Fall 2019 FILM at REDCAT

For our upcoming Fall 2019 season, FILM at REDCAT will include films from Mexico (Juan Pablo González, Sept 23), Italy (Homage toAngela Ricci Lucchi with Yervant Gianikian, Oct 1), Germany via Tokyo (Sylvia Schedelbauer, Nov 4), China (Lei Lei, Nov 18), Portugal (Gabriel Abrantes, Nov 25) and Ecuador (Alexandra Cuesta, Dec 9). We are also showcasing recent works by veteran artists of the Los Angeles avant-garde scene, James Benning (Sept 30) and David Lebrun (Dec 13) – as well as welcoming an experimental film artist visiting from New York (Lana Lin, Oct 7).

         Throughout the years, we have enjoyed working with guest curators to open up new horizons; Rebecca Baron and David Dinnell are presenting a series of contemporary experimental works, “Mur Murs”(Sept. 28); and we are delighted to welcome back Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré, the organizers of the 2019 Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation (Oct 12).

         Looking forward to seeing you at REDCAT

         Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud, Co-Curators

         Karissa Hahn, Curatorial Assistant

         Vivian Chen, Head Projectionist

         Nora Sweeney, Projectionist

Juan Pablo González: Caballerango – Still courtesy of the artist

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

Juan Pablo González’s Caballerango (Horse Wrangler) (2018, 62 min, Digital, Spanish/English subtitles) is an intimate portrait of rural Mexican life amidst the deepening presence of tragedy and loss. In the village of Milpillas, a family remembers the last day they saw Nando, their youngest and apprentice of his father José, a horse wrangler. Through a subtle weaving of multiple voices and vivid locales, Caballerangopoignantly reflects a community’s will to survive. Juan Pablo González is a Mexican filmmaker who was among Filmmaker Magazine‘s 2015 “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” His work has been screened at Cannes, Rotterdam, IDFA, BAM, Mexico City Cinematheque, and other international venues.

“An atmosphere and feeling of loss that will haunt you.” – IndieWire

“Juan Pablo González’s Caballerango,captures spare haunted moments in Milpillas… when the unexpected invades the frame, it engenders surprise or awe… demonstrating how ghosts, metaphoric and literal, permanently disrupt everyday lives.”
– Vikram Murthi, Roger Ebert Festival & Awards

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

Taking its name from the late Agnès Varda film and inspired by that film’s vitality and diversity, “Mur Murs” is a new one-day film series presenting contemporary artists’ cinema in Los Angeles. This inaugural edition presents three programs of new moving-image works in dialogue with the rich histories of avant-garde, experimental, documentary and creative non-fiction cinema. An off-the-beaten-track selection of groundbreaking films/videos (mostly shorts and medium-length pieces), the series brings into sharp focus cinema from international artists screened in conversation with works originating from Los Angeles. Agnostic in genre and format, it also includes recent archival restorations and (re)discoveries. Programs include recent works by Victoria Fu, Mike Gibisser, Jorge Jácome, David de Rozas, Deborah Stratman and others.

“Beautiful yet baffling, similar to the warm confusion felt when waking from a deep slumber in an unfamiliar, unremarkable location, Victoria Fu’s work leaves us to wonder when exactly the dream ends and reality begins.” – Artillery

“With an experimental sensibility, David de Rozas disrupts reified notions of memory and history by means of peculiar editing and sound.”
– Indy Week

“Like her editing, Deborah Stratman’s soundtrack is filled with layers of nuance and abrupt shifts in tone, and the film’s multiple waves of image, sound and discourse ultimately grow intoxicating.”

