With all of the doom and gloom surrounding the fate of 16mm film these days, finding an intimate screening venue that welcomes small gauge (Super 8 and 16mm) filmmakers to show their work has become increasingly rare. But for those of us who care to gaze upon the flickering glow of halogen light projected through celluloid, there is MassArt Film Society. Since 1978, MassArt Film Society has held weekly screenings of experimental and avant-garde films, often followed by live(ly) discussions with the filmmakers. Curated by avant-garde holy man Saul Levine, MassArt Film Society opens its doors every Wednesday evening and invites the public to share the work of film artists from all over the world.
This weeks’ screening promises to be a stunning blend of contemplative images and quiet soundscapes composed by Ecauadorian filmmaker Alexandra Cuesta. An award-winning cinematographer, Cuesta’s images often comment on displacement and cultural diaspora. The four short films in this program feature urban landscapes and portraits of the people who inhabit them, woven together with the fabric of time, texture and history. All films are projected in 16mm. Cuesta will be introducing the films and available for Q&A following the screening.
Wednesday, October 9th at 8 pm
$4 (FREE for MassArt students)
MassArt, Screening Room 1
621 Huntington Avenue
*Enter through the South Building entrance on Huntington Avenue*
http://massartfilmsociety.blogspot.com/
Film descriptions courtesy of the MassArt Film Society blog:
Recordando El Ayer, 2007
16mm, black and white reversal, sound, RT 9:00
Shot in Queens, NY in 2004
Memory and identity are observed through textures of everyday life in a portrait of Jackson Heights, home to a large Latin American immigrant population. Images of street, people, and daily rituals render passing of time in a neighborhood that becomes a mirror not just of another place, but also of the past. The landscape visually reflects the space as a creation of a new home while revealing displacement within the new condition. The meaning of home is explored and built upon
collective recollection.
Beirut 2.14.05, 2008
16mm, color and black and white, sound, RT 8:00
During the shooting of From Beyrouth With Love (Wael Nourredine, 2005), Alexandra Cuesta captured her impressions of Beirut between strangeness and rapprochement, using a handheld camera. The images are indirect and unsettled: reflections in the rain or through display windows, a view out of a moving car window. Cuesta captures and edits these images into fragments with
the certainty of a dream. The menace of war resonates in her images without taking on form. Beirut 2.14.05 is both honest and masterly, a miniature at the roots of poetry, where the palpable echoes the visible.
Piensa En Mí, 2009
16mm, color, sound, RT 15:00
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 meditation on 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.
Despedida, 2013
16mm color, sound, RT 9:53
Shot in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, this transitory neighborhood resonates with the poetry of local resident Mapkaulu Roger Nduku. Verses about endings, looking and passing through open up the space projected. A string of tableaus gather a portrait of place and compose a goodbye letter to an ephemeral home.
