Feb 6
Common Time Conversations: Guest Curator Carl Elsaesser
Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, Carl Elsaesser, will discuss 'Imperfect Cinema: Respond, Work, Play'
**Coffee and Churros will be served**
Taking its cue from the title of the canonical essay by filmmaker and scholar Julio García Espinosa, this exhibition upholds a politic of imperfection, or as García Espinosa says, a “partisan' and 'committed' poetics, a 'committed' art, a consciously and resolutely 'committed' cinema — that is to say, an 'imperfect' cinema.
Suspending traditional modes of cinema, these filmmakers seek personal and political agency through alternative and direct practices with film. Starting with two foundational figures in Cuban nonfiction cinema, the series moves through a history of alternative filmmaking practices, from the directly political (Respond), the indexical or observational (Work) to the playful (Play). While these films vary in tone and content, they all uphold a sense of the radical possibilities of imperfection for an active cinema that demands the audience watch, watch again, listen, take part in, do not ignore.
Exhibit dates: January 10 - April 26, 2020