Screening

MFA Photography, Video and Related Media presents a variety of recent works from Millennium Film Journal. Millennium Film Journal RIFTS covers a swath of current artists’ moving image territory, including eight reviews of recent works, a dossier by MFJ editors and advisory board members focused on the 2022 New York Film Festival Currents sidebar, Cathy Rogers’ unique Artist Pages and a trio of full length articles on major international artists’ films and videos. Selected for the program is a variety of recent works addressing major issues, but invariably obliquely—as is to be expected in our constantly changing field.

Curated by Grahame Weinbren (MFA 2019 Photography, Video and Related Media) and Jonathan Ellis (MFA 2019 Photography, Video and Related Media).

Andre Demirjian, We Send Our Signal [2021 digital 2' 03]

• “The Nunnery Gallery comprises a screening room connected to an arched hallway no bigger than 20’ x 8’. Any indication that this was once the site of Christian rituals has been stripped, its walls painted pure white in gallery tradition. I slowly made my way down the passage, taking in each monitor as one would observe the stations of the cross. . . . At the end of the passage, projected high above the other artworks, was Signal. Appearing in a space once occupied by Christ on the cross, Demirjian’s futuristic documentary projected a newer, more pressing kind of premonition that feels contemporary and dystopian all at once.” – Elizabeth Lowe, Signal

Riccardo Giacconi in collaboration with Andrea Morbio Diteggiatura, Fingerpicking [2021 digital 17’30]

• “The figures of action are the hand-crafted marionettes of the Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla e Figli in Milan, one of the oldest puppet theatres in the world. The film builds a tactile depiction of raw materials being shaped into unique characters, each with its own expressive features. In one of the most fascinating sections, we see the pages of a catalogue showing the faces of some of the nearly three thousand puppets housed in the studio. Each face tells a story, imbued with history and the experience of previous performances.” – Kim Knowles, Currents Program 3: Action Figures

Eva Giolo, The Demands of Ordinary Devotion [2022 16mm to digital, 12’ 03]

• “Despite the repetition and carefully framed shots, the film is far from clinical; Giolo keeps things playful with clever visual puns and Freudian double entendres, in the images, the sounds, and their juxtaposition. The omnipresence of 16mm film, both in the texture of the images and the diegetic appearance of the Bolex, demonstrate Giolo’s commitment to the particularly tactile process of analog filmmaking. Beautifully filmed, impeccably edited, Giolo’s latest vibrates with the substance of life, labor, joy, and uncertainty.” – Vincent Warne, Currents Program 7: Ordinary Devotion

Sylvia Schedelbauer, In The Beginning Woman Was the Sun [2022 digital 17’]

• Schedelbauer’s film culls together archival footage, though in a manner that coincides with what Eisenstein deemed “potential montage,” conflict within the shot. In Schedelbauer’s films multiple layers counterpose each other while also colliding against successive shots of just a few frames. The internal montage might be considered a depth model of vertical montage. Viewing In the Beginning feels like plunging perpetually forwards into an unknown universe, riding upon a boiling fireball of a planet. – Lana Lin, “Currents Program 8: Time Out of Mind”

Peter Tscherkassky, Dreamwork [2001 35mm to digital 11’2]

• “PT: It’s another work in the tradition of “dream films,” and it pays homage to the Surrealist film tradition and to Dadaist cinema. But the main point of reference was Man Ray, who invented the camera-less darkroom film by copying and printing objects onto unexposed raw footage.
• JR: [. . .] I suspect the Man Ray film that most influenced Dream Work was Le Retour à la raison—is that right?
• PT: Correct. When I started working on Dream Work, at some point in time it crossed my mind that Man Ray was the first to do what I am doing: sitting in a darkroom, putting something on top of unexposed footage, exposing it, and developing it. Everything is handmade. The only difference is this: my objects are not real objects from everyday life but filmstrips—found footage.” – Justin Remes, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: A Conversation with Peter Tscherkassky

Peng Zuqiang, The Cyan Garden [2022 analog to digital/digital 8’]

• “The Cyan Garden (2022) gives form to a past made familiar with the veneer of borrowed nostalgia. Interlacing oral history with historical accounts, the film cuts between the old site of an underground radio in exile and a modern-day Airbnb apartment decorated in an imagined "Southeast Asian” style in Yiyang. Peng Zuqiang’s films affirm nostalgic obsession as a tool for cultivating solidarity in times of loss, confusion, and uncertainty.” – Yanxiu Luo, Souvenirs of Frictions: Peng Zuqiang at the e-flux Screening Room

TRT 67’

The Millennium Film Workshop gratefully acknowledges support for the Millennium Film Journal by the following individuals and organizations: Deborah and Dan Duane, Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts and Anonymous Donors.

Feature image courtesy of Peter Tscerkassky.

This event is sponsored by Adorama.