Cinematic Migrations (Spring 2019)
4.356/7
Program Schedule
Monday, March 4
Tuesday, March 5
Wednesday, March 6
Program Themes
Monday, March 4
10-12pm \ Seminar and lunch:
The Spectropoetics of Diaspora; Hauntologies
Films include: The Genome Chronicles and The Call of Mists
Location: ACT Cube, E15-001
Hauntologies is artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah’s compelling meditation on disappearance, memory and death. From his first exhibition for Carroll/Fletcher gallery the virtuosity and depth of Akomfrah’s practice is revealed in three new video, sound and installation works – never before presented in the UK – as well as a new presentation of a video essay from 1998.
The Hauntologies show was comprised of Peripeteia, an 18-minute gallery based film set in the 16th century about the lost lives of two characters sketched by the German artist Albrecht Durer; The Call of Mist, a film essay on memory, cloning and loss; At the Graveside of Andrie Tarkovsky, a sound installation and Allegories of Mourning, a series of large scale photographic diptychs.
The Genome Chronicles is a film by John Akomfrah, produced by Smoking Dogs Films, on the artist Donald Rodney, 40 min. (2008). “The Genome Chronicles is ultimately in memoriam of a friend mourned, a threnody on lost time.” Seminar discussion will examine works that traverse the gallery and cinema spaces.
7-9pm \ ACT Lecture Series: Cinematic Migrations:
Considering The Stuart Hall Project
Films include: The Unfinished Conversation and
The Stuart Hall Project
Location: ACT Cube, E15-001
The three-screened work, The Unfinished Conversation, is considered in relation to the single screen film premiered at Sundance in 2013,The Stuart Hall Project. Hall’s concept of the formation of identity emerges from both a dialogue with the external world and with that of the terrain of the psyche. The differences between these projects and approaches to perception are unpacked with a focus on shared themes of identity and migration.
Tuesday, March 5
9:30- 12:30pm \ Continuation of…
The Spectropoetics of Diaspora; Hauntologies
Films include: Peripeteia and Memory Room 451
Location: ACT Cube, E15-001
The theme of lost lives, haunting, and re-imagining lives through cinematic means will be probed. Peripeteia is an exploration of two prints by Dürer. Memory Room 451 is a companion piece the film to Last Angel of History.
12:30-2pm \ ACT Presentation and lunch \ Renée Green: On Other Planes of There
Location: E15-207
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Wednesday, March 6
9:30- 12:30pm \ Seminar:
Twelve Theses on Migration
Films include: Que Viva Mexico by Sergei Eisenstein
Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Location: E15-207
John Akomfrah presents a paper addressing a discussion of migration as a pre-filmic fact exploring the phantasmagoric ground of cinema as a dialectic directly within the frame. Films analyzed include Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment.
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Program Themes
Theme 1: The Spectropoetics of Diaspora
The themes of re-imagined history, lost past, and haunting of past are presented through a series of short film screenings produced for the gallery and the cinema.
Theme 2: Twelve Theses on Migration
John Akomfrah presents a paper based on and using film excerpts from early cinema that explore migration as part of cinema’s formation, a pro-filmic fact inscribed in the history of filmmaking.
Theme 3: Considering the Stuart Hall Project
The three-screened work, The Unfinished Conversation, is considered in relation to the single screen film premiered at Sundance in 2013,The Stuart Hall Project. Hall’s concept of the formation of identity emerges from both a dialogue with the external world and with that of the terrain of the psyche. The differences between these projects and approaches to perception are unpacked with a focus on shared themes of identity and migration.
Theme 4: New political economies and moving images: films by artists amidst myriad migrations
Experimental distribution of film and collaborative production is considered throughout the seminar.
