Basilica Screenings: October
Special Effect: Live Cinema | Yumen | Teenage
BASILICA SCREENINGS is a film series that presents an array of works from new and repertory narrative features, documentaries, experimental films, to video and media art, as well as guest curated programs, often with filmmakers and special guests in attendance for a discussion following the screenings. Programmed by Basilica Hudson’s film curator Aily Nash, and creative directors Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone.
All films begin at 8 pm and are $5-10 sliding scale, unless otherwise noted.
BASILICA SCREENINGS: OCTOBER
Thursday, October 10
SPECIAL EFFECT: Live Cinema by Peter Burr, 2013
Peter Burr in person! Q&A with Burr following the screening.
Thursday, October 17
TEENAGE, Matt Wolf, 2013, 78 min.
Matt Wolf on Skype! Q&A with Wolf via Skype following the screening.
Thursday, October 24
YUMEN, Xu Ruotao, J.P. Sniadecki & Huang Xiang, 2013, 65 min.
J.P. Sniadecki in person! Q&A with Sniadecki following the screening.
still from Teenage
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10
SPECIAL EFFECT: Live Cinema by Peter Burr
2013
Peter Burr in person! Q&A with Burr following the screening.
Video artist Peter Burr presents Special Effect, a live television show inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1971 film Stalker. The performance features screenings of 18 short animations from underground video label Cartune Xprez; original music from Lucky Dragons and Seabat; and live performances by Burr involving laser beams, green screens, and a webcam. The videos as well as Burr’s performance were inspired by “The Zone,” an off-limits place of hope and possibility rumored to make one’s deepest desires come true that is the central setting in Tarkovsky’s film. Burr has toured the show across Australia and Europe throughout 2012 and 2013, and is touring across the United States and Canada this fall.
Contributors include James Duesing, Amy Lockhart, Michael Bell-Smith, Ola Vasiljeva, Jacob Ciocci, Philippe Blanchard, E*Rock, Luke Painter, Devin Flynn, Michael Robinson, Sabrina Ratté, and Brenna Murphy.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17
TEENAGE
Matt Wolf, 2013, 78 min.
Matt Wolf on Skype! Q&A with Wolf via Skype following the screening.
‘Teenagers’ didn’t always exist. In this living collage of rare archival material, filmed portraits, and voices lifted from early 20th Century diary entries, a struggle erupts between adults and adolescents to define a new idea of youth. Inspired by punk author Jon Savage’s book, Teenage gives voice to young people from the first half of the 20th century in America, England, and Germany—from party-crazed Flappers and hip Swing Kids to zealous Nazi Youth and frenzied Sub-Debs. Four young voices bring to life rare archival material and filmed portraits of emblematic teenagers from history—Brenda Dean Paul, a self-destructive Bright Young Thing; Melita Maschmann, an idealistic Hitler Youth; Tommie Scheel, a rebellious German Swing Kid; and Warren Wall, a black Boy Scout. By the end of World War II, they were all ‘Teenagers’: a new idea of youth. Filmmaker Matt Wolf also made Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (2008).
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24
YUMEN
Xu Ruotao, J.P. Sniadecki & Huang Xiang, 2013, 65 min.
J.P. Sniadecki in person! Q&A with Sniadecki following the screening.
“Fusing documentary and staged scenes in a manner reminiscent of Godard from the 1970s onward, Yumen brings dignity and beauty to a place that lies in near ruins, and was the finest piece of cinematic portraiture I witnessed at this year’s Berlinale.” -Travis Jeppesen, Artforum
Set in the quasi-ghost town of Yumen that once thrived with oil production in China’s arid northwest, YUMEN is a haunting, fragmented tale of hungry souls, restless youth, a wandering artist and a lonely woman, all searching for human connection and a collective past among the town’s crumbling landscape. One part “ruin porn”, one part ghost story, and shot entirely on 16mm, the film brings together narrative gesture, performance art, and socialist realism into a crude and radiant collage that not only plays with convention and defies genre, but also pays homage to a disappearing life-world and a fading medium. Produced by The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard, which also produced LEVIATHAN (2012), and most recently MANAKAMANA (2013).