2015 IN FILM
Season Five: Year In Review
It was Basilica’s fourth season of bringing unique and exceptional films to the region through Basilica Screenings. The season emphasized expansive documentary practices, with selections from Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986, formerly presented at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and hosting guest programmer Jake Perlin and filmmaker Charles Hobson. Additional highlights included screenings with filmmakers Kevin Jerome Everson and Wu Tsang in person, and a program co-presented with the HQTBD art collective that featured Peggy Ahwesh, Ephraim Asili and Takeshi Murata. And, the launch of our Sci-Fi Summer Nights Series included the community success Blade Runner Noodle Night! Our big annual events also featured crossover cinematic programming; 24-HOUR DRONE screened an all-female video program from the collection of Second Ward Foundation along with Bill Stone’s Pensato Clock. At Basilica SoundScape, Kiln Films presented Direct-to-Video, a program of films dedicated to eliciting dialogue between artists and challenge spectatorship, which was joined by Chris Bower’s We Won’t Bow Down along with several other Friday screenings in the North Hall.
BASILICA SCREENINGS: AUGUST 2015
Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads by Spike Lee
Dune versus Dune
Heaven Knows What by Josh + Benny Safdie
The Wolfpack by Crystal Moselle
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. (more…)
HQTBD
Still/Life Exhibition + Programs
HQTBD | Still//Life
May 22 – June 14, 2015
Opening Night – May 22, 6-10 PM
Back Gallery, Basilica Hudson
110 S. Front Street, Hudson, NY
Hours Sunday – Friday 12-4 PM / or by appointment
FACT OR FICTION? FACT AND FICTION?
Film Class: Investigating Documentary Practices
Kites Nest and Basilica Hudson Film and Media program co-present a documentary film workshop for teens. The workshop is lead by Basilica Hudson Film and Media Curator Aily Nash. The class description and registration info are below:
Class Description
“All great fiction films tend towards documentary, just as all great documentaries tend toward fiction.” – Jean-Luc Godard
Is there a distinction between reality and fiction? How do we define those boundaries and what are the responsibilities of filmmakers and viewers to reality? How do we make sense of the overwhelming amount of images and stories that we’re exposed to? And what is the relationship between our personal politics of representation and what we encounter in films? In a film culture that conditions us to think of fiction and documentary as distinct forms, what tools can we develop to read works that complicate our definitions of genre?
Exploring experimental documentary and narrative forms, in this workshop we will expand our idea of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction cinema. We’ll watch films that give a broad historical overview of the evolution of the essay film and documentaries, spanning from early cinema to today. The selection will be international in scope, and touch on ethnographic filmmaking, social documentary, feminist perspectives, and non-western storytelling approaches. The workshop will be seminar-style, and based around weekly film screenings and a discussion group. (This is not a production workshop.) Some appearances by special guest experts and filmmakers.
The course will include films by Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Chantal Akerman, Chris Marker, Joshua Oppenheimer, Sensory Ethnography Lab, Abbas Kiarostami, Kidlat Tahimik, Jean Rouch, Robert Flaherty, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Andy Warhol and others.
About the instructor, Aily Nash
Aily Nash is a curator based in Hudson and Brooklyn, New York. She is a curator of Projections, the New York Film Festival’s artists’ film and video section, and has curated programs and exhibitions for MoMA PS1 (NYC), FACT (Liverpool), BAM/Brooklyn Academy of Music (NYC), Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Northwest Film Center (Portland), Image Forum (Tokyo), and others. Her writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Artforum.com, Film Comment, de Filmkrant and elsewhere. Speaking engagements include Centre Pompidou (Paris), Harvard University, Cornell University, The New School, Universität der Künste (Berlin). She has served on the jury at Media City Film Festival and on the FIPRESCI Jury at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. Nash is the Film/Media curator at Basilica Hudson, is co-editor of a film criticism program at the Berlinale Film Festival, and has taught at Parsons and Bruce High Quality Foundation University in New York.
Schedule + Registration Info
Screening Dates: Tuesdays 7 – 8:30pm, April 7 – May 26
Seminar Dates: Wednesdays 4 – 7pm, April 8 – June 9
To register, go to http://kitesnest.org/fact-fiction
Image Credit: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, William Greaves, 1968 (still)
2014 IN FILM
Season Four: Year In Review
Never did we dream that such a charismatic rule breaker as Alex Cox would appear at Basilica the same month as the “Pope of Trash” pioneer John Waters, to take our film programming to the next level! The Basilica film dream team was joined throughout our season by artists far, near, and in our own backyard: feminist icon Barbara Hammer, acute documentarian Salomé Lamas and acclaimed film and television director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Forging connections between film, music and art, Basilica SoundScape included projections by Zia Anger, Maxwell Paparella, Nathan Corbin and Stephen G. Rhodes as part of the Kiln Films series. We also hosted a late night screening of Dead Poets Society in honor of the late Robin Williams, with an introduction by our friends from down the river, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, and co-presented by Secret Cinema, an organization which presents large-scale cultural experiences in abandoned spaces.
