Monday, February 19, 2007

Tuesday, February 20

*** JUST ADDED!! ***

WORKSHOP WITH GAME DESIGNER TRACY FULLERTON
3-6; 7-9pm MIT B91

Tracy Fullerton will be giving a presentation and workshop on gaming and interactive media in the Film 115 Media Archaeology class. The class meets from 3-6 in Mitchell B91 but her workshop will also extend into an evening session from 7-9 PM.

Guests are welcome to attend the entire workshop but are especially encouraged to attend the evening session when they will have an opportunity to participate as game testers and give feedback to the designers.

Tracy Fullerton, M.F.A., is a game designer, educator and writer with over a decade of professional experience. She has designed games for MTV, Microsoft, and Disney and is currently collaborating with artist Bill Viola on The Night Journey, a unique game/art project hybrid. Tracy is an Assistant Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television where she serves as Co-Director of the new Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab.

The schedule of her workshop is as follows:

3-4:30 PM: Presentation
4:30-6:00 PM: Game design exercise (break-out groups)
7-7:30 PM: Playtesting presentation
7:30-9:00 PM: Playtesting of design exercises (break-out groups)

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7pm ** FREE **

UWM Union Theatre

Experimental Tuesdays at the Union Theatre

Specters of an Everyday: The Poetic Documents of Sergei Loznitsa


Experimental Tuesdays at the Union Theatre presents the regional premiere of films by acclaimed Russian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa.


Four films from one of Russia's most acclaimed documentary filmmakers, whose poetic, observational films offer a portrait of a landscape and a people in transition. Documenting the changes in his country since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Loznitsa offers beautifully photographed, precisely detailed, and thereby haunting essays on the ways of life of people caught in the curl of time.

Celebrated at festivals across Europe and Canada, Loznitsa's work has rarely been seen in the States. Tonight's program, to be presented entirely on 35mm, comes to Milwaukee thanks to the efforts of filmmaker/curator David Dinnell, currently of the UWM Film Department.

The program was made possible thanks to the support of the Center for International Education at UWM


Artel (30min., 2006)










Sergei Loznitsa’s newest film, an examination of the details of wintertime everyday life within a small fishing community.


Halt (24min., 2000)

Trains travel through the night without stopping. The clatter of the carriages quickly disappears, along with the wail of the locomotive. The people at the station are all asleep. Why are they so exhausted? What are they waiting for?


Portrait (28min., 2002)

A timeless film about human dignity and grace, 'Portrait' consists of what at first appear to be photographs of Russian peasants and farmers. But as we watch the carefully composed scenes, small details in the background begin to catch our eye - the rustling of tree leaves, water flowing in a stream. The peasants, mostly elderly men and women, stand in their everyday clothes, often with tools by their side, looking into the camera. Occasionally someone shifts their weight, or turns slightly, or blinks.

Evoking the photographic portraits of August Sander or Dorothea Lange, this remarkable short film captures a people, and a world, that is quickly vanishing. With poetic rigor and stunning black-and-white cinematography, 'Portrait' offers us a thoughtful meditation on man and nature, city and country, old Russia and new.


Factory (30 min., 2004)
Stunningly photographed in rich sacral tones, 'Factory' takes the viewer on a visually mesmerizing tour through the belly of an old Soviet industrial plant. In near pitch-dark conditions, male workers toil over fiery blast furnaces, pour molten steel into giant casting ladles, and hammer metal spikes into colossal machines (echoes of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis abound), as their female counterparts in a slightly more hospitable environment operate the assembly lines, endlessly moving clay blocks from one conveyor belt to another.
Unlike some of Loznitsa’s previous films, which dealt with rural and environmental issues, 'Factory,' a brilliant subversion of the Soviet-era idealization of the worker, is concerned with industry, labor, and development. It is an unapologetic questioning of Russia's ability to emerge as a modern industrial nation in the 21st century.


(descriptions courtesy of Deckert Distributon and The Cinema Guild)

Wednesday, February 21

No postings.

Thursday, February 22

7pm ** FREE **

UWM Union Theatre

Share the Earth Environmental Film Series: Two Films by Laura Dunn


GREEN

(dir. Laura Dunn)












Laura Dunn’s GREEN tells the story of Cancer Alley, home to over 150 petrochemical plants. The residents of this area—mainly African American and poor—suffer from astronomical rates of life-threatening medical ailments. The film journeys through six communities, showing how one group of people bears the burden of a nation's consumerism.


BECOME THE SKY

(dir. Laura Dunn)

A meditation on capitalism, war and power.

Friday, February 23

2 pm ** FREE **
CURTIN 175

Colloquia in Conceptual Studies
"Interactivities: Conversations with Media Artists and Theorists"









Laura Marks
, Dena Wosk University Professor, Art and Cultural Studies, School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University


"Travels of the Abstract Line:
New Media's Debt to Islamic Aesthetics"

Paul Klee wrote, "We have never until now allowed a line to dream." Yet 1100 years before he wrote this, classical Islamic art abounded with dream
ing, growing, transforming lines. And now, software allows lines to dream and grow before our eyes, stirring new algorithms (an Arabic word) into nonorganic life. This resurgence is not a coincidence but part of the Islamic lineage of Western art.

