Abraham Ravett was born in Poland in 1947, raised in Israel and emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1955. He holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Filmmaking and Photography and has been an independent filmmaker for the past thirty years. Mr. Ravett received grants for his work from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Artists Foundation Inc, Boston, MA., The Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, The Japan Foundation, The Hoso Bunka Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. His films have been screened internationally including the Museam of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, The Collective For Living Cinema, N.Y.C., Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, CA., S.F. Cinematheque, L.A. Forum, Innis Film Society, Toronto, Canada, Image Forum, Tokyo, Japan and Scratch Projection, Paris France, WRO Art Center, Wroclaw, Poland and Ponrepo, Prague, Czech Republic, among others.

From Pasolini to Bazin (football) via Daney or Godard (tennis), sport has fascinated many filmmakers and film theorists, as a social fact but also for its undeniable aesthetic qualities of bodies that box, swim, run, of body represented in the effort, nudes or not. This phenomenon is part of a historical continuity of the image. Indeed, we see at the end of the nineteenth century, after centuries dominated by particular religious iconography, a resurgence of this representation, notably Manet, Cezanne and Degas.

Cinema Project’s second program of Japanese experimental films—the first presented in May 2013—continues to explore the short works of filmmakers Takashi Ito and Toshio Matsumoto. Once a student and teacher duo, both experimented with techniques of still photography in a number of their films produced during the 1970s and 80s.  Techniques included using time-lapse photography, single-frame shooting, or employing the still photo as both object and extra-dimensional window.