recent programs -

Winter 2006 - Love and Obsession: Laurence Attali, Sophie Calle, Guy Maddin

Love and Obsession presents a series of works by artists and filmmakers who combine elements of documentary and fictional techniques while expressing the psychological and cultural dimensions of the lives of a variety of real and invented characters.  Seduction, rejection, control, jealousy and revenge are explored as the boundaries between love, obsession and desire become blurred in these often ironically tragicomic human stories. 

Laurence Attali's Trilogy of Love takes place in Senegal, Africa and traces the mystical links between different cultural traditions of love, marriage and spiritual and political practices.  Real musicians, artists and people are themselves, while playing fictional characters in these films that explore cross-cultural differences and common, shared aspects of life and traditions in a search for self-realization, communication and understanding. 

Sophie Calle and Gregory Shephard's video documentary, Double-Blind, is a diaristic reality media event told from two simultaneous, but different perspectives.  Their investigations of identity, sexuality, individual behavior, power and voyeurism take place within the context of their personal relationship during a 1992 road trip across the United States. 

Guy Maddin's Cowards Bend the Knee is a dark comedy and narrative extravaganza that was originally exhibited as a ten-part peephole installation.  This subliminal melodrama with overtones of a delirious Greek tragedy tells a tale of revenge, jealousy, pathological obsession, deceit, murder, and ghosts.  Fragments of Maddin's childhood experiences of family, friends and places take shape and unfold cinematically in a hallucinatory, visceral memory theater of the mind. –Patrick Clancy


February 10, 2006

 La Trilogie des Amours (Trilogy of Love), 3 films by Laurence Attali (France/Senegal), 76 min., 35mm films shown on Beta SP

Meme le vent… (Even the Wind…),1999, 18 min., French and Wolof with English subtitles
Even the Wind… is a love story that takes place one fine morning in a yellow and black Dakar taxi.  ‘Even the wind going by is something I see,’ says the taxi driver.  As with this phrase, it’s the gap between cultures ultimately at one with each other that gives rise to this story.” –Laurence Attali

Baobab, 2000, 25 min., French and Wolof with English subtitles
“It all started with a dream: ‘Find the griot who’ll bring you to me, and when you recognize me, circle around me three times, caress me with buttermilk and let me know what you want.’  And this is how, caught up in the spirit of the baobab, I set out to make a road movie between fiction and documentary, mythology and current events.” –Laurence Attali

Le Déchaussé (The Unshod Man), 2003, 33 min., French with English subtitles
The Unshod Man explores a mystical link between Judaic and West African traditions, depicting the romantic tension between a Senegalese band leader, played by Cheikh Lo, and his widowed Israeli sister-in-law. –Tench Cox

         
February 17, 2006

Double-Blind, Sophie Calle (France) and Gregory Shephard (USA), 1992, 76 min., video shown on DVD
In her premiere video project, French conceptual artist Sophie Calle joins with Gregory Shephard to create a voyeuristic tour de force.  Armed with camcorders, Calle and her collaborator/partner Shephard head West in his Cadillac convertible to produce and document a real-life narrative of their journey and their relationship.  –Electronic Arts Intermix
         

February 24, 2006

Cowards Bend the Knee, Guy Maddin (Canada), 2003, 64 min., Super 8 film to DigiBeta shown on DVD, silent with English intertitles
In this twisted and poisoned wish-fulfillment, the mythomaniacal Maddin casts “himself” as a hockey sniper made lily-livered by mother and daughter femme fatales, and resurrects his father as the team’s radio broadcaster and his own romantic antagonist.  Cowards Bend the Knee is suffused with sordid family secrets that spawn unintentional murder most foul. –Mark Paranson

Rooster Workbook, Guy Maddin (Canada), 2005, 4 min., Super 8 film shown on DVD

Zookeeper Workbook
, Guy Maddin (Canada), 2005, 4 min., Super 8 film shown on DVD
Shot in 1997, these two short works are early post-production montage blueprints for scenes from Guy Maddin’s lost feature, Love-Chaunt of the Chimney. –Zeitgeist Films 

Fancy, Fancy Being Rich, Guy Maddin (Canada), 2002, 5 min., Super 8 film to Beta SP shown on DVD
Maddin’s video tells the story of a mythic group of Drowned Men who rise from Lake Winnipeg to seduce village women and steal their favorite possessions.  –Winnipeg Film Group

Sombra Dolorosa, Guy Maddin (Canada), 2004, 7 min., 16mm film to DigiBeta shown on DVD
The widow Paramo attempts to prevent further familial tragedy – her daughter Dolores wants to join her father, the recently deceased Don Paramo, in death – by taking on El Muerto, Death himself, in the wrestling ring. –Winnipeg Film Group

Sissy Boy Slap Party, Guy Maddin (Canada), 2004, 6 min., 16mm film to DigiBeta shown on DVD
Starring Louis Negin and his Chippewa Sissy-Boys, this short study shows what can go wrong when the sissies are left alone. 
– Winnipeg Film Group

 
Home