BASILICA SCREENINGS PRESENTS: COLONY OF LIGHT
Programs I & II
FRIDAY, AUGUST 15 – SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 8 PM
PROGRAMS I & II, Colony of Light
// All the artists will be present! //
The Colony of Light is a provisionally utopian collective of artists and filmmakers which first convened and collaborated in July 2013 at MoMA PS1, NYC. They reunite for a week residency at Basilica Hudson this August, where they will be collaborating on new work, and will present two public programs of films, videos, and performances. Each night will be an entirely different program of recent work by the Colony members: Basma Alsharif, Peter Burr, Bonnie Jones, Ted Kennedy, Jodie Mack, Xander Marro, Ben Russell, Jonathan Schwartz, Fern Silva, Ruth Somalo, and others, all of whom will be in attendance for discussion.
The first iteration of the Colony was inspired by, and initiated around Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s film A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS (screening on Aug 9), exploring the themes of Utopia, collective living, and “dark optimism”.
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, often with filmmakers and special guests in attendance for a discussion following thescreenings. Programmed by Basilica Hudson’s film curator Aily Nash, and creative directors Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone.
Images courtesy of Superstudio, Ben Russell, and Colony of Light artists. 
BASILICA SCREENINGS: AUGUST
Vanessa Haroutunian does JOANIE4JACKIE | Godard’s EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF | GIMME THE LOOT
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: AUGUST
Thursday, August 8
Vanessa Haroutunian does JOANIE4JACKIE
Vanessa Haroutunian in person!
Thursday, August 15
EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF, Jean-Luc Godard, 1980, 87 min.
Thursday, August 22
GIMME THE LOOT, Adam Leon, 2012, 81 min.
Adam Leon in person!
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8
VANESSA HAROUTUNIAN DOES JOANIE4JACKIE
Vanessa Haroutunian in person! Q&A with Haroutunian following the screening.
PURE&MAGICALPUSSYPOWER, Vanessa Haroutunian, 2010, 38 min
A documentary on Joanie4Jackie, an all-girl video chain letter project started by Miranda July in 1995. Combining archival footage and raw interviews with punk and DIY techniques, Haroutunian uncovers the history of the project as well as the implications it has for girls and women in the field today. Includes interviews with Miranda July, Vanessa Renwick, Ed Halter and others and footage from over 50 Joanie4Jackie submission videos.
VANESSA’S J4J PICKS:
Screening of Joanie4Jackie chain letter submissions hand picked by Vanessa. Videos include teen made horror films, celebrity love letters, and psychedelic cable access adventures among many others. Made explicitly by badass girls and women, these videos are unlike any you’ve seen before and are not to be missed. TRT: 45 minutes
THURSDAY, AUGUST 15
EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF
Jean-Luc Godard, 1980, 87 min
“Even After 30 Years, the Film of the Moment,” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times, Nov. 2010.
“Godard’s brilliant new comedy…a stunning, original work… breathtakingly beautiful and often very funny… I trust it will outlive us all.” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times, Oct. 1980.
Godard called Every Man For Himself his second first film. Superbly acted and an inventive parody of modern life, the film revolves around three characters who are romantically intertwined and all at turning points in their lives. The all-star cast features Isabelle Huppert as a country girl who moves to the city to become a prostitute; Nathalie Baye as a woman who gives up her city job to pursue an idyllic life in the country; and Jacques Dutronc as a television director, separated from his wife and daughter, and at the end of his tether. Sexually frank, emotionally wistful and visually refined, Every Man For Himself focuses on recognizable urban types grappling with midlife crises and existential ennui.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22
GIMME THE LOOT
Adam Leon, 2012, 81 min
Adam Leon in person! Q&A with Leon following the screening.
“A uniquely fresh, affectionate and downright huggable debut feature,” – Mark Olsen, LA Weekly
Malcolm and Sofia are the most determined teenage graffiti-writers in the Bronx. But when a rival gang buffs their latest masterpiece, they hatch a plan to get their revenge by planning the ultimate graffiti tag – to “bomb” the Mets’ home run apple. The only hitch is that they need to raise $500 to pull off their spectacular scheme. Over the course of two whirlwind, sun-soaked summer days, Malcolm and Sofia travel on an epic urban adventure involving black market spray cans, illicit bodegas, stolen sneakers, a high stakes heist, and a beautiful, stoned girl whose necklace is literally their key to fame. Gimme the Loot is the charming, funny, daring story of two taggers that will do anything to become the biggest writers in the city. Official selection at Cannes and winner of the Grand Prize at SXSW.
BASILICA HUDSON and CCS BARD PRESENT: TO LOOK IS TO LABOR
Exhibition and performative lectures curated by Olga Dekalo and Aily Nash with works by Harun Farocki, Lucy Raven and Andrew Norman Wilson
FRIDAY JULY 12 – SUNDAY JULY 14