Promised Lands
Susan Sontag, 16mm, 1974, 87 mins

at

Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 7:30pm

Susan Sontag¹s third directorial effort and her only documentary, Promised Lands scrutinizes the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the growing divisions within Jewish thought over the question of Palestinian sovereignty. Shot in Israel during the final days and immediate aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Promised Lands is undoubtedly one of Sontag¹s most incisive examinations of contemporary Jewish consciousness, and she considered it her most personal film.

Sontag structures the film as an antiphony between two sets of images. The first consists of observational sequences detailing moments from modern Israel: desert landscapes, patrols of roadside soldiers, old men and women at the Wailing Wall, Israeli grocery stores and movie theaters, the Jerusalem War Cemetery, a military psychiatric ward, and a wax museum depicting the official history of the state. Intercut throughout are conversations with two intellectuals: writer Yoram Kaniuk, a supporter of Palestinian rights who sees Israel shifting from its socialist roots to an American-style commercial culture, and physicist Yuval Ne¹eman, who argues for the endemic nature of Arab anti-Semitism. Though the film grants no direct access to Arab or Palestinian voices, its clear elaboration of the debate prompted Israeli censors to ban its initial release, claiming it would be "damaging to the country's morale." Stateside, Stanley Kaufman praised the film¹s Hegelian quality, writing that it presents ³not a struggle between truth and falsehood but between two opposing, partial truths.²

A Film Desk release.

Tickets - $7, available at door.

TIE (3 Programs)
August 11, 2009
Denver, Colorado
Crossroads Theater
2590 Washington Street

Join us for the following three programs that illuminate the continuing vitality of experimental cinema with 16mm and 8mm films from Argentina, USA, Austria and Australia, including world premiers. Special guests, Pablo Marín and Christopher May, among others, will be present to introduce and answer questions.

Program 1: Sin título (Films by Pablo Marín)
- TM (2008, Argentina, 16mm, sound on CD)
- NYC (2006, Argentina/USA, Super-8, sound on CD)
- Bajo tierra (2007, Argentina, Super-8, silent)
Untitled Trilogy:
- Sin título (Focus) (2008, Argentina, Super-8, silent)
- Sin título (Snoopy) (2009, Argentina, Super-8, silent)
- Sin título (Parte tres) (2009, Argentina, Super-8, silent)
- Manual casero para detectives en pequeña escala (cap. 1-3) (2009, Argentina, Regular-8mm, sound on CD)

Program 2: Pets (Films)
- Gabriel Goes for a Walk (Karl Staven, 1996, USA, 16mm, optical)
- Untitled Insect Film (Jesse Kennedy, 2009, USA, Super-8, silent)
- Cat and Bird (Noah Stout, USA, Super-8, silent)
- Excerpt from Film (Parkour) (Christopher May, 2009, Austria, Super-8, outside sound

Program 3: Guided Angle (Films)
- Collide-A-Scope (Gregory Godhard, 2009, Australia, 16mm, silent)
- And We All Shine On (Michael Robinson, 2006, USA, 16mm, optical)
- Sad Lexicon (James Cole, 2009, USA, 16mm, silent)
- Mystery School (Jerry Tartaglia, 2009, USA, 16mm, sound on CD)

tank tv. Now Showing: Jacco Olivier
22nd July - 11th August 2009
tank.tv is pleased to present a showcase of the work of Dutch artist Jacco Olivier.

These short videos exemplify the dense painterly technique that has come to define Olivier’s work within the realm of moving image and position him somewhere between painter, filmmaker and animator. Each work is 'a slice of life' and the effect on viewing is of a feeling forgotten or a mystery unravelling. By withholding any meaningful narrative Olivier leaves viewers examining their own desire for meaning within these little, emotive pieces which seem like so much flotsam from the artist’s own experience.

“The images he (Olivier) makes are obviously painterly, their brushwork bold and narrative, their colour-sense superb. Yet the point of painting is that it is framed, that it frames (or freeze-frames) a turning world. By contrast, Olivier’s frames do all of those transitory things we expect of film, so that you’re constantly longing to shout “Stop!”; to be given a moment to appreciate his individual visions. We expect different things of painting and cinema. By running the two together, Olivier shakes the way we see the world.” - Charles Darwent, The Independent on Sunday, 2007.

Live Film! Jack Smith!
Five Flaming Days in a Rented World

New Films and Performances - Over 50 International Guests - Superstar Mario Montez Live!

From October 28- November 1 2009 Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art and Hebbel-am-Ufer (HAU) Theater present "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World", a monumental event that brings together over fifty international artists and scholars to pay homage to the pioneering American underground artist and queer icon Jack Smith twenty years after his death from AIDS.

Through performances, film and video screenings, installations, concerts, lectures and discussions, LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! not only offers a variety of perspectives on the gender and genre bending work of Smith, Andy Warhol and fellow '60s avant-gardists, but also situates this work in dialogue with that of a diverse group of international contemporary artists.

LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! participants were invited to Berlin in March 2009 for private screenings of the restored copies of Smith's films that were placed in the Arsenal film archive by film restorer Jerry Tartaglia of the Plaster Foundation, the organization founded by performance artist Penny Arcade and critic/scholar Jim Hoberman to save and archive Smith's work after his death. Following extensive discussions about Smith's work and the context of its production, participants have had almost six months to prepare new work for the public festival.

Special festival guest is the legendary underground Superstar Mario Montez who will be making his first live appearance in over thirty years! With a special star-studded production of Warhol screenwriter Ronald Tavel's play "The Life of Juanita Castro", LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! will also pay homage to Tavel, who was Smith and Montez's close collaborator and who died unexpectedly after the March screening weekend.

Participants include: Bini Adamczak, Callie Angell, Penny Arcade, Tim Blue, Nao Bustamante, Christoph Chemin, Eric D. Clark, Tony Conrad, Beatrice Cordua, Douglas Crimp, Martin Dannecker, Vaginal Davis, Diedrich Diederichsen, Jennifer Doyle, Rainald Goetz, Ulrich Gooß, Karola Gramann, Chloe Griffin, Herbert Gschwind, Birgit Hein, Wilhelm Hein, John Edward Heys, Werner Hirsch, Jim Hoberman, Oliver Husain, Ken Jacobs (live Skype appearance), Dominic Johnson, Kinky Justice, Andrew Kerton, Sean Michael Kirk, Jakob Lena Knebl, Michael Krebber, Deirdre Logue, Renate Lorenz, Marie Losier, Guy Maddin, Thomas Meinecke, José Muñoz, Ulrike Ottinger, Uzi Parnes, Phantom/Ghost, Gwenäel Rattke, Juliane Rebentisch, Evelyn Rüsseler, Hans Scheirl, Heide Schlüpmann, Isabell Spengler, Tim Stüttgen, Juan Suárez, Jerry Tartaglia, Amy Taubin, Chris Tedjasukmana, José Teunissen, Ela Troyano, Gordon W. and Klaus Walter.

Curated by Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel, and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus. "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World" is a co-production by Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art and Hebbel-am-Ufer (HAU) Theater, funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.