COME & GET ONE AT EV !!

Exploded View Gallery, Tucson, AZ

Here I was expecting Tucson to be a hard sell, and the type of town I would feel most alien too. But no, if anything, I felt most comfortable here. Tucsonians are generous, beautiful, creative and friendly people. If you want to feel welcome, come here.

Reception of the Selected 3 programme at Exploded View Gallery was exceptional; applause after each film, whistles, appreciative laughter, sighs – everything in compliment. I was over the moon by the end with a deeply embedded grin on my face.

The screening was followed by interested questions; all the films were talked about, again Sophie Beresford’s Making Adidas Mermaid got attention – loved very much. Lots of curiosity about Cheryl Simmons’ film What are you doing man? They’re cooking my men like sausages. A glorious collage piece that examines reinterpretation and memory.

Exploded View is unique in Tucson; opportunities to show artists’ film and experimental work rely on Rebecca and David’s commitment to the gallery, which is an inspirational example. The University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography is worth checking out (the archive gets shown off to the public every Friday), and, off the arts track, there is also the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, a superb department for those interested in dendrochronology.

Tucson also has an amazing desert surrounding it, with huge Saguaro cacti soaring into the sky, perched on the mountain slopes like armies of headless triffids. I was driven into the desert by Carl Hanni, a devoted Tucsonian, who generously took me on a hike to see the Saguaros, desert sunset and endless mountainous landscape.

I leave Tucson with a heavy heart, but with eyes set on LA for Echo Park Film Center and to see some good friends.

Tucson desert sunset

By CASEY KNOX Published October 30, 2013 at 2:17am

Through a series of videos, Exploded View’s microCINEMA in downtown Tucson aims to showcase stories by Syrian artists and Syrians in exile that they feel need to be told.

This Wednesday, David Sherman, Exploded View’s founder, is showing videos that have been curated by a media arts organization in the Netherlands called Impakt, which collects Syrian work.

“There’s not a huge Syrian art community in the United States, but that’s the beauty of the Internet,” Sherman said.

In an intimate venue, audience members will be able to openly discuss the issues presented on the screen, he added.

“We wanted to highlight a creative response to a serious war situation,” Sherman said. The civil unrest in Syria began in 2011, and has since inspired Syrian artists and those in exile to tell their personal stories in the form of short clips and videos.

Sherman and his wife, Rebecca Barten, coined the term “microcinema” in 1994. The first microcinema was established in San Francisco in 1994 and was called Total Mobile Home microCINEMA. Sherman moved to Tucson in 2012, where he introduced Exploded View.

“It’s less about the big audience and more about how people connect with the material,” Sherman said.

Christian Sinclair, a scholar of Middle Eastern studies, will be flying in to help create an intimate dialogue with audience members about specific Syrian issues expressed though the videos. Sinclair will be able to explain the Syrian conflicts to those who may be unfamiliar with their history, as well as the content provided in the videos.

“The issues are complex, and these underrepresented voices are coming to the foreground,” Sherman said.

Sherman said that these videos will give people a unique way to view issues in Syria, as the work strays from being purely documentary-driven and objective and tends toward narrative stories.

The videos will have a range of aesthetics, from animation to diary work, and each will be unique in terms of their structure, Sherman added.

“Our interest is to combine experimental media with other veins of creativity which are currently happening in Tucson,” he said.

Susan Stryker, director of the Institute for LGBT Studies and a local filmmaker, met Sherman for the first time when she was screening her own works at the Playground Bar and Lounge. Stryker worked with Sherman in his microcinema to present an LGBTQ film to the Tucson community during LGBT History Month in October.

“There’s a lot of work happening in the film and media industry that’s not commercial,” Stryker said. “There’s some really important and interesting work that’s out there.”

Stryker said that the film and the works presented in Sherman’s microcinema are able to give the Tucson community a different perspective on the world that they live in.

Although Sherman’s microcinema is targeted toward a smaller audience, Stryker said the films presented are politically, artistically and intellectually charged.

“As a filmmaker, I’m just really excited to see this kind of space in Tucson,” she said. “They really want to be a hub for the experimental and small film market community.”

In “An Outline for Exploded View Microcinema” we write about the origins and vision behind EV.
OtherZine #25

This issue is edited by Christine Metropoulos and featuring Articles on sister microcinema Echo Park Film Center; writings by Gerry Fialka, Jesse Drew; artist pages by Caroline Koebel, Michael Betancourt; & Jerry Tartaglia on the restoration of the films of Jack Smith.