Final Project Presentations

I found the presentations for other students’ final projects really helpful when thinking of my own work. When working alone, it is hard to gauge if you are on the right track, if your process is similar to others, and if the scope of your work is appropriate. Sarah’s presentation was especially interesting. She mentioned that she started her program about women’s empowerment and resistance thinking she would screen The Color Purple, but as she continued her work, the film no longer fit into the program. 

I had similar struggles with figuring out where certain films worked, and as I added pieces, if they still worked with the program. I also took Raanan’s questions and concerns to heart, with respect to my final project. My project, while touching on the theme of discomfort in one’s body, does not touch on topics such as race, gender dysphoria, or other equally important and relevant issues. I struggled to figure out why I felt that these topics didn’t fit. When selecting works, I had purposely chosen not to include a medical film of child birth. Why? I know part of the reason is that the scope of my program was becoming too broad. When your series’ theme is the human body, that includes every body. It’s not to say I shied away from certain topics, but rather, this program was more personal to me than I realized. My world is heavily populated by doctors, pills, procedures, and the latest medical studies. Luckily, this has also turned into a love for most things medical. But feeling like an object, or even dependent on machines is a thought manifested in this series. How others interpret or react to the program is entirely welcome, as everyone’s reaction to their own body, let alone a piece of art is unique and personal. With that said, I do welcome the challenges this series has brought and could bring in the future.

Hannah Franklin

Keeping Your Programming Ideas Memorable/Tweetable

After having kept a close eye on the New York repertory film world for a few years now, one lesson that I’ve learned is that sometimes all it takes is a really funny, audacious, or provocative title or concept to get people interested in your film program. While I’m sure I left out a few great ones, here’s a list of some of the most memorable program titles, concepts, and film pairings that I’ve seen over the last couple of years:

• The Caan Film Festival @ the Museum of the Moving Image
-- “For two glittering weekends at the end of May, the world turns its attention to the movie event of the year: The Caan Film Festival at Museum of the Moving Image. In celebration of the Bronx-born, Sunnyside-raised, and Meisner-instructed actor, the survey revisits twelve of James Caan’s greatest performances.” – from the MOMI website

• Simian Vérité @ the Anthology Film Archives
-- A mostly documentary series focusing on the subject of human-primate coexistence. The series features such classics as Frederick Wiseman’s Primate, Barbet Schroder’s Koko: A Talking Gorilla, and Nagisa Oshima’s Max Mon Amour. How Bedtime for Bonzo was overlooked, I do not know.

• Bad Reputation: Spotlight on Kristen Stewart @ BAMcinématek

• Double Feature: Despairing Times for a Mute Woman in a Vast Landscape @ Tenant 416
-- Featuring Few of Us (Šarūnas Bartas, 1996) and Hellé (Roger Vadim, 1972)

• Workers Film and Photo League Films + Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933 @ Light Industry

• Bronxploitation @ Spectacle

• The Cat-vant Garde Film Show @ the Museum of the Moving Image
-- Organized in conjunction with the “How Cats Took Over the Internet” exhibition, this series highlighted the extraordinary number of experimental films that prominently feature cats. The show included works by filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid, Carolee Schneemann, Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, and Bill Brand.

• Inauguration of the Displeasure Dome: Coping with the Election @ the Anthology Film Archives

• Double Feature: Cloaked Hungarian Outlaw: 2 Films of György Szomjas @ Tenant 416

A Microcinema Handbook

During a recent visit to my hometown of San Diego, I was struck by an idea while attending a experimental film screening being held at an abandoned bread factory turned art center (http://www.breadandsaltsandiego.com/): why doesn’t someone write a book on how to start your own microcinema?

This particular screening series (https://www.spacetimeart.org/) was organized by a group of New York expats who, having become frustrated with their day jobs as arts administrators and graphic designers, decided to start a microcinema dedicated to exhibiting experimental cinema, video art, and other forms of time-based media. As we learned in Scott MacDonald’s book on Cinema 16 and see living on today in places like Light Industry and Spectacle, microcinemas and alternative screening spaces have long served as venues where films outside the mainstream can be seen and appreciated. By starting a microcinema or screening series, you're able to inject new ideas into the public consciousness by showing new, unfamiliar work, while also bringing like-minded people together and forming artistic communities. It's also worth noting that spaces like these are especially significant for people who don't live in major urban centers, and have significantly less opportunities to see (and show) challenging, unconventional work.

However, deciding to start a microcinema leaves one with a great number of difficult questions. How do you go about clearing the rights to a film for public screening, especially if the venue is charging admission? How do you go about becoming a nonprofit? Most importantly, how much is this going to cost? I believe that if someone wrote a book on how to start a microcinema that helped to answer questions like these, more people would open them. The result could only be a more interesting and vibrant film culture.

