Every April, Basement Films in Albuquerque presents Experiments in Cinema, films from all over the globe that push the boundaries of the art form. Here are some samples from the 19th season.
Our introduction to this year's festival was a midweek midday visit to the Sanitary Tortilla Factory to view the weeklong exhibition "Work," described as a "documentary public-art project." Zoe Beloff, with the assistance of Eric Muzzy, interviewed blue-collar workers on camera and painted their full-body portraits on banners that are easily portable from venue to venue. There also is a mural component taking shape at the IBEW electrical workers' training center on New York's Long Island. (Here is a short film about the project.)
The workers get about 10 or 15 minutes each to talk about their job or craft (and lives). I saw a respiratory therapist, dockworker, and a home-health-care aide. There also was an elderly Chinese man who had come to America and learned how to sharpen knives. The latter interview was wistful, analyzing two cultures and emphasizing the importance of hard work and determination in the face of hurdles.
Beloff and Muzzy discussed their work surrounded by about 14 murals and video of the interviews running on a loop. See more at www.theworkerswall.com.
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Milan Milosavljevic and Greg de Cuir Jr. presented recent works from the 40-year-old Academic Film Center in Belgrade, Serbia. All short films were from the former Yugoslavia. Highlights, all three from Serbia, include:
"A Line Is Not a Line" (Miljana Nikovic) is a 5:30 think piece leaning on clever word play. Most things we call "lines" are not true lines in the mathematical/geometrical sense of a series of connected dots that theoretically extend forever in each direction. So, it asks, is a line a lie? Literal modern images are interspersed with clips from Belgrade's 1961 conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, deep in the early years of the Cold War.
"Surplus" (Isidora Ilic and Bosko Prostrani, collectively as Doplgenger), from 2008, takes straightforward aim at consumerism, more pointedly the classic postwar expectations of domesticated women keeping their homes clean and shiny. The film begins and ends with shots of a gleaming toilet, in case you need an elbow to the ribs for effect. The filmmakers slow down reaction shots of women and girls from vintage clips, betraying the horror or anger behind the polite smiles.
"Melancholic Drone" (Igor Simic, 2015). In which a drone flies over Belgrade and narrates in a distorted sing-song voice his lament at having to eventually rain destruction. The drone, however, has developed an artificial illusion of a wistful melancholy and nostalgia regarding all those buildings and residents he has been surveying. It's a short jump from this back to HAL in "2001" winding down by singing a hoary standard. The dialogue here is clever, and the concept is provocative. And Simic sticks the landing perfectly. (There is a version on Vimeo and below.)
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Chicago artist Lisa Barcy, who works in stop-motion and experimental animation, curated a 70-minute evening program. Some of the shorts were a little too visually hectic without enough return ("Family Vacation Photos," "High Street Repeat"), and others prattled on with uninspiring collage work or stick-figure animation on trite themes (drug culture, getting your first period). Three stood out:
"Cricket" is an intense 8-minute wood-cut-style animation about a peasant household that finally has a son, in the form of a cricket. Russian filmmaker Natalia Ryss (who now lives in Israel) creates a visual urgency through the flowing images and harrowing strings punctuated by fraught piano chords. It might require another viewing or two to fully drink in the imagery and to comprehend the story line.
"Landline" is a 2:22 barrage of images accompanying a dreary narration, about the death of the filmmaker's mother. A true assault on the senses, but its somewhat Buddhist message seeps through somehow.
BONUS TRACK
"Hallowstide" by Steve Socki (U.S., 2017), another Chicagoan, is elegant. Check it out here on Vimeo.
And here is "Melancholic Drone":
Melancholic Drone from IGOR SIMIC on Vimeo.
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