Documentary by Daniel Skaggs
Filmmaker in Person!
Wednesday, April 9 at 7pm, $7-10
Just as the original hobos of the early 20th century were scorned by the mainstream of society, so too are today’s train riders. FREELOAD (2013, 65 min) is a dive into a beggar’s existence. It’s a ride through America’s backyard. It is a musical endeavor that feels like a drama. It is a sociological examination of the ignored.
Filmmaker Daniel Skaggs, a veteran train hopper himself, spent over a year riding the rails with a video camera to capture the complex and varied lives of the modern day riders. Sometimes sweet and often difficult, the (primarily) men in FREELOAD allowed Skaggs unfettered access into their lives, and honest, direct accounts of both why and how they live on the outskirts of American society.
Watch the trailer here.
(2013, 66 min)
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artist in attendance,
documentary,
video
Archival Screening and Book Launch
Presented by threewalls
Saturday, March 29th at 7:00 pm
The Nightingale and Threewalls are pleased to host the Chicago launch of the new book, LEARNING BY DOING AT THE FARM by presenting a program of three films from University of California, Irvine’s Special Collections: The screening will be followed by a discussion with the book’s editors, Robert Kett and Anna Kryczka.
http://soberscove.com/book/learning-by-doing/
About The Farm:
In 1968, faculty from the University of California, Irvine’s Social Sciences Division began a short-lived pedagogical experiment in intercultural exchange and scientific/artistic learning through practice that brought indigenous craftspeople from Guatemala, Mexico, and Samoa to live, teach, and be studied on the undeveloped edges of the newly-built California Brutalist campus. Through previously unpublished archival documentation, Learning by Doing at the Farm: Craft, Science, and Counterculture in Modern California (recently published by Chicago-based Soberscove Press) offers access to the initial dreams of what the Farm could become and the collaborations–and commune–that eventually came to pass.
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An evening of video, performance, and pasta
with Tony Balko & A.E. Paterra.
Wednesday, March 26th, 8pm, $7-10
Flashing lights and pulsing synthesizers create a site for transmogrification, as Balko and Paterra invite you to ride shotgun on a trip toward the Singularity. Psychedelic fictions and good old heavy vibes provide a glimpse of the future as seen from the eyes of working class Ridge Runners.
Suit up and come hungry!
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artist in attendance,
experimental,
found footage,
new media,
video
A Selection of Videos by Jesse McLean
Jesse McLean in person!
Friday, March 21st at 8pm, $7-10
“My work is motivated by a deep curiosity about human behavior and relationships, and is concerned with both the power and the failure of the mediated experience to bring people together.”
Jesse McLean’s work conveys a unique sense of empathy while it both investigates and performs a pressing social concern of our moment: does technology extend the human experience or has the human experience become mediated by technology? The works presented tonight contemplate these questions with acute attention—witty and smart, without sacrificing feeling to cleverness. Even with cultural detritus, McLean creates rich moments of sonic and visual splendor that recall the histories of personal cinema; moments created with a sincere desire to understand her own position with the materials she is drawn to and uses for her artistic practice. In her interview with Jesse Malmed for Bad at Sports she admits:
“There is a great deal of power in mass media but the level of manipulation is so grotesque as to be impressive. Popular culture works terrifically on me; I have a particularly embarrassing memory of sobbing uncontrollably on a plane during Toy Story 3. This kind of emotional response never happens to me in real life. So I would never ridicule my subject, because I’m a fan, too. But I’m also a skeptic.”
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artist in attendance,
documentary,
experimental,
found footage,
new media,
video
Recent Experimental Films by Richard Tuohy
DIY & Handmade Cinema from Australia!
Richard Tuohy in Person!
Thursday, March 20 at 7:30pm, $7-10
The Nightingale is excited to present Australian experimental filmmaker Richard Tuohy in person, who will screen a program of his vibrant and stunning diy/handmade/hand-processed 16mm work. Tuohy hasn’t so much rejected digital as he has embraced celluloid, and his work vividly demonstrates that extraordinary things can be done in these days of dwindling film stock options and closing labs with hands-on techniques and processes.
“While these works cover a range of techniques, strategies and visual themes, they each share the same tenacious experimental unfolding of a set of abstract possibilities from out of singular visual ideas, much as might a set of theme and variations musical studies. These works collectively represent a distinctively cinematic experience, wrestled from mundane objects and salvaged film industry equipment. More visual then cerebral, these pictures move, and with an energy unique to film. This program presents seven hand-processed and d-i-y printed 16mm film works from Tuohy’s recent output. The films, though diverse, are all highly abstract and tightly structured and share a fascination with the visual possibilities of basic traditional film technology. Tuohy is very much a part of the ‘dirty hands’ co-hort of film artists.”
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