Visiting Artists

Cinema Visitors Series

At Binghamton University

All Shows are free and open to The Public

Series Sponsored by Cinema Department and Harpur College Dean's Speakers Series.

Friday March 15 (Second screening Sunday March 17) MONTEITH MCCOLLUM (In person) with A DIFFERENT PATH, 2010, 96 min.

Co-sponsored with Harpur Cinema Admission: $4.00 or Harpur Cinema Pass. In A Different Path sidewalk activist Senior, a Critical Mass trumpeter, city Kayak-er, and others, use ingenuity and humor to solve their modern mobility dilemmas in an automobile-centric environment. Combining animation, cinematography and original music composed by McCollum and performed by Michael Louis Johnson, this film is an artistic and poetic treatment of personal struggle and environmental concern over livable cities. "A gripping, soulful film," writes June Chua, Toronos Rabble.ca. Special note: Monte McCollum will introduce the film on Friday 3/15 and will answer questions after the screening. Premiered at South by Southwest in 2010 and was nominated for the Pare Lorentz Award of the International Documentary Association. Monteith McCollum is a member of Cinema's faculty.

Friday April 5 (Second screening on Sunday April 7) CHRIS SULLIVAN (In Person) with CONSUMING SPIRIT, 2012, 130 min.

Co-sponsored with Harpur Cinema. Admission: $4.00 or Harpur Cinema Pass. - NYT Critics' Pick "Consuming Spirits," an animated feature by Chris Sullivan, is a defiant — 
or maybe, even better, an oblivious — exception to the rules and patterns of contemporary cartoon entertainment. At a time when animation is expected to be computer-generated, three-dimensional and relentlessly upbeat, Mr. Sullivan's film is flat, handmade and melancholy, a dark and painful fantasy for grown-ups. As its title suggests, "Consuming Spirits" is both about the power of (figurative) ghosts and the literal effects of drunkenness. It weaves a complicated, intoxicating spell and sets the mind running in several directions at once, not all of them toward happy places. The fact that these realms are represented in exaggerated, often comical pictures does not make them less disturbing, but it does create a sense of enchantment that turns bad feelings inside out. This movie is sometimes a downer, but it's also a wonder. -- A. O. SCOTT, New York Times Christopher Sullivan's animated dystopia is about as far from a cartoon-for-kids as they come. Relationships among the three main characters - Earl Gray, Gentian Violet, and Victor Blue - multiply and divide as their stories becomes increasingly complex, hilarious, and scary. The Huffington Post writes of the film's "insanely meticulous construction" and continues: "The animation took 15 years of work... The characters were hand-drawn onto layers of glass which were then moved with needles and pins. The film seamlessly combines cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop- motion animation to create the haunting atmosphere of a self-contained world... (most of whose) characters walk shakily between self-medication and a bad trip... ugly characters (who) make up the most beautiful spectacle you've ever seen." – Rotten Tomatoes

Tuesday April 9 Film Scholar JONATHAN WALLEY will lecture on "EXPANDED CINEMA IN FOUR MOVEMENTS"

The term "expanded cinema" covers a bewildering array of new moving image media and practices that began to appear in the 1960s, including video and TV, computer imaging technologies, holography, light shows, and film/video installation in the gallery. 
This talk takes a new approach to mapping the vast, untamed terrain of expanded cinema, both past and present, and attempts to answer the question: "How can cinema expand and still be cinema?" The talk considers both important historical works of expanded cinema from the 1960s and '70s, and the resurgence of such work - along with the questions and challenges it continues to pose - in the last decade. JONATHAN WALLEY is an Associate Professor of Cinema at Denison University. He specializes in avant-garde or experimental film, focusing in particular on "expanded cinema" (multi-screen works, film-based performance, film/video installation, paracinema, etc.). His work has appeared in October, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, The Velvet Light Trap, and in numerous anthologies on avant-garde film and art. He is currently writing a book on expanded cinema.

Tuesday April 23 LAIDA LERTXUNDY (in person) 2012 Whitney Biennial Films & Videos

"The enigmatic cinema of Laida Lertxundi resists easy categorization. Her works could be described as landscape films, set as they are against the backdrop of Southern California's deserts and mountains, its blue skies and wild shores. These environments are sparsely populated with non-actors, who are sometimes wandering, sometimes still. Sequences are repeated and reframed, calling back to one another; recorded music plays within the world of the film, taking on the character not of a soundtrack but of a field recording. Narratives are hinted at, flirted with, yet never realized. Her films function as both exactingly arranged experiments with the syntax of film language and lovesick daydreams, fragmented and full of longing." -Whitney Biennial 2012 Footnotes to a House of Love, 2007 16mm film, color, sound; 13 min. My Tears Are Dry, 2009 16mm, color, sound; 4 min. Llora Cuando Te Pase Cry When It Happens, 2010 16mm, color, sound; 14 min. A Lax Riddle Unit, 2011 16mm, color, sound; 5 min. Laida Lertxundi makes films with non-actors, landscapes and sounds. Her work has been selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial, MoMA, LACMA, the Viennale, Views from the Avant Garde at the New York Film Festival, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. She received the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival and was named as one of the "25 Filmmakers for the 21st Century" in Film Comment's Avant-Garde Poll. She is a film and video curator in the U.S. and Spain and teaches film at the University of California San Diego. 

Tuesday April 30th FILM PORTRAITS by UTE AURAND (in person)

A central figure in the vibrant experimental film scene enlivening Berlin today, Ute Aurand (b. 1957) has only recently received wide recognition outside of her native Germany for her at turns playful and poignant films that creatively engage the tradition of diary film best defined by Jonas Mekas, one of Aurand's acknowledged influences. Aurand's films derive much of their unique and often exuberant energy from their remarkable editing and structure, a kind of precision frame-by-frame montage, at times rapid-fire, that evokes the specific rhythm and personality of the people and places described by her camera. An important showcase of Aurand's singular approach to image and montage is her on-going series of portrait films of friends, family and acquaintances – captivating short works that crystallize fleeting encounters and quotidian details into intimate and affectionate renderings of personality and memory. Among Aurand's finest works is Hanging Upside Down in the Branches, a touching double portrait of her parents, filmed just before their death. Filming portraits allows me to emphasize private gestures and moments beyond narration and documentation. Sometimes I collect footage for years before deciding to edit a portrait, like Paulina, Franz, Susan or Hanging Upside Down in the Branches, then again a portrait like Lisbeth was filmed only on two occasions and edited shortly afterwards.

These artists’ screenings are co-sponsored by Harpur College Dean’s Speaker Series.
Info: 607-777-4998