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- Tony Oursler's Imponderable (2015-16) offers an alternative depiction of modernism that reveals the intersection of technological advancements and occult phenomena over the last two centuries. Presented in a "5-D" cinematic environment utilizing a contemporary form of Pepper's ghost-a 19th-century phantasmagoric device-and a range of sensory effects (scents, vibrations, etc.), Imponderable is an immersive feature-length film inspired by Oursler's own archive of ephemera relating to stage magic, spirit photography, pseudoscience, telekinesis, and other manifestations of the paranormal. Drawing on these objects, Imponderable weaves together a social, spiritual, and empirical history of the virtual image that overlaps with the artist's own family history. A cast of characters including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, Mina "Margery" Crandon, and members of Oursler's family are portrayed by an eclectic ensemble of artists, musicians, and performers including Kim Gordon, Jim Fletcher, Keith Sanborn, and Constance DeJong. Bringing together Oursler's ongoing interest in mysticism, psychedelia, popular culture, and media history, the work employs macabre humor and theatrical surrealism to reflect on the irrational relationship between belief systems and the authenticity of images.
- In Reckless Eyeballing, the title taken from a Jim Crow-era prohibition against Black men looking at White women, Harris imagines encounters between characters from American films such as Birth of a Nation (1915) and the blaxploitation film Foxy Brown (1974) to explore "the gaze" from a Black cinematic context. Throughout the film he juxtaposes images of activist and scholar Angela Davis, best known for her roles in the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement, with those of Foxy Brown actress Pam Grier, mixing fantasy with reality and visually articulating how cinema's cultural image bank conflates Black American women's desirability with danger.
- The elderly people living in the forest areas of the Yoshino Mountains and the village of Nishi-Yoshino are resilient loners. Kawase records them in their daily activities, revealing their humorous and frank philosophies about hard work, isolation, loneliness, and growing old. One woman dryly says, "Turn your camera off, being old is not entertaining." Another adds philosophically, "The wind will blow, the future will come. Without suffering there is no happiness."
- LORDVILLE extends Tajiri's on-going examination of ideas of history, place and race, and continues and propels larger conversations within the documentary field. - A work spanning categorizations; it is a landscape film, an experimental documentary, an ethnography of place, a personal meditation. - As is in HISTORY AND MEMORY, it is an inquiry into questions of law, land and citizenship and how these, in the context of American history, are complicated by notions of nation and race.
- Oiticica Filho, nephew of Hélio Oiticica, one of the most essential figures in the evolution of Brazil's revolutionary art-movements of the 1960s and 1970s, combines skillful research with his exceptional access to his uncle's films and documentation of artworks. The "Heliotapes"-audiotapes onto which the artist recorded ideas and "manifestations" from Rio de Janeiro, New York, and London before dispersing them to friends-make up the soundtrack of the documentary, along with terrific musical choices. With the addition of a treasure trove of images, this dynamic construction immerses the viewer in the universe of Hélio Oiticica, who guides us through the invention of his Bólides, Penetráveis, Núcleos, Parangolés, etc.
- The moving collage Remembrance: A Portrait Study, richly colored in warm tones and lighting and featuring a pop soundtrack, offers a follow-up portrait of Owens's mother, Mildered, as she lounges with friends sharing drinks, cigarettes, and friendship.
- A silent work that fuses a baroque painterly style and photographic sensibility with experimental montage. Portraits of Edward Owens' mother adorned in fanciful costumes and striking regal poses are superimposed with other images to create a dreamlike world bridging realities of life with fantasy and desire.
- A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the Shanghai movie scene, with parallels to the true-life story of popular actress Ruan Lingyu. A simple girl is plucked from the countryside by a famous actor, who romances her and makes her a star, with unhappy results. The film's score is lost, but the engagement of Zi Luolan, an opera star (credited as Violet Wong), to play the lead opposite Jin Yan (Raymond King) was a sensation.
- Civil servant Jesús Martinez suffers a heart attack. Abandoned by his wife and stuck with hospital bills he can't afford, he assumes the identity of a terminally ill patient with the same name.
- A still photographer and a sound recordist independently wander the Chinese city and countryside in search of transformative artistic experiences. More than a portrait of disaffected youth, Shi's experimental narrative offers oblique evidence of the radical social and economic changes under way in china, and the strange collisions between communism and capitalism.