This Radiant World: Recent and Retrospective Experimental Films is a four-program series of exceptional experimental films from the last few years, complemented by several newly restored and preserved retrospective works. Many of the films comment directly or indirectly on the anxieties and uncertainty of the past two years; others serve as joyful and playful counterpoints. Together, they demonstrate the continuing richness of experimental cinema, the history of which is exemplified by this selection of lesser-known works that are overdue for rediscovery and reappraisal. 

Change and the possibility of change are the thread that ties this diverse group of films together: change of substance, of oneself, of the land, of the seasons, of consciousness. German artist Margaret Raspé turns domestic labor into performance art through the use of a helmet-mounted camera in The Sadist Beats the Unquestionably Innocent, while S. Pearl Sharp’s Back Inside Herself, starring Barbara-O (Daughters of the Dust), is a raw and moving exploration of individuality and Black female identity. In For the Time Being, Deborah Stratman’s “video letter” to artist Nancy Holt, landscape becomes art and place is imbued with magical possibility, and Montréal-based Japanese filmmaker Daïchi Saïto transforms the landscape of the Andes mountains into an increasingly abstract phantasmagoria of color, shape, and texture in the stunning 35mm film earthearthearth. Lois Patiño and Matías Piñeiro’s collaborative Sycorax moves the barely-mentioned witch in Shakespeare’s The Tempest to the center, rendering her visible but still unfixed, wandering in the wilderness, body-shifting in a filmed audition process, while Markus Maicher’s Blätter im Herbst / Leaves in Autumn is a delicate, lyrical study of light and movement. Co-curated by Julia Gibbs and Patrick Friel. (digital and 35mm, 71 min.) 

Full Program

• The Sadist Beats the Unquestionably Innocent (Margaret Raspé, 1971, 6 min, digital video)
• Back Inside Herself (S. Pearl Sharp, 1984, 4 min, digital video)
• For the Time Being (Deborah Stratman, 2021, 7 min, digital video)
• Sycorax (Lois Patiño and Matías Piñeiro, 2021, 20 min, digital video)
• Blätter im Herbst / Leaves in Autumn (Markus Maicher, 2018, 4 min, digital video)
• earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021, 30 min, 35mm)

Masks and proof of vaccination are required for entry for this in-person event at the Logan Center. Learn more at arts.uchicago.edu/visitlogancenter.