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Experimental Curator

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:09:38 GMT

Experimental Curator
Buy Now: $320.00

Experimental Curator: The Sally Dixon Story is a documentary that delves into the life of experimental film curator Sally Dixon. Her story began in the 1960's when she received a small hand-held movie camera from her father-in-law and started making films, that she later called "Film Poems." Sally is known as a trailblazer in the "film as art" movement and created the film program at The Carnegie Museum of Art in 1970. She founded the program with the purpose of "promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of film as an art form and the filmmaker as an artist." It was one of the first museum-based film programs in the country.

This one hour biographic documentary reflects Sally’s life as a woman in a man’s art world. The film beautifully weaves in archival footage of Sally as her love of film first emerged as she captured her first images on Super 8 as well as archival footage of her collaborations with artists in Pittsburgh, and finally St. Paul. The documentary threads in contemporary footage of Sally, her family and her friends as they reflect on her enormous impact.

“She understood it very early and she promoted it, bringing attention to different poetic, non-narrative forms of cinema.”
– Jonas Mekas

Selected Screenings & Awards

Honorable Mention, Experimental Forum, USA 2023

Winner for Best Female Filmmaker, Lindsey Film Festival, USA 2023

Winner for Best Feature Documentary Film, BostonDoc, USA, 2022

World Festival Premiere, Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA, 2022

Athens International Film Festival, USA 2022

Hot Springs International Women’s Film Festival, USA 2022

Berlin International Art Film Festival, Germany, 2022

Cinefem 10, Uruguay, 2022

Stockholm City Film Festival, Sweden, 2022

The Women’s Festival, USA 2022

University Film and Video Association Conference, USA, 2022

Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Film Festival, USA 2022

Toronto International Women Film Festival, Canada, 2021

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Entretejido

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 09:02:00 GMT

Entretejido
Buy Now: $295.00

Peruvian alpaca wool has held an important place in the rich textile traditions of Andean highland communities for generations. Among today's cosmopolitan elite, the wool has attained the status of luxury item, enhanced by its manufacture at the hands of indigenous artisans and herders. From remote villages to the capital's fashion runways, the wool bridges Peru's rural, indigenous poor and the urban and global fashion world. This supply chain has become a site of development efforts to alleviate poverty and foster social inclusion within Peru’s high-fashion worlds.

Entretejido is an observational-ethnographic film that weaves together the different sites and communities involved in making alpaca wool fashions. Varying representations of indigeneity emerge out of these encounters, which both challenge and reproduce historically-rooted racism.

The film offers an immersive experience of the textures that constitute this supply chain from animal to runway. More than just a sensory experience, however, viewers are confronted with the ways in which everyday items such as clothing are entangled in the racial politics and contested histories of the nation.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Golden Remi Award, Best Culture and Ethnicity Short Documentary, Houston International Film Festival, 2017

Honorable Mention – Best Graduate Student Film, Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, 2016

Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, 2017

La Paz International Film Festival, La Paz, Bolivia, 2017

Ethnografilm Festival, Paris, 2017

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Egypt series

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

Egypt series
Buy Now: $755.00

Fadwa El Guindi is currently Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Qatar; founding director and research anthropologist at El Nil Research in Los Angeles; and Co-Editor of the new social science journal Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life. In addition to her innovative, award-winning films, she is widely published and gives lectures and workshops internationally on Arab and Muslim Americans. Her renowned expertise on the Middle East has been sought by the media, the UN, and the US government. Her most recent book, Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory, is available from AltaMira Press. Recommended for use in courses on general anthropology, religion and ritual, medical anthropology, circumcision, rites of passage, popular Islam, and traditional Arab culture.

Films in the Egypt series

El Moulid

El Sebou'

Ghurbal

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Earl's Canoe

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Earl's Canoe
Buy Now: $320.00

We meet Earl Nyholm, a member of the Ojibwe Nation, as he walks through the woods on Madeleine Island, Wisconsin. He's looking for just the right birch tree to select for the bark which will be used in the making of a traditional Ojibwe canoe. He talks about the respect that the Ojibwe People have for nature and for the spirit of the particular tree used in the making of a canoe following the traditions that had been handed down through the generations. We are told that this spot is a good one for building this canoe as Madeline Island was a sacred place and a center for the Ojibwe Nation in earlier times.

We watch the entire process from peeling the bark from the tree to shaping the form of the canoe with heavy rocks and then the elegant stitching together of the canoe's parts. Earl tells us that artists have always depicted birch bark canoes with the distinctive white pattern of the bark on the outside. This is a myth, as they are actually made with the white, outer bark of the tree, on the inside of the canoe. While the task is arduous the work proceeds step by step with the help of other members of the Ojibwe Nation.

The excellent camerawork allows us to see in great detail the ingenious process. While it is not as easy as going down to the local sporting goods shop and picking up an aluminum model, there is the sense of satisfaction knowing that the materials and the process are integrated with the natural environment and provide a spiritual link to the past.

This program is suitable for all ages and will be very useful for anyone interested in canoe making, in the preserving of a Native American craft, in teaching Native American Studies, and anthropology.

A Traditional Ojibwe Craft was produced for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies.

