Tonight at the Brattle Theatre, there is a sweet meditation on the absurdity of the bureaucracy of public land. I’ll let them tell it –
“Who is the self-appointed master of this so-called public space? Were the (re-)occupiers not contributing members of our society, trying to redirect its rogue course toward humanism by using their own bodies and possessions as protest signs? Do their selfless efforts not deserve an outlet like Iceland’s historic commons, Thingvellir, “the perpetual property of the … nation, never to be sold or mortgaged”?
The films of WHOSE LAND? express a similar malaise. This “land of the free” appears to be colonized by a malignant and hungry privatizing force that corrals our ideas and activities into pens to prevent any obstruction to a Manifest Destiny that, having run out of earthly space, has now set its sights on the moon.”
If that doesn’t boil your blood, Angela Sawyer, Boston’s High-Priestess Weirdo, will move your feet, she’s going to be unloading her DEEP vinyl collection on the ones and twos. Get there early, duh.
Films:
Triumph of the Wild (2008, 10 mins, 35mm) by Martha Colburn
“Triumph of the Wild spans decades of battles in American history and places a man in a landscape infested with indigenous predatory animals.” – MC
Future So Bright (2010, 23 mins, HDCam) by Matt McCormick
“[T]he film explores ghost towns, abandoned military bases, and boarded up tourist traps to present a meditative time capsule of the false starts and failed attempts of the past 200 years of American Western Expansion.” – MM
Kudzu Vine (2011, 20 mins, 35mm CinemaScope) by Josh Gibson
Beautiful, eerie portrait of an invasive species from Korea that is taking over the Southern landscape several feet a day.
Crossings (2005, 5 mins, 16mm) by Robert Fenz (appearing in person!)
“By visually simulating what the [United States-Mexico border] wall symbolizes, Fenz depicts terror and awe as impossibly intertwined.” – Trinie Dalton (2008 Whitney Biennial)
You Are on Indian Land (1969, 34 mins, 16mm) by Mort Ransen and Mike Mitchell
Legendary vérité document of a 1969 protest by members of the Mohawk tribe against a levy imposed on them by the U.S.-Canada border authority.
The Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle Street Cambridge
Doors 7:30 Sawyer 8:00
$10, $8 for Students & Seniors
Stay Highdrayted
