Professional Motion Picture Production and Distribution NEWS
MoMA Salutes Creative Capital, Supporter of Risk-Taking, Experimental Artists, with an Exhibition of 37 Film and Videos
By Staff
posted May 1, 2010, 13:25
Among the directors who will present their work during the exhibition are Laura Poitras...
Five-Week Exhibition Features Three Premieres, Two Live Moving-Image Musical
Performances, and Many Appearances by Film Directors
Creative Capital
April 30–June 6, 2010
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
(New York) Recognizing the extraordinary contribution that the New York-based
nonprofit organization Creative Capital has made to sustaining art of the highest
quality in the United States, The Museum of Modern Art will present an exhibition
of 37 original, impassioned, and rebellious films and videos that Creative Capital
has funded and nurtured over the past 11 years. Presented from April 30 through
June 6, 2010, the exhibition will include the premieres of three new works and
two live moving-image musical performances among its showcase of 17 shorts and
20 features. Since 1999, Creative Capital has committed more than $20 million
in financial and advisory support to more than 400 artists across artistic disciplines.
Within film, this includes fictional narratives and documentaries, animated
and experimental shorts, live moving-image performances, and many other innovative
film projects. The exhibition screens in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, and
is organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, with Rajendra Roy, The Celeste
Bartos Chief Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.
The opening night, HERE [ THE STORY SLEEPS ] (2010) on Friday, April 30, at
7:00 p.m., is a one-night-only live performance of an emerging collaboration
between the award-winning filmmaker Braden King (Dutch Harbor; Sonic Youth:
Do You Believe in Rapture?), the composer Michael Krassner, and the critically
acclaimed Boxhead Ensemble. This hybrid film-concert explores the dream life
of cinematic narrative, deconstructing King’s forthcoming film HERE, starring
Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal, and will include projections designed by Deborah
Johnson. The closing night, on Sunday, June 6, at 5:30 p.m., features the New
York theatrical premiere of a new work by Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation:
the ?New Wave futurist noir? whiteonwhite:randomthriller [alphaversion] (2010).
This experimental work by the creators of the gallery installation 89 Seconds
at Alcázar (2004) and the theatrical feature The Rape of the Sabine Women
(2006) is a film of indeterminate length whose continuously evolving narrative
is generated by computer code. The screening will be followed by a conversation
with director Sussman, editor Kevin Messman, code writer Jeff Garneau, and actor/writer
Jeff Wood.
Among the directors who will present their work during the exhibition are Laura
Poitras, whose documentary The Oath (2010) takes us deep inside the world of
Al Qaeda, Guantanamo, and U.S. interrogation methods and was featured at this
year’s New Directors/New Films festival (a collaboration between MoMA
and the Film Society of Lincoln Center); Natalia Almada, who won the 2009 Sundance
Best Documentary Director award for her film El General (2009), an intimate
meditation on the life of Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles; and Andy
Bichlbaum, a member of the Yes Men and co-director of the documentary The Yes
Men Fix the World (2009), the 2009 Berlin Film Festival Panorama Audience Award
winner, which follows two gonzo anti-globalization activists and their pranks
on major corporations and governmental agencies. The animated short film Paulina
Hollers (2006) by Brent Green will screen on Thursday, May 6, at 7:00 p.m.,
and will include live narration by Green and improvised music by a band that
includes Donna K., Brendan Canty (of Fugazi), Catherine McRae (of The Quavers),
and Drew Henkels (of Drew & the Medicinal Pen).
Three films will have premieres in MoMA’s Creative Capital exhibition.
These include the East Coast premiere of Erin Cosgrove's Happy Am I (2009),
an animated short by an exciting young artist from Los Angeles that combines
a wide variety of art historical and pop culture references; the New York premiere
of Glenda Wharton's The Zo (2009), a hand-drawn animated short that was shown
at Sundance and tells a dark and dreamlike tale of violence, abuse, and escape;
and the New York premiere of director Peter Sillen's I Am Secretly an Important
Man (2010), a documentary portrait of grunge-rock poet and performance artist
Steven (Jesse) Bernstein, a major figure of the Seattle art and music scene
who died tragically in 1991.
Among the memorable fiction films are Sleep Dealer (2008) by Alex Rivera, a
dystopic parable about the cyber-trafficking of human memory and feelings, and
a highlight of the 2008 New Directors/New Films festival; Caveh Zahedi’s
comic reconstruction of his ten-year struggle with sex addiction in I Am a Sex
Addict (2005); Jem Cohen’s Chain (2004), a hybrid of narrative and documentary
that Cohen filmed around the world, creating a portrait of alienated, late-capitalist
consumerism that also has moments of transcendent beauty; and Christopher Munch’s
The Sleepy Time Gal (2001), a poignant drama featuring Jacqueline Bisset in
a career-defining performance.
Many experimental and animated films are highlighted in the exhibition, including
Naomi Uman’s The Ukrainian Time Machine (2008), Suzan Pitt’s El
Doctor (2005), Jeff Scher’s You Won’t Remember This (2002), Bill
Morrison’s Decasia (2002), Joe Gibbons’s Confessions of a Sociopath
(2002), Philip Solomon’s Psalm III: Night of the Meek (2002), Lewis Klahr’s
Daylight Moon (2002), and Craig Baldwin’s Spectres of the Spectrum (1999).
Films made by visual artists include performance artist Kalup Linzy’s
Keys to Our Heart (2008); Sharon Lockhart’s Pine Flat (2006); Reynold
Reynolds and Patrick Jolley’s Burn (2002); and Levsha: The Tale of a Cross-Eyed
Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea (2001), by David Wilson, the founder and
director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.
Award-winning documentaries presented as part of the Creative Capital exhibition
include Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s 2009 Academy Award-nominated Trouble
the Water (2008), which also screened at the 2008 New Directors/New Films festival,
and which includes footage of Hurricane Katrina shot by a New Orleans couple
who survived it; I Was Born, But... (2004), filmmaker Roddy Bogawa’s remembrance
of a seemingly unrecoverable moment in the history of the Los Angeles punk rock
scene and his own history as an artist and Asian American growing up in Hawaii;
Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s 2004 Academy Award-nominated The Weather Underground
(2002), which features news footage, original interviews, and never-before-seen
FBI documents that trace a militant group’s efforts to stop the Vietnam
War and bring down the U.S. government; and Sandi DuBowski’s internationally
successful documentary Trembling Before G-d (2001), an exploration of the cloistered
world of Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism, and the dilemma of gays and lesbians
living in those communities.
Creative Capital is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to providing
integrated financial and advisory support to artists pursuing innovative and
adventurous projects in five disciplines: Emerging Fields, Film/Video, Literature,
and Performing and Visual Arts. Working in long-term partnership with artists,
Creative Capital’s pioneering approach to support combines funding, counsel,
and career development services to enable a project’s success and foster
a successful and sustainable practice for its grantees. In its first decade,
Creative Capital has committed more than $20 million in financial and advisory
support to 325 projects representing 406 artists and has reached an additional
3,000 artists through its Professional Development Program. For more information,
visit www.creative-capital.org.
Resources:
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