You Just Hate to be a Thing

Before the class session in which students would present their final projects, Dan had paired students with a responder, responsible for asking questions or providing feedback on a single student’s project. I was assigned as Mel’s responder, and the night before class, I noticed she had uploaded a video as part of her final project. Because it was 3:00am and I figured sleep could wait, I decided to watch it. First, I didn’t realize it was Marilyn Monroe narrating the work until about halfway into the roughly six minute piece. I think this is very telling of my viewing experience and the intent of the work. Although it could partially be chalked up to my lack of sleep, I think it is also due to the fact that much of what Monroe says is relevant to me and many other women, such as the many depicted in the short work. Notable, she remarks that she is “generally miserable”, with a cut to a late 1950s/early 1960s dinner party in which well-dressed women are seen smiling and politely nodding their heads. If that is not a depiction of middle to upperclass women’s misery, I don’t know what is. 

Monroe also states that she believes everyone “want[s ]to be alone, but they want to be together”. I found it so striking that right after Monroe finishes that thought, a contemporary woman is shown out in public, maybe at a concert or other event. This is perhaps my favorite part of the short because, as Monroe expresses, it is difficult for women to be in public. While Monroe’s experience was certainly different from most (and certainly mine), it is exhausting to be “together” or be with others, especially in public. Female comedian Jen Kirkman once jokingly compared the freedom men feel when leaving the house with only keys and a cellphone, while women cannot experience that feeling because we cannot take off our gender-signifying body parts before we get out the door. While the desire “to be together” is there, the sense of isolation can feel unavoidable. 

The short closes with Monroe stating that “you hate to become a thing”, followed by this narration in text and credits, revealing that the work was done by our own Melanie Miller. I had no idea that this was her work, and throughout viewing had assumed that Melanie was presenting her research on this work, done by an established artist. I was truly impressed by her choice in archival clips, which while following the narration, did not match it; it had a parallel narrative. I knew Melanie had made some short films in undergrad, but I had never seen any of her work, and I really hope she continues to create more. 

Hannah Franklin

Spoiler-Free Tribeca Thoughts

In the midst of this busy semester, I managed to see a few films at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. Here are my spoiler-free reactions:

Flower (2017) 

Flower is a coming-of-age dramedy. It's hilarious, uncomfortable, and takes some seriously dark turns. This film surprised in a lot of ways, and while the ending felt a little too neat for my taste, I enjoyed it overall. The audience at the premiere seemed to love it, and there were laughs and audible gasps throughout. The film's cast is amazing, and I think the lead gives a great performance as a funny, yet infuriating teen who likes to think she's more mature than she really is.

Aardvark is a drama about a therapist, her mentally ill patient, and his brother. Again, the cast here is excellent - Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, and Jon Hamm. I wanted to love this film more than I did. There were a couple of moments that didn't make any logical sense, which is hard for me to get over. I did like the elements of mystery, but ultimately the film just felt unfinished. So much potential though.

Take Me is a mad-cap comedy produced by the Duplass Brothers (l watch everything these two work on, and it blows my mind how prolific they are) and starring Orange is the New Black's Taylor Schilling. This film suffers from some tonal shifts, but when it's funny, it is really funny. There are a couple of side characters, but the two leads basically carry the film. I had fun with this one, and you'll be able to catch it on Netflix in a few months.

On the festival as a whole, I love that Tribeca offers individual tickets for films for about $20 each. Other fests I have been to don't necessarily do this, and it simply doesn't make sense for me to buy a pass when I don't have time to see many films. I think Tribeca caters perfectly to busy New Yorkers with these single ticket sales. Props to AT&T for their Free Film Friday promotion also. I got to see one of these films for absolutely nothing, simply by walking into an AT&T store and asking for a ticket. I love the accessibility of this festival.

VIKTOR UND VIKTORIA at Anthology

by Jacob Zaborowski

It is March 29^th, 2017 when I attend a Wednesday evening (6:30 pm) screening of Viktor und Viktoria at the Anthology Film Archives on Second Avenue and East 2^nd Street. Some backstory on Anthology: it was founded in 1970, and moved to its current location, a former municipal courthouse, in 1979. While it has been renovated and retrofitted to include two theaters, it maintains some vestiges of its former life; a weathered “Magistrates’ Court” sign hangs in the lobby.

The rest of the lobby itself merges the old and the new in this quiet, unadorned manner. Old marble floors coexist with off-white, almost pale blue walls and fluorescent lighting. The rust-red metal doors take you into this lobby and lead you to a circular ticket window with printed announcements and ticket price lists surrounding it. A young ticket taker, probably working their way through college here, takes your money and gives you one green (if you’re a student) ticket. A brief trip to the third floor (where the water fountain is located) shows a large theater named for. Viktor und Viktoria is not showing in this theater. It is showing in the theater to the right of the ticket window, named for Maya Deren. I hand my ticket to the man taking them at the theater’s entrance, and he rips off half. Naming the theater after the director of Meshes of the Afternoon is fitting, as the interior reminds one of the minimalist aesthetic associated with Deren’s work. Black walls, about fifteen rows of seats inclining towards the back of the theater, and a blank projection screen at the front. I take my seat, the lights dim, and the logo of the F. W. Murnau Foundation appears on the screen.

