Film Studies Center (U of C) - Friday, 6pm (Stratman) & 7:45pm (Comerford/Brown)
Deborah Stratman, Thomas Comerford, and Bill Brown make
work that is simultaneously documentary and experimental, landscape
portrait and essay, personal and accessible. Three of the most engaging
filmmakers working today, all are either current or former
locals. Contextualized together here, their films become a mapping of
the contemporary American experience and power structure. Comerford’s LAND MARKED/MARQUETTE
uses locations and monuments in the Chicago area connected to 17th
century explorer Jacques Marquette as a jumping-off point for
reflection on representations of history and how our modern city has
transformed land that was once prairie. In O’ER THE LAND,
Stratman ponders the multitude of definitions that Americans have for
“Freedom” by combining footage of high-school football, war
re-enactments, and machine gun festivals, focusing on the participants
and refusing to tell the viewer what to think. She combines these
pastimes with the story of U.S. Marine Colonel William Rankin who
survived a 40-minute descent through a thunderstorm in 1959 after being
forced to eject from his aircraft at 47,000 feet. Bill Brown, who
describes his films as postcards of pretty pictures with voice-over
instead of writing, will show THE OTHER SIDE, a film
about the US-Mexico border that uses migrant activists and the natural
features of the desert Southwest to investigate political boundaries in
a geographic and historical manner. After the screenings the artists
will engage in a roundtable discussion that is sure to be the highlight
of the evening. Also screening: IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE (Stratman), FIGURES IN THE LANDSCAPE (Comerford), and CHICAGO DETROIT SPLIT (Brown & Comerford). (6pm: 2002 & 2008, 84 min total, 16mm / 7:45: 2002-06, 88 min total, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info
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