SVA Screening: MFJ 76 "Worlds"

Celebrating the publication of Millennium Film Journal No. 76 “Worlds”, the program consists of four rarely screened recent experimental media works from around the world.

Selected and presented by Millennium Film Journal senior editor Grahame Weinbren and editor-at-large Jonathan Ellis.

The screening is free and open to the public.

Chiara Caterina L’Incanto [Enchantment] (2021, 20′ Italy)

In 1997, Donatella Colasanti was found alive in the trunk of a car after being raped and tortured. In 2006, Rosa Bazzi and her husband stabbed four people to death, including an infant because “I didn’t like the way he was screaming.” L’Incanto’s soundtrack includes fragments of an interview with Donatella and of Rosa’s police interrogation: the voices of a victim and a murderess. Chiara Caterina placed these audio recordings, along with segments of a Tarot card session and other women’s stories — all on the subject of death — against images from “abandoned projects” (her words).” The result is a compelling, unique film.

Grahame Weinbren “Enchantment / Spells / Murders: EMAF 2022” (MFJ 76)

Eva Giolo Flowers Blooming in our Throats (2020, 8′ Belgium)

. . . a shifting line where gestures remain symbolically ambiguous, expressing a kind of violence that is not immediately recognizable. Hands try to support or escape, but also to grip or strike, in a subtle interweaving of sounds and references that adds to the viewer’s sense of tension and unease. A dialogue of gestures, made up of repeated visual sequences where time is marked by the spinning of a small toy top, as unstable and precarious as the balance of a relationship.

Leonardo Bigazzi “In Between Art Film“

Abraham Ravett Łódź:22592 (2019, 22’ USA)

Łódź:22592 explores the city’s Jewish ghetto in the years 1941-1944, as captured by the Jewish photographer, Henryk Ross (1910-1991). Ross buried the negatives, which were later recovered and published. Ravett utilizes long takes to explore Ross’s black and white photographs of everyday ghetto life under Nazi occupation: children, street scenes, work in factories, family gatherings, the subjects often looking directly into the camera. One image shows a portrait of a Jewish woman with the negative number 22592 clearly visible. Ravett highlights the number in his title. Could this be an image of his father’s first wife? The film’s silence indicates that neither the filmmaker nor we, the audience, shall ever know.

Jan-Christopher Horak “Recent Films by Abraham Ravett” (MFJ 76)

Alisi Telengut Fourfold (2020, 7′ Canada/Mongolia)

To make her films, Telengut works on a single surface or piece of paper, painting with pastels and fingertips, to produce a three-dimensional picture on a magazine-sized substrate. Scenes are painted, photographed, and then either adjusted, erased, or painted over. Films are produced live on the canvas, which, at the end, stands tall and thick. This procedure is repeated over many months, concluding with the creation of two interrelated yet distinct artworks: a digitally rendered film made via stop motion animation, and a sculptural artifact made by hand.

Chris Dymond “Media of Devotion” (MFJ 76)

Total running time: ca. 90 min.

This program is partially funded by NYSCA through the Millennium Film Workshop, affiliated with Millennium Film Journal.