Dr. Laura U. Marks is a scholar and curator of independent and experimental media arts. Her current research interests are Islamic genealogies of new media art and independent media in the Arab world. She is the author of *The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses* (Duke University Press, 2000), *Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media* (Minnesota University Press, 2002), and many essays. She has curated experimental media for festivals and art spaces worldwide. Dr. Marks is the Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.
www.sfu.ca/~lmarks

FILMS TO BE SCREENED ALONG WITH THE TALK:


Dieu me pardonne
(May God forgive Me)
(Mounir Fatmi, France, 2001, 8:15)

On a Monday (dir. Tamer Al-Saïd, Egypt, 2004, 10:00)

These Girls (dir. Tahani Rached Egypt, 2006, 68:00)


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Carousel: An Evening of Slide Show Sensations


7pm
$2

Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E Locust @ Riverwest
www.woodlandpattern.org

Carousel is a Slide Show Invitational that solicited artists from around the neighborhood -- and oh maybe one from across the country -- to create their own program of projected 35mm slides.

Participants were supplied with a roll of 35mm slide film and one month to design their own shows: the number and kind of slides, the arrangement of projectors & screens, and sonic accompaniment (if any) were all the choice of the participating artists.

Nostalgic for a kind of technology no longer manufactured and, perhaps, for a pre-PowerPoint kind of sharing (communal and performed) of projected images stuttered sequentially, Carousel will unwind a party of images. So join us, won't you?

Participants include Naomi Shersty, Max Estes, Senseney Lea Stokes, Meredith Root, Team Woodland Pattern, Micaela O'Herlihy, Steve Wetzel, Polina Malikin, and more!


Presented as part of the Woodland Pattern Experimental Film/Video series, a presentation of the UWM Film Department


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7pm ** FREE **
Performance at the Union Ballroom

The Mammy Project
by Michelle Matlock

An exploration of race, gender, and consumerism in 20th century America








This project confronts the American stereotype of mammy, focusing on its commercialization through the character of Aunt Jemima. Michelle Matlock's performance travels from the life and times of Nancy Green (the first woman to play the part of Aunt Jemima in 1893) to the present day where Aunt Jemima is still bought and sold from her “pancake box prison.”

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Basement Cinema
Mitchell Hall - Room B91

Basement Cinema is a student-run series of B and unusual commercial movies.
More information at
http://basementcinema.wordpress.com


7pm
** FREE **

The Stuff
(dir. Larry Cohen, 1985, 93 minutes)

Miners discover a white goo erupting from the Earth. They taste it and decide the marshmallowy substance is good enough to market. Over night, The Stuff, as this new dessert is called, takes the nation by storm. This creamy taste sensation scares the sprinkles out of ice cream executives. Hired to find out the secrets behind The Stuff, industrial spy Michael Moriarty (Law & Order) learns the shocking truth. Is The Stuff simply a fashionable consumer treat or is it an alien being consuming the brains of those that eat it and turning America into a wasteland of mindless zombies?

9pm
** FREE **

Street Trash
(dir. J. Michael Muro, 1987, 102 minutes)

A vile liquor store owner unearths a case of “Tenalfy Viper” from his basement and starts selling it to local bums and winos for a buck. The outdated booze possesses a nasty side effects that leaves its consumers in a puddle of ooze. Centered around the squalor of the Brooklyn Wrecking Company this junkyard drama is full of sick humor, gross effects, and transgressive behavior, not to mention some of the sleaziest folks ever seen in cinema. Able to rival the early gore/humor works of Peter Jackson, Street Trash shows the dismal side of the 80’s.

Saturday, February 24

UWM Union Theatre
Feb 24-26 Saturday-Monday film festival
African American Film Festival: We Were, We Are, We Will Be

This three-day film fest explores the history, present, and future through issues and images surrounding the lives of Blacks in America.


7pm ** FREE **

Saturday's theme: We Were


Putney Swope

(dir. Robert Downey Sr., 85 min.)

Putney Swope is a dark satire in which the "token" black man on the executive board of an ad firm is accidentally put in charge.


The Conferate States of America

(dir. Robert Downey Sr., 85 min.)

The Confederate States of America, is a faux documentary, and takes a look at an America if the South had won the Civil War.

Sunday, February 25

UWM Union Theatre
Feb 24-26 Saturday-Monday film festival

African American Film Festival: We Were, We Are, We Will Be


5pm ** FREE **
Sunday's theme: We Are


Furious Flower II

(dir. Joanne Gabin, 3 hours)

Furious Flower II is an outstanding critical scholarship on Black contemporary poetry's origins and trends, as well its conflicts and consonances.

COMING UP

Monday, February 26

FAM 175, 11am – 12:50pm

Guest: Professor Laura Marks


FILMS TO BE SCREENED:


Les Égarés
(dir. Mounir Fatmi, Tunisia/France, 2005, 9:00)

My Son
(dir. Lina Ghaibeh, Lebanon, 2006, 5:00)

Vacuum
(dir. Adel Abidin, Iraq/Finland, 2005, 3:00, excerpt)

In This House
(dir. Akram Zaatari, 40:00)

Dead Time
(dir. Ghassan Salhab, 6:00)

An Outing About the Sea
(dir. Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Palestine, 10:00, excerpt)

Usama Alshaibi
(dir. Allahu Akbar, Iraq/United States, 2003 5:10)

Ça sera beau
(From Beyrouth with Love, dir. Waël Noureddine, 30:00)

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UWM Union Theatre

Feb 24-26 Saturday-Monday film festival

African American Film Festival: We Were, We Are, We Will Be


7pm
** FREE **

Monday's theme: We Will Be


Suffering and Smiling

(dir. Dan Ollman, 60 min.)
Suffering and Smiling focuses on African musician Femi Kuti and his decades long struggle against the corruption of the Nigerian Government.