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Edward O. Wilson

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Edward O. Wilson
Buy Now: $320.00

Edward O. Wilson, the Pelligrino University Professor and Honorary Curator of Entomology at Harvard University, is one of the world's most distinguished and controversial scientists. Through his books and lectures, Wilson has changed the way scientists and nonscientists alike view the natural world by fueling their enthusiasm for science and showing them its immediacy for their everyday lives. Wilson's devotion to natural history, his broad humanistic approach to learning, and a gift for storytelling have made him one of the most popular teachers at Harvard and lecturers around the world. In this warm and engaging biographical portrait Wilson offers insight into the scientific process, relating how an interest in studying ants and social insects led him to establish the field of sociobiology and to promote the study of biodiversity. He compares scientists to mythmakers and examines the role of imagination in scientific inquiry. Wilson’s passionate concern for the preservation of our natural heritage has placed him in the forefront of environmental activism. As a young boy growing up in the deep South, Wilson began to dream of going to the "Big Tropics, the Amazon, New Guinea, of discovering new kinds of plants and animals." This urge to explore propelled him from a childhood interest in collecting insects to a career that has encompassed studies in the biology of social insects, ecology, biogeography, sociobiology, and environmental conservation. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Science (1976), the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1990), and two Pulitzer Prizes. Prof. Wilson's books include The Insect Societies, Sociobiology: the New Synthesis, On Human Nature, The Diversity of Life, Biophilia, Naturalist, and The Future of Life.

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El Field

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

El Field
Buy Now: $320.00

International border crossing as a daily constant is an unusual life habit. Especially when Mexican urban dwellers do so to work as agricultural field laborers in the United States. In a time when immigration has taken the political center stage across the globe, El Field contributes to the discussion by providing a compelling portrait in motion of the life, work and industry of a forgotten section of the largest, busiest land transit border in the world. Shot in the Imperial Valley, California, and the Mexicali Valley, Mexico; El Field presents visual historic information that induces the audience to form their own impressions on migrant labor and the industry that employs them.

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El Moulid

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

El Moulid
Buy Now: $295.00

Moulid (spoken Arabic meaning “birth”) refers to a public religious festival celebrating the life and legacy of a holy person. The film vividly captures the festive and religious mood of the very 700-year old moulid of the 13th century Muslim Wali, Sayyid Ahmad Al-Badawy, held annually in Tanta, Egypt during cotton harvest. Using “layering” as a method, this visual ethnography analyzes the moulid’s structure and symbolism, revealing various levels of religious experience – scriptural, mystical, ritual, mythical, interacting with secular traditional life. It culminates in a dramatic procession following the Friday public prayer led by the khalifa (Badawy’s current successor) on horseback, followed by drummers on camels, a Sufi parade, workers representing medieval vocational guilds, and finally circumcised boys in horse carriages. A transmission of vigorous masculinity and potent spirituality is symbolized as a journey from boyhood to manhood embedded in a regenerative cycle from life to death to rebirth.

Films in the Egypt series

El Moulid

El Sebou'

Ghurbal

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El Sebou'

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

El Sebou'
Buy Now: $295.00

In Egypt, a birth ritual called el-sebou', meaning "the seventh", happens on the seventh day following the physical birth of a child of either sex and is celebrated by Coptic and Muslim families of all status groups, rural and urban. Characteristic of this ritual is the gender-linked imagery also manifest in the ritual clay pot. The ceremony celebrates the newborn's crossing a threshold from a neutral gender and status into a world of gender differentiation and family hierarchy. This particular sebou' is celebrated for twins, a boy and a girl, in a rising middle class Muslim family in urban Egypt.

Anthropologist Fadwa El Guindi portrays the sebou' ritual as a rite of passage with the universal three phases of transition (separation, liminality, incorporation) and as the key ceremony in an individual's life cycle until marriage. Focusing on — and showing the proveniences of — the variety of objects and materials, the film's perspective highlights the central role of the female ritual leader and provides a kinesthetic spatial sense of the ceremony. The editing combines both an analytic and an emic approach, allowing the participants to speak for themselves without losing a broader anthropological perspective.

Films in the Egypt series

El Moulid

El Sebou'

Ghurbal

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Elephant's Dream

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Elephant's Dream
Buy Now: $320.00

Elephant's Dream is a portrait of three state-owned institutions and their workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The interwoven stories of a female clerk in the dilapidated central post office, two colleagues at the railway station, and the group of firemen in the only fire station provide insight into their daily lives and survival in Kinshasa, the third largest city of Africa. Although these three government-owned institutions are running on their last legs, the film allows for a surprisingly poetic and empathetic look at a state in decline. Yet, it also bears witness to small but powerful moments of change and revolution, while at the same time functioning as a mirror to what is happening in the Western world.

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Encountering Jean Rouch

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Encountering Jean Rouch
Buy Now: $275.00

This short film was shot in 2002 during Bilan du Film Ethnographic for the purpose of introducing Jean Rouch to the audience at 2003 Taiwan International Ethnographic film festival. Unexpectedly, Jean Rouch passed away in 2004. In this film Jean Rouch talked about his new marriage, his anger towards the moving of the artifacts of the Mankind Museum, his anarchistic nature, his dreams and fantasies, etc..

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