in the sounds of the place, in the individual beats that comprise a workday from restful moments as the day begins, to the listless off-work hours in the evening.
TARP. Zach Iannazzi. Black and white 16mm silent film. 3 minutes. 2011.
Light trails of the golden west.
CASTAIC LAKE. Brigid McCaffrey. Color 16mm sound film. 28½ minutes. 2010.
Taking its course, the camera drifts in to the coves and surveys the shorelines of a multi-use reservoir to unearth fragments of its young history and consider a series of possible relationships within this artificial environment.
Biographies
Madison Brookshire is a Los Angeles-based artist whose interdisciplinary work investigates modes of perception and qualities of time. His films and videos have screened internationally and he has had solo exhibitions at Parker Jones in Los Angeles and Presents Gallery in Brooklyn. In 2008-9 he was an artist in residence at the Hammer Museum.
Vera Brunner-Sung is a Los Angeles-based non-fiction filmmaker interested in the way personal and social history is channeled through landscape and the built environment. In addition to making moving image work, she writes film criticism and is a lecturer at the University of California, San Diego.
Alexandra Cuesta is a filmmaker and photographer who lives and works between Los Angeles and Quito, Ecuador. Her work is about the construction of place, structures of time and documentation of the invisible, discerning the in-between within the outside and the familiar. She was recently included in 25 Filmmakers for the 21st Century in Film Comment’s Avant-Garde Poll and received a Map of Time Jury Award at the 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Zach Iannazzi is a San Francisco-based filmmaker. “My gaze is clear. A wide-eyed child-like wonder at the variety of nature, wedged into a pyramidal ray of light.”
Brigid McCaffrey makes documentary films about subjects who appear to be mis/displaced in the world and the mutable landscapes they encounter. Featuring Sikhs in the California desert, young female truck drivers on the American interstate, and nuns as riverboat captains, her films have been seen as far afield as Rotterdam, Portland, Lisbon, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She is currently working with an itinerant geologist speculating on survivalist living in the Mojave region.
Ben Rodkin is a filmmaker living and working in Los Angeles. His work has shown extensively in the US and internationally. He is originally from Oakland, CA.
programmed by Madison Brookshire, special thanks to Zach Iannazzi
