Available online worldwide!Friday-Sunday, October 2-4, 2020, All DayLos Angeles Filmforum presentsIsm, Ism, Ism: Urban Harmonies/Dissonant Cities
Online
Q&A on Sunday Oct 4
https://www.lafilmforum.org/schedule/fall-2020/ism-ism-ism-urban-harmoni...
More information: www.lafilmforum.org, (323) 377-7238
Tickets: Sliding scale, https://ismcitysymphonies.bpt.me
https://www.lafilmforum.org/schedule/fall-2020/ism-ism-ism-urban-harmoni...
Promotional Support for these online screenings from Berkeley Art Museum * Pacific Film Archive; WNDX Festival of Experimental Film, Winnipeg; Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque; Lightbox Film Center, University of the Arts, Philadelphia.
At the end of the silent era of cinema, there was an international cycle of films that depicted the nature of the modern city. These films, known as city symphonies or film symphonies, were edited as if following a musical score. The rhythm and succession of the images were immensely important for the filmmakers. In Latin America, some of the earliest experimental films participated in this cycle of city symphonies. For example, São Paulo: a Sinfonia da Metrópole (1929), by Rodolfo Rex Lustig and Adalberto Kemeny, and Humberto Mauro’s film-poem about his home town in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Sinfonia de Cataguases (1929). Ever since those early efforts many filmmakers have maintained a fascination with the city, as Latin American cities were transformed by unfettered growth, industrialization, and massive rural to urban migrations. This program offers a range of urban visions—some more celebratory, others more critical—of the architecture, daily life, public spaces, and transportation of cities such as Buenos Aires, Havana, Lima, Bogotá, Los Angeles, Santiago, and London.
Screening:
- Habana Solo, Juan Carlos Alom, 2000, 15 min, b&w, 16mm transferred to digital, Cuba
In Habana Solo some of the most important Cuban musicians from the most diverse musical tendencies of today, showing us the city in them and the city they inhabit with no other words than the music solos they improvise _ in solitary space and without restrictions, and we can see through the free lens of the camera, freedom based on undertaking the translation of the sounds of their music and the city’s, into an uninterrupted visual solo in which images concatenate each other, in the same way the musicians are composing in the real instant their improvised pieces, with the rhythmical and harmonical intensity of the music that happens, and with the same dose of abstraction _, making palpable the spirit of the city possessed by its musical sounds in the same proportion they sound, beat and visualize, with a texture that doesn’t betray its reality, possessed by her. -- Franklin J. Díaz
- Inùtil Paisagem, Louise Botkay, 2010, 6 min, b&w, 16mm transferred to digital, Brazil
In a musical mood shifted and carried by the figure of Bob Estrela, a city and a girl blend into solitude in urban areas
- Machinery No. 1 (Maquinaria No. 1), Luis Soldevilla, 2011, 3 min, color, sound, video, Perú
This video explores - in an abstract way - the motion generated by machines that "carry away" the citizens and how this machine at the same time transport the necessary energy to keep the city´s vital flow. By means of combining the inner motion of the devices (ladders, trains an elevators) with an external motion (camera movements) these ideas of motion, energy and transportation acquire a new meaning, generating a sort of vertigo and the idea of no point or direction.
- Constitución (Constitution), Melisa Aller, 2013, 4 min, b&w, sound, Super 8 transferred to digital, Argentina
No insides and outsides. The margins do not exist. Constitution is an intensive burst which does not seek individuals and forms, but seeks the different speeds and slownesses. Immanence. Distributing the affects, the intensities. There is no difference in the artificial from the natural. Because, the important is to know what a body is able to afford in a way of life.
- Despedida (Farewell), Alexandra Cuesta, 2013, 10 min, color, sound, 16mm transferred to digital, Ecuador/USA
Shot in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, this transitory neighborhood resonates with the poetry of local resident Mapkaulu Roger Nduku. Verses about endings, looking, and passing through, open up the space projected. A string of tableaux gather a portrait of place and compose a goodbye letter to an ephemeral home.
- La Poubelle, Felipe Ehrenberg, 1970, 16 min, color, sound, video transferred to digital, México
La Poubelle a film by Felipe Ehrenberg about his garbage walks around London at the time of the strikes in 1970
- Rapsodia en Bogotá, José María Arzuaga, 1963, 24 min, color, sound, 35mm transferred to digital, Colombia
This screening is part of Los Angeles Filmforum’s screening series Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Cine Experimental en América Latina). Ism, Ism, Ism is an unprecedented film series —the first in the U.S.—that surveys Latin America’s vibrant experimental production from the 1930s through today. Revisiting classic titles and introducing recent works by key figures and emerging artists, Ism, Ism, Ism takes viewers on a journey through a wealth of materials culled from unexpected corners of Latin American film archives. Key historical and contemporary works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the United States are featured. The online screenings in Fall 2020 will conclude the touring portion of Ism, Ism, Ism. www.ismismism.org
Ism, Ism, Ism is accompanied by a bilingual publication (from University of California Press) placing Latino and Latin American experimental cinema within a broader dialogue that explores different periods, cultural contexts, image-making models, and considerations of these filmmakers within international cinema.
Ism, Ism, Ism was originally part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles that occurred in 2017-18. Explore more at www.ismismism.orgLead support for Ism, Ism, Ism is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.
Significant additional support comes from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.
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Los Angeles Filmforum screenings are supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, the Wilhelm Family Foundation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and the American Cinematheque. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation. 2020 is our 45th year.
Memberships available, $75 single, $125 dual, or $40 single student. Contact us at [email protected]. www.lafilmforum.org.
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