Back by popular demand! Three new films added!
Ventana al Sur: An Evening of Argentine Experimental Films
curated by Mark Street and Lynne Sachs
contact: Mstreet430@gmail.com or Lynnesachs@gmail.com
www.markstreetfilms.com
www.lynnesachs.com
Millennium Film Workshop Saturday November 14, 2009 8pm
http://www.millenniumfilm.org
66 E. 4th St. NYC
We will serve sweet dessert churros and other Argentine delicacies
in the lobby before the show.
This rollicking evening of challenging, expressive and oppositional
Argentine cinema offers a window onto makers shredding formal
niceties, relishing in risk and daring to access the sublime. From an
achingly beautiful evocation of an hourglass to a darkly humorous
evisceration of the tenets of the stock market, this program will take
us to the land where summer is winter and winter is summer and render
our souls topsy-turvy for a bit too. For the last two summers NYC
experimental filmmakers Mark Street and Lynne Sachs immersed
themselves in the Buenos Aires film community through a variety of
collaborative cinematic endeavors. In addition to shooting Super 8
movies with their artist peers in town, Street and Sachs spent time
meeting and watching the works of local moving image makers – some
young firebrands and some veterans who have been expanding the
parameters of the medium since the early 1960s. (88min TRT.)
"Los Angeles" (5 min., 16mm, 1976) by Leandro Katz
Portrait of a small community living by the railroad tracks in the
banana plantation region of Quiriguá, Guatemala. Originally a single
take, this film is composed of alternating equal number of moving
frames and frozen frames as the camera tracks alongside the train
station.
"Workshop" (10 min.,16mm 1977) by Narcisa Hirsch
A structuralist vision as conceived by one of South America's most
beloved experimentalists, Narcisa Hirsch. One wall of the filmmaker's
studio as seen through a fixed camera. We see photos she's stuck on
the wall, then there is a dialogue with a male friend to whom she is
describing the rest of the walls that you don't see. A "one upmanship"
of a similar film by Michael Snow where he describes a wall of his
studio- workshop, by describing what one CAN see.
"Aleph" (1 min., 16mm) by Narcisa Hirsh
In the blink of the eye – 1440 frames in one minute – the rituals of
childhood and adolescence give a magical and haunting rhythm to daily
life.
"El Eroticismo del Tiempo" ( 1 min., video, 2005) by Narcisa Hirsch
Like the curves of the body, an hour glass can both seduce and repel us.
"Bajo Tierra" (4 1/2 min., Super 8, sound on CD, 2007) by Pablo Marin
A film portrait of filmmaker Claudio Caldini: in the industrial town
of General Rodriguez, Buenos Aires, a man makes a new cinematic
offering in front of the no-longer-industrialized Kodachrome.
"Sin título(Focus)" (4 min., Super 8, b&w, silent, 2008,) by Pablo Marin
Shot on a rooftop in Buenos Aires, this film truncates space in ever
inviting ways using a dizzying array of formal tropes.
“Equivale a mentir” (3 min, Super 8 to video, sound, 2001) by
Macarena Gagliardi.
A meditation on the four elements, and various aspects of fusion—a
sensual evocation of the process of change.
“Espectro” (6 min, super 8 with separate sound on CD, 2008) by Sergio Subero.
Abstract images shimmer and shift on the screen. We are invited to
look within as we enter an unfamiliar and unpredictable realm.
"Montevideo" (4 minutes, DVD, 2008) by Leandro Listorti
The capital of Uruguay reveals, briefly, its characteristic of a
Doppelgänger City: a single place cut in two spaces where two pairs of
creatures explore the limits of the travelogue.
"Stock" (5 minutes, 2007, mini DV ) by Ruben Guzman
A boy from La Cruz walks to school to read aloud the stock market
report from the newspaper. We are witness to the last day of
capitalism.
"El Guardian" (5 min., video, 2008) by Ruben Guzman
A fantasmic guardian coddles and keeps the images of the world.
"Nunca Fuimos Allah Luna" (7 min., 35mm, 2008) by Ernesto Baca
Two characters on split screens collide, converse and argue as the
city unspools kinetically behind them.
“For You/Para Usted” (16 minutes, video, 1999) by Liliana Porter
A witty and wry comparison of linguistic and visual modes of
expression through a series of pithy and provocative animated
vignettes.
“Jardin” (2 minutes, video, 2004) by Enrique Bernacchini
A stop motion funhouse ride of dynamic images and shattering
sounds—all out in the garden. The ebb and flow of domestic life
yields its own particular texture.
“VHS” (10 min. excerpt) by Diego Trerotola
“ If gender is technology (as feminists teach us), then queer identity
is an infected machine. VHS (VideoHomoSexual) is a smash-up of
trailers and institutional clips where the trashy texture of
videotapes, corrupted by the queer-techno-eye, exhibits the camp
desire and its degradation.”
“Mirarte a lo lejos” 'From Afar, I See You' (10m, 16mm on video,,
2009) by Tomas Rautenstrauch
‘This movie is intended as a thank-you-note to Narcisa Hirsch. My
grandmother was the one who pushed me into the arts. She did it not
with words nor with an attitude. Silence was her tool, and I needed to
learn how to use it. “
