An Experimental Documentary by Erin Espelie
Filmmaker in Attendance!
The Nightingale Cinema, 1084 N. Milwaukee
Thursday, September 22nd, 7 pm, $7-10
The Nightingale welcomes Erin Espelie to present her experimental documentary about rare earth elements (the lanthanides), black mirrors (from obsidian to iPads), and how technology is reshaping the way we record the present and replay the past.
From the portals of personal computing devices to ancient obsidian mirrors, optical tools control how people see, foresee, record, and remember their lives. The Lanthanide Series ( 2014, USA/France/UK, 72 minutes) meditates on how we frame and understand the world through such material means and instruments, with a reliance on certain chemical elements and the people who we love.
“Part poetry, part chemistry lesson, part landscape film, part cinematic exploration, part history and geography lesson, part environmental revelation,part magic. The Lanthanide Series is something new under the sun.”– Scott MacDonald
“The Lanthanide Series fuses poetry and science to create a thrillingly uncategorizable work.” – Anthology Film Archives
Preceded by Kari Altman’s R-U-INS
ERIN ESPELIE is a writer, editor, and filmmaker, with a background in the research sciences. Her poetic, nonfiction films have shown around the world at the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival, the Whitechapel Gallery, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Imagine Science Film Festival, and more. Espelie currently holds an assistant professorship in Film Studies and Critical Media Practices at the University of Colorado Boulder; she serves as an Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Journalism and is editor in chief of Natural History magazine, a centenarian publication for which she has worked since 2001. erinespelie.com.
The Nightingale Cinema, 1084 N. Milwaukee
Sunday, September 18th, 8 pm, $7-10
A selection of shorts surrounding not just the the how-to but to-how. Bearing fully in mind the notion of utopia as a no-place, Difficult but Possible animates the notion of a diffuse set of not-yet-places, of worlds unbuilt, of worlds unbuilding, of the crazy-eyed mirage we keep moving toward. Together, we explore terrains fantastical, domestic, speculative and utopian; we learn to dodge the camera all around us and to stare deeply into and through others; we receive allegories from beyond underground weather and beyond Drop City, venture into cited non-sites and pick up some skills along the way.
Co-presented by Spudnik Press, in conjunction with Rules, Tools and Fools, curated by Jaclyn Jacunski and Jason Pallas; made possible through the generosity of the Chicago Film Archives, and the sense of possibility and adventure of the artists
Programmed by Jesse Malmed
Mike Lopez | Whole Earth Land | 2016 | 10 minutes | Playthrough Performance
Gene Bernofsky | 1993 | 1980 | 9 minutes | 16mm to Video | Sound
JoAnn Elam | The Last Whole Earth Catalog | 1967-1990 | 20 minutes | 8mm to Video | Silent
Jillian Mayer | Makeup Tutorial – How to Hide from Cameras | 2013 | 3.5 minutes | Video | Sound
Sam Green | Clear Glasses | 2008 | 4 minutes | Video | Sound
Jennifer Proctor | Alternative Forms of Energy | 2005 | 5 minutes | Super 8 to Video | Sound
Ben Russell | Trypps 7 (Badlands) | 2010 | 10 minutes | S16mm to Video | Sound
The Films of Rhody Streeter and Tony Ganz
Presented by White Light Cinema
With Rhoden “Rhody” Streeter in Person!
The Nightingale Cinema, 1084 N. Milwaukee
Friday, September 16th, 7:30 pm, $7-10
White Light Cinema is pleased to present this program of the quirky, idiosyncratic, and occasionally ironic early 1970’s short documentaries of Rhody Streeter and Tony Ganz.
Over the course of two years, Streeter and Ganz produced a series of amazing films that chronicle little-seen aspects of American society and culture of time. Some are sincere looks at more serious subjects (a men’s shelter, a youth social service organization), others explore in miniature more eclectic aspects of American life: a kitschy honeymoon hotel in the Poconos, the Sun City retirement community in Arizona, Muzak, and a former Times Square freak show business. Even when the films are at their most ironic and wryly humorous, Streeter and Ganz never resort to overt mockery.
A number of the films found success at the time – many of them were produced for the television series The Great American Dream Machine, a weekly satirical variety television series, produced in New York City by WNET and broadcast on PBS from 1971 to 1973; others aired on The 51st State, a WNET New York local news program; many played extensively on the film festival circuit.
Streeter went on to make television documentaries in Louisville, and later worked in Media Services with the Kentucky Department of Education for twenty-five years. Ganz entered the film industry, working mostly as a producer of television films, but also for the theatrical features Gung Ho and Clean and Sober, among others.
Program Details:
THE BOARD
(1971, 3 min, 16mm)
A moody look at smalltime investors contemplating their changing fortunes, as reflected in the fluctuations of stock prices on the big board. Based on The Board, the producers of The Great American Dream Machine hired Streeter and Ganz to make additional short films.
THE BEST OF YOUR LIFE
(1972, 8 min, 16mm)
A grimly amusing look at life in Sun City, Arizona, a gated retirement community. The Best of Your Life was the first film that Streeter and Ganz made for The Great American Dream Machine.
THE BOWERY MEN’S SHELTER
(1972, 10 min, 16mm)
A portrait of a longstanding shelter for homeless men on the Bowery in New York City, based on observation and conversations with the residents and employees of the shelter. “Interesting to note in almost all my films the narrative thread is developed strictly out of the interviews I think this film with its 20 seconds of Tony’s voiceover is one of the few times I’ve used a narrator.” (more…)
