Category Archives: WEB/TELEVISION/RADIO

SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT

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I wanted to make a film about love, friendship, and sexuality among three people with the social currents of the times we live in today.

Performing as both director and cinematographer, I tried to create a sense of living realism where the environments, as much as the performances, seep into our awareness and shape our emotions. I wanted the camera to feel like another character experiencing an intimacy with the actors, but also have an omnipotent perspective that steps back at some moments, guiding the audience along on this journey through an unpredictable reality.

Our characters live in a film world that breaks the traditional rules of filmmaking to accompany their spirit of rebelling against social norms. — Svetlana Cvetko

Cvetko’s SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT conveys an improvisational mood appropriate to its subject—the story of three twenty-somethings whose immediate and intimate love for one another provides a brief respite from life’s uncertainties and responsibilities. The three leads—Neyssan Falahi, Cristina Rambaldi, and Mattia Minasi—beautifully capture the easy-going receptivity required of such arrangements.

This contemporary homage to Jules et Jim opens today with an online weekend-long gala. It’s also streaming at Laemmle Virtual Cinema. See links below for details.

SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT OPENING GALA and Q & A LIVESTREAM

Friday, February 12.

5 pm on the West Coast, 8 pm East Coast.

Event streams for 72 hours.

SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT

Directed by Svetlana Cvetko.

Laemmle Virtual Cinema

Streaming through February 25.

Svetlana Cvetko, Show Me What You Got (2019) from top: Neyssan Falahi (left), Cristina Rambaldi, and Mattia Minasi (2); Show Me What You Got poster; Rambaldi; Falahi, Rambaldi, and Minasi. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker and Double Take Pictures.

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE CURATORIAL ROUNDTABLE

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As images from the civil rights era migrated in the American visual lexicon, some becoming icons… a shift also happened in the aesthetic understanding of what images do and how they function. American society has been saturated with images since the post-Second World War period, and artists growing up at that time were some of the first to turn a critical eye to the production of images and cast doubt on their narrative function…

Black artists understood that though Black people may be the subject of many images throughout U.S. history, those captured by and circulated within those images gave little or no consent. In addition, the Black body and its visual reception have been so predetermined by stereotype that their presentation may undermine even good intentions. — Naomi Beckwith*

To kick off the New Museum exhibition GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE—ART AND MOURNING IN AMERICA—the final show conceived by Okwui Enwezor—join Beckwith, Glenn Ligon, Mark Nash, and New Museum artistic director Massimiliano Gioni for a curatorial roundtable.

See link below to register for this online event.

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE CURATORIAL ROUNDTABLE

New Museum

Tuesday, February 16.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

See MEETING WORLDS—ON OKWUI ENWEZOR’S WORK, an online conversation featuring Ute Meta Bauer (the founding director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore), Franklin Sirmans (the director of the Pérez Art Museum in Miami), Terry Smith (a professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh), and Octavio Zaya, an independent art critic and curator. New Museum director Massimiliano Gioni moderated the January 21 talk.

*Naomi Beckwith, “My Soul Looks Back in Wonder,” in Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (New York: New Museum; London: Phaidon, 2020), 182.

From top: Naomi Beckwith, photograph by Maria Ponce, courtesy of the photographer, Beckwith, and MCA Chicago; Glenn Ligon, A Small Band (2015) installation, New Museum, 2021, neon, paint, and metal support, image © Glenn Ligon, courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, Chantal Crousel, Paris, and the New Museum; Garrett Bradley, Alone (2017), still, single-channel 35mm film transferred to video, sound, black and white, image © Garrett Bradley, courtesy of the artist and the New Museum; Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (2020), conceived by Okwui Enwezor, cover image courtesy and © New Museum and Phaidon; Mark Nash, image courtesy of Nash; Massimiliano Gioni, courtesy of Gioni and Alain Elkann.

CECILIA VICUÑA

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What’s happening in Chile (and in Hong Kong, Ecuador, etc.) is truly terrifying, and it may be a preview of what awaits people around the world, unless we wake up fast to defend our democratic rights! The art community will be affected fully by what happens to the whole of society, during and after an uprising of this order.

The beauty of this movement is that it feels as an awakening expressed in joyful and peaceful massive protests emerging in every corner. They respond to the hidden pain under the monstrous inequity of the system (Chile has the biggest disparity between rich and poor in the world). The people have named it “Chile despertó.” (Chile awoke). Yet, the President has declared an unconstitutional “State of exception” that suspends rights and floods the streets with armed soldiers and [is] unleashing a new form of state violence, illegal detentions, and shootings. The number of people dead is growing, and so far there is no accountability. It all comes down to the circulation of information: the media controlled by the private sector only shows vandalism, to spread fear. But the people are posting counter images: multiple video clips on the Internet that open the question: is this vandalism a “set up”? You see what looks like undercover policemen descending from fancy cars, setting banks on fire. You see crowds shouting: “the police are burning the subway stations.” So, this is beyond fake news, it is faking reality, in order to exert control.

What can art, and the art world, do in Chile and beyond? Spread awareness of the violence that distorts information, language, and images, the “tools” of our trade. The art world can stand for transparency to empower our ability to discern purpose and intent. Otherwise the mad destruction of the land and people’s rights, along with the right to question what is true as it is happening in Chile, will continue to spread like wildfire to all nations. — Cecilia Vicuña

This week at the Wattis Institute, Vicuña presents three of her short films—El veroir comenzó/Seehearing began, Rito por el Mapocho, and the video poem Word-Snakes.

The event includes an online conversation with Vicuña and Daniel Borzutzky. See link below for details.

CECILIA VICUÑA and DANIEL BORZUTZKY—SCREENING and CONVERSATION

Wattis Institute

Thursday, February 11.

5 pm on the West Coast, 8 pm East Coast.

From top: Cecilia Vicuña, photograph by Jane England; Vicuña film still; Vicuña, Lava Quipu, 2020, multimedia performance, photograph courtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Vicuña film still; Cecilia Vicuña, Memoria Chilena. Images © Cecilia Vicuña, courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin.

MR. WASH AND IKECHUKWU ONYEWUENYI IN CONVERSATION

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Prison has a lot of politics. Art was a neutral zone and a way to express the human emotions that both I and the other inmates were feeling… I’d love to meet other artists and find out what’s going on out here. I’m learning a lot about art politics on a day-to-day basis. — Fulton Leroy Washington

This week, join Washington (aka MR. WASH) in conversation with Made in L.A. 2020 assistant curator of performance