WED 3/9
ORNETTE COLEMAN TRIBUTE: Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in America

09 ornette 09 Ornette-Made-in-America-review 09 ornette clarke

Ornette: Made in America captures Ornette Coleman’s evolution over three decades. Returning home to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1983 as a famed performer and composer, documentary footage, dramatic scenes and some of the first music video-style segments ever made chronicle his boyhood in segregated Texas and his subsequent emergence as an American cultural pioneer and world-class icon. Among those who contribute to the film include William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Don Cherry, Yoko Ono, Charlie Haden, Robert Palmer, Jayne Cortez and John Rockwell. The film focuses on the struggles and triumphs of Ornette Coleman’s life as well as on the inspired intelligence that spawned his creativity and ensured his success. Experimental pioneer, Shirley Clarke’s film explores the rhythms, images and myths of America seen through they eyes of an artist’s ever-expanding imagination and experience.

THU 2/4
SISTERS’ SCIENCE FICTIONS:
Irene Lusztig’s The Motherhood Archives

02 motherhoodarchiveheader

(Filmmaker, Irene Lusztig in person)

We are pleased to welcome the filmmaker Irene Lusztig (Santa Cruz) presenting her latest film, The Motherhood Archives. Archival montage, science fiction and homage to 1970s feminist filmmaking are woven together to form this haunting and lyrical essay film that excavates hidden histories of childbirth in the twentieth century. Assembling her extraordinary trove, including newly rediscovered Soviet and French childbirth material tracing the evolution of Lamaze, The Motherhood Archives inventively untangles the complex, sometimes surprising genealogies of maternal education. This extraordinary achievement illuminates our changing narratives of maternal success and failure while raising important questions about our social and historical constructions of motherhood.

 

YAYOI KUSAMA: I Love Me + Karima Walker

16 Review-YayoiKusama_258998c  16 Yayoi-Kusama 16 Yayoi+Kusama+09-1

This fantastic documentary profiles the avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), a polka-dot-loving eminence recognized throughout the international art world. Kusama is one of the most influential and most collected artists of the 1960s; this film follows her creative process in her later years, working on a massive solo exhibition. At once an endearing and an intimidating character, Kusama has been widely quoted as saying “If I didn’t make art, I’d probably be dead by now.” As each work comes to completion, we witness the essence of Kusama’s art welling up in the conflict between life, death, and love. Opening the show will be multi-instrumentalist & songwriter Karima Walker who will be channeling Kusama’s ecstatic energies into a minimalist folk-scape of image and sound.

Filed Under: Tagged With: , , , ,

WED Dec 9 @ 7:30
YAYOI KUSAMA: I Love Me + Karima Walker

16 Yayoi-Kusama

karima-walker-10

This fantastic documentary profiles the avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), a polka-dot-loving eminence recognized throughout the international art world. Kusama is one of the most influential and most collected artists of the 1960s; this film follows her creative process in her later years, working on a massive solo exhibition. At once an endearing and an intimidating character, Kusama has been widely quoted as saying “If I didn’t make art, I’d probably be dead by now.” As each work comes to completion, we witness the essence of Kusama’s art welling up in the conflict between life, death, and love. Opening the show will be multi-instrumentalist & songwriter Karima Walker who will be channeling Kusama’s ecstatic energies into a minimalist folk-scape of image and sound.

LAVISH LITERARY HOAXES The Cult of JT LeRoy (Tucson Premiere)

14 Jtillustrated_poster 14 cultofjtleroy1

EV is proud to present the Tucson premiere of Marjorie Sturm’s new feature documentary about the scandalous writer JT LeRoy. JT LeRoy was a teen prostitute, addicted to heroin and infected with HIV, when a therapist encouraged him to write his life story. Buoyed by a cadre of celebrities, he published three critically acclaimed books, including Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. But as his fame skyrocketed, the shocking truth emerged: JT was not what he seemed. What followed was a downfall as bewildering as it was tragic. Drawn into LeRoy’s inner circle before the truth came to light, filmmaker Marjorie Sturm was misled like many others. Through intimate interviews with many close to the tarnished figure, Sturm attempts to untangle what really happened, and in the process explores how his deception called into question not only the value of LeRoy’s writing without his “authenticity”, but our culture’s complicity with the author’s seductive cult of personality.

Filed Under: Tagged With: , ,

WED Dec 2 @ 7:30
The Cult of JT LeRoy

14 Jtillustrated_poster

Tucson Premiere!!

LAVISH LITERARY HOAXES

EV is proud to present the Tucson premiere of Marjorie Sturm’s new feature documentary about the scandalous writer JT LeRoy. JT LeRoy was a teen prostitute, addicted to heroin and infected with HIV, when a therapist encouraged him to write his life story. Buoyed by a cadre of celebrities, he published three critically acclaimed books, including Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. But as his fame skyrocketed, the shocking truth emerged: JT was not what he seemed. What followed was a downfall as bewildering as it was tragic. Drawn into LeRoy’s inner circle before the truth came to light, filmmaker Marjorie Sturm was misled like many others. Through intimate interviews with many close to the tarnished figure, Sturm attempts to untangle what really happened, and in the process explores how his deception called into question not only the value of LeRoy’s writing without his “authenticity”, but our culture’s complicity with the author’s seductive cult of personality.

VISIONARY NEW MEXICO MEDIA (Filmmaker/Curator Bryan Konefsky in person)

 

04 konefsky golden pride small size

A program of Albuquerque-based Bryan Konefsky’s independent cinematic projects, including selections from Konefsky’s documentary on media scholar and visionary theorist, Gene Youngblood (author of the 1970 groundbreaking Expanded Cinema). Additionally, Konefsky presents works from Albuquerque’s Basement Films and the cutting edge film festival Experiments in Cinema. For Konefsky, “un-dependent” film/video artists are the modern day equivalent of the traveling troubadour, sharing the cultural news of the day in an un-mediated, first-person form. Come connect with our microcinema comrade for a guided tour of visionary New Mexico and it’s intersection with world media currents.04 Basement Films Angels DL program

Filed Under: Tagged With: , , , ,

FRI 4/17
Orchids: My Intersex Adventure & Susan Stryker’s Screaming Queens

Early Show…….7PM  FREE!

“Open Embodiments: Locating Somatechnics in Tucson”:

International Conference, Film and Artist Talk

(filmmaker in person)

Exploded View will screen Dr. Phoebe Hart’s will screen  acclaimed autobiographical documentary film Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. This film asks what is the experience of a person with an intersex condition, and how can this experience be embodied and accessed on screen in documentary? A rare opportunity to experience this outstanding film! The second portion of the evening will be Susan Stryker presenting and discussing  her award winning 2005 film Screaming Queens.

EMMY® Award-winning “Screaming Queens” tells the little-known story of the first known act of collective, violent resistance to the social oppression of queer people in the United States — a 1966 riot in San Francisco’s impoverished Tenderloin neighborhood, three years before the famous gay riot at New York’s Stonewall Inn.
“Screaming Queens” introduces viewers to street queens, cops and activist civil rights ministers who recall the riot and paint a vivid portrait of the wild transgender scene in 1960s San Francisco. Integrating the riot’s story into the broader fabric of American life, the documentary connects the event to urban renewal, anti-war activism, civil rights and sexual liberation. With enticing archival footage and period music, this unknown story is dramatically brought back to life.

orchid screaming_queens-01