For some clarification: Viktor und Viktoria (Reinhold Schunzel, 1933) is the German talkie that provided the basis for the better-known Victor/Victoria, directed by Blake Edwards and starring Julie Andrews. Anthology presented it as part of a series called “Cross Dressing On Screen”, guest-curated by performer John “Lypsinka” Epperson. For those not familiar, Viktor und Viktoria is the story of two down-on-their luck performers, Viktor (Herman Thimig) and Susanne (Renate Muller). Viktor, a Shakespearean ham, finds work as a female inpersonator, but falls ill; he asks Susanne to take his place as...Viktoria. Needless to say, Viktoria becomes a hit, winning the hearts of audiences in London, and a German playboy for extra measure(Anton Walbrook, billed as Adolf Wahlbruck).

I’ve written more about the venue than the film that was screened for a reason. To me, the driving sense behind Anthology in its aesthetic is that you have sense of its history and reputation before making your way in, only to forget it as the film you’re watching unfolds. I still remember what I saw in Viktor und Viktoria and liked (Renate Muller’s boyish femininity and Thimig’s zealous hamming make for excellent on-screen chemistry), but in looking back, I realize that’s because Anthology, as a brick-and mortar building and an institution, did their job right by fading themselves into the background. You don’t go there to see the Magistrates’ Court sign, you go there to see the movie. Even the screen beneath the screen proper to show the subtitles is unobtrusive. Anthology is in the midst of fundraising for a renovation and expansion project that will add a cafe and expand their archival facilities. I hope that the end result will be present when needed and fade into the background when necessary.

Film Screenings in Remembrance of Japanese Internment Camps

   

      

      On Wednesday evening, April 26, I went to room 674(6 floor, Tisch, NYU) to see the Japanese Internment Camp film screenings: Where I Live, produced by my cinema studies classmate Conan Ito and Luyao Ma. A couple of weeks earlier, Conan invited me to go to their upcoming documentary screenings, which would include a film he and Maloo (as we call her) recently made. He said their film is about the World War II Japanese concentration camp. The phrase “concentration camp” he used, instantly made me associate this with what the Nazi regime had done to its Jewish victims. Thus I started to question myself: why didn’t I know anything about this period of history before? But later Conan told me that most of the Japanese Americans in these camps had survived. At the screening, I also found the presenters changed the word “concentration” into “internment,” a more apt term.

      The screening showcased three films in this order: Robert Nakamura’s Something Strong Within (1995), Ito and Ma’s work-in-progress, Where I Live (2017), and Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige (1991). The first and the third are documentaries, but quite distinct from conventional ones. Something Strong Within is an assemblage of home movie footage, with intertitles giving the names of their makers. It unfolds these images of the real life in multiple Japanese internment camps across America. In a mix of black-and-white and color footage, we witness how American Japanese reconstruct a new community far away from the outside world, celebrating their traditional holidays; holding sporting events, games, and art classes; chopping firewood and working in the field. But History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige is far more fragmentary and experimental with its use of documents.

      In the discussion that followed the screenings, Maloo answered a question about why they selected these two to juxtapose with their film. She admitted that even she started to understand them in this second viewing. What’s more important, Conan added that there are plenty of mainstream documentaries which introduce the history of American Japanese in a more dramatic tone, whereas what they intend to do is more directly reveal the truth of this period of history.

      As for their new documentary, I wanted to praise them for doing a good job. From the perspective of the present, they interviewed three women involved in the past and historical trauma in different degrees. What interests me most are the multiple identities of these female interviewees. Instead of being the so-called survivors or the descendants of survivors of that period and experience, they constructed new identities, socially or professionally, to integrate into the multicultural society they have known since the war years. Theodora Yoshikami, the 74-year-old interviewee who came to the screening, was once a dancer. I was deeply moved by seeing the old images (performance record from NYU Tisch, took in 80s, Theodora used to be a student in Dance department in Tisch.) that she was performing traditional Japanese dance in Where I Live.

( Theodora Yoshikami)

      I want to end with some words from the conversation between Theodora and a Japanese girl in the Q&A section. The girl said in Japan she had never heard of the history of American Japanese internment camps. She thought it must be a big part of American history, so she wanted to know how important the issue is to Americans. But Theodora instantly answered it was never a big part of America. What she meant is the American haven’t widely discussed or memorialized the internment camp and it will never appeal on the official textbook no matter in America or Japan. So how should the younger generation consider the issue? Memorize or let it go?

Ni Lei