– The Hollywood Reporter

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

In his prolific career, unfolding since the early 1970s, legendary filmmaker and artist James Benning has matched a passionate wanderlust to an exacting formal rigor, mapping out multivalent landscapes. REDCAT is proud to present the North American Premiere oftwo moons (2018, 42.5 minutes), filmed in November 2018 in Valencia, California. A gibbous and full moon rising. The film will be preceded byL. COHEN (2017, 45 minutes, Grand Prix, Cinéma du réel festival in Paris), filmed in August of 2017 near Madras, Oregon. A rather unremarkable farm field on a most remarkable day. Mount Jefferson can be seen 40 miles away. Repeat screening of the April 29 event cancelled for technical reasons

“… one of the year’s most awe-inspiring and transcendent experiences. Regenerative, contemplative, profoundly moving, and as challenging as it is soothing, Benning’s minimalist tour de force captures the ordinary in nature and reveals the extraordinary within. L. COHEN is a search for totality, as much as it is a meditation on the beauty and brevity of existence.” – Andréa Picard, Cinéma du réel

“… the latest masterwork by this grand figure of the American avant-garde. Filmmaking can find its full force simply ‘by looking and listening’. The secret organization of phenomena emerges out of a long-sustained attention in which the landscape is a function of time – geological, historical and biographical, each new film bringing into play references inherent to the entire oeuvre.”

– Antoine Thirion, Toronto International Film Festival

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

When painter Angela Ricci Lucchi and architect Yervant Gianikian met in 1974, this triggered one of the most exciting collaborations in the history of cinema, spanning 44 years, as the pair became internationally known for their sensual, poetic, and critical work on “found footage.” They invented an “analytic camera” that allowed them to re-read, one frame at a time, archival material that was then slowed down, reframed, and colorized. To commemorate Ricci Lucchi’s passing in February 2018, and in collaboration with Gianikian (who will be present via Skype), we have made a selection of some of the 50-odd films they made together. This will include: Erat Sora (1975), Animali Criminali (1994), Lo Specchio di Diana (1996), Visions from the Desert (2000) and Notes from our Journey in Russia (2010), among others.

“Italian filmmakers Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi have proven themselves to be masters of the assemblage of found footage film, returning over and over again to images from the first decades of the 20th century, with a special attention to images of war and colonialism.” – Harvard Film Archive

“Their beautiful images – colored in vivid hues, slowed down, iterated – embodied so many things one would rather avoid seeing, if at all noticing: violence, individual pain and feelings, the devastations of war, the objectification of female and black bodies, the ideological construction of the ‘Other’, human fragility. Their insistence on slowing down, looking harder, studying the context, refusing to march on, forget and bypass at the same collective pace, is an active and precious form of resistance.” – Frieze

“Consistent through their long collaboration is an idiosyncratic and highly sensual engagement with old, archival, and found materials.”
– Hyperallergic

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

The Cancer Journals Revisited (2018, 98 min) is a poetic rumination on the precarious conditions of survival for women of color. At the invitation of the filmmaker, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, twenty-seven artists, activists, and current and former patients recite queer black poet Audre Lorde’s riveting 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience, reflecting aloud on what it means to be a woman contending with illness and its afterlife. Lana Lin is an artist, writer and curator based in New York. Her work examines fragilities and contradictions of human and discursive bodies, emphasizing the conceptual and poetic capacities of moving image media.

“Exceptionally moving… courageous, compelling, and formally experimental handling of painful and personal subject matter.”

– Ashley Clark, BAM

“The particular strengths of women of color, side by side with Audre, speak in a way that should be available and seen by all women.”

– Barbara Hammer

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

  

The Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, called “tightly-curated … essential viewing every year” by Cine-File Chicago, will return to REDCAT for its fourth year. Founded in 2010, Eyeworks is an annual festival that showcases abstract animation and unconventional character animation. The Eyeworks Festival at REDCAT will feature two programs of short films, and a screening of work from the 2019 festival guest, Janie Geiser, who will present a program of her films, followed by a discussion with festival curators Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré. The two curated lineups of short films will include classic and recently restored films, works from rising names in the field, and premieres of new works. Filmmakers in the 2019 festival include Allison Schulnik, Kevin Eskew, and Sebastian Buerkner.

“An annual mind-melding cinematic spectacle not to be missed.”

– Anthology Film Archives

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

Sylvia Schedelbauer’s films transform fragmentary found footage

into hallucinatory landscapes merging large historical action and evocative solitary gesture. Subtly using rhythmic montage and overlays of sound, Schedelbauer creates unsettling experiences in which the seemingly familiar becomes an ominous reflection of the present. Compelling, resonant and sensually rich, these films brilliantly revitalize a classic experimental film tradition. Sylvia Schedelbauer was born in Tokyo and lives in Germany. Her complicated bi-cultural family history has and continues to be the driving force behind her artistic vision. Schedelbauer’s films have shown at dozens of film festivals throughout the world. The evening’s program presents several films made between 2007 and 2018.

 

“Easily one of the most impressive moving-picture artists to emerge in the past decade.” – Artforum

“Schedelbauer’s films reveal the world in a perpetually unsettled state of flux and traverses into liminal zones where time and space collapse.”
– Cleo-Journal of Film and Feminism

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

Following its world premiere at the Berlinale and its US premiere at Art of the Real, Breathless Animals constantly surprises and unsettles the viewer by keeping the titular animals off-screen – within the cadence of the speaker’s nonlinear memory. In this intimate, yet hypnotic, fictional “reconstruction” of what his mother experienced and dreamt about in her youth (the first television, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath), award-winning Chinese filmmaker Lei Lei brilliantly pushes the boundaries of experimental animation through an arresting, discretely emotional montage of archival photographs, newsreels and sound recordings, collected, reframed, processed and recontextualized.

“By disconnecting image and sound, Breathless Animals opens a wonderfully speculative space. Watching it is like feeling the distance between images, a chain of visual echoes.” – Hyperallergic

“A hypnotic and postmodern entity built upon the breaking down of mediums…” – Asian Movie Pulse

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

Since emerging in 2006, Gabriel Abrantes has carved a unique niche for himself at the vanguard of contemporary cinema. As de facto figurehead of a loose ensemble of collaborators with art school ties and a taste for the transgressive, the Lisbon-based artist (co-director of the acclaimed comedy Diamantino) brings a playfully perverse spirit to the tradition of experimental filmmaking. Shot on 16mm, Abrantes’ absurdist allegories tackle issues of colonialism, gender, sexuality, and desire through a bold conflation of history, aesthetics, and politics-like pop art by way of Pasolini. Dizzyingly prolific, he continues to add to a shapeshifting body of work whose pleasures and provocations are wholly indivisible.

“With a penchant for genre subterfuge and a style that distinctly shuttles between a jerky (and somewhat quirky) amateurism and a stately Super 16mm grandeur, [Gabriel Abrantes] evokes, twists, and turns Hollywood’s conventions into beguiling and breathtaking devices.” – Andréa Picard, Cinema Scope

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

To celebrate the birthday of filmmaker, teacher and cultural force Chick Strand (Dec 3), who passed away ten years ago last July, REDCAT has organized a program of rarely seen masterworks spanning forty years. Hailed for her profoundly expressive voice, Strand’s eye was unsurpassed in its complex and empathetic responses to people and their worlds, whether in California, Mexico, or her imagination. Strand’s films defy categorization, moving between intimate portraits and intuitive ethnographies, lush poetic metaphor and anecdotal storytelling, subtly recorded images and astonishing found footage, and haunting portrayals of women alone and within families. Join us in celebrating one of Los Angeles’ great artists.

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

Known for her experimental, precise and hypnotic portraits of places and people shot in 16mm (Recordando El Ayer, Beirut 2.14.05, Piensa En Mí,Despedida, Territorio), Alexandra Cuesta expands her cinematic vocabulary into an “intimate ethnography,” shot over three years in upstate New York, Los Angeles, Japan, and Chile. Setting up the process of regularly shooting a “film gesture” almost daily, Camera Notesrecords “fragments of the everyday intimate.” Cuesta lives and works between the United States and Ecuador and was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship in 2018. Camera Notes (Part One) will be preceded by a selection of her earlier work.

“What is immediately apparent, is Cuesta’s talent for both framing and editing, with each of her discreetly composed images held long enough to give all the delicate shifts they contain a chance to breathe.”

– Senses of Cinema

“Cuesta’s lovingly observed cinematic long takes exude a living sense of place and time that renders microscopic gestures and environmental sounds credibly present.” – Artforum

“Cuesta is a delightfully playful director and acts as her own cinematographer. Like James Benning, she is an auteur walking the tightrope between cinema and media art.” – Reverse Shot

       Jack H. Skirball Series

       $12 [members $9]

David Lebrun combines techniques of animation, documentary, experimental and anthropological film to explore the art, architecture, cosmology and history of cultures ancient and modern. His features, including Proteus and Breaking the Maya Code, have been exhibited from Sundance to Tehran and received major international awards. The evening’s program of short films explores the boundary between still and moving images in formats ranging from variable-speed 8mm to 4K multiscreen arrays. Included are several premieres from Four Worlds, an epic cycle of films that synthesizes images of objects made between the Paleolithic and late Middle Ages into contemplative and revelatory aesthetic experiences.

“[Lebrun’s work lies] at the intersection of ritual, anthropology and
expanded vision.” – David James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde

is located at 631 West 2^nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 – at the corner of 2^nd and Hope Streets inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking structure and at adjacent lots. Unless otherwise specified, tickets are $12 for the general public, $9 for members. Tickets may be purchased by calling213.237.2800 or at www.redcat.org or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon-6 pm and two hours prior to curtain.

For more information, go to www.redcat.org

 

                             Lei Lei: Breathless Animals –  Still courtesy of the artist.  

REDCAT, CalArts’ downtown center for contemporary arts, presents a dynamic and international mix of innovative visual, performing and media arts year round. Located inside the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles, REDCAT houses a theater, a gallery space and a lounge. Through performances, exhibitions, screenings, and literary events, REDCAT introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in this region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT continues the tradition of the California Institute of the Arts, its parent organization, by encouraging experimentation, discovery and lively civic discourse.

                           Alexandra Cuesta: Camera Notes – Still courtesy of the artist.  

For current program and exhibition information call 213-237-2800 or visit www.redcat.org.

Location/Parking: REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex with a separate entrance at the corner of West 2nd and Hope Streets. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking structure. $9 event rate or $5 for vehicles entering after 8:00 pm on weekdays.

Street Address: 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles CA 90012

THE LOUNGE | Open to the public six days a week, the Lounge is a great place to spend an afternoon or grab a drink pre-and post-performance.

Lounge Hours: Tuesdays-Fridays from 9am until 8 pm or post-show; Saturdays from noon until 8 pm or post-show; Sundays from noon until 6pm or post-show

THE GALLERY | REDCAT’s Gallery presents five major exhibitions each year, and publishes artist books and catalogues. Admission to the Gallery is FREE.

Gallery Hours: Tuesdays-Sundays from noon until 6 pm and through intermission

THE THEATER | Tickets for programs held in the theater are available through the REDCAT Box Office, by phone 213-237-2800 or online at www.redcat.org. Group, member, student and CalArts faculty/staff discounts available.

Box Office Hours: Tuesdays-Saturday from noon until 6 pm or two hour prior to curtain.

In addition to the Jack H. Skirball Series, REDCAT also presents a wide range of Gallery exhibits and presentations and conversations, in addition to the music, theater, dance and multi-media events from some of the most influent artistic voices in contemporary arts. (Info at redcat.org)

Always committed to offering audiences the opportunity to experience new innovative world class voices in the arts, REDCAT continues to ensure that regular ticket prices remain affordable and offers member, student, and community discount programs and that all events in the Gallery events remain free of charge.

Individual tickets, for ticketed events, can be purchased online at www.redcat.org.

Group discounts are available by contacting the box office at 213-237-2800, or in person at 631 West 2nd Street, 90012, on the SW corner of the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex (corner of West Second Street and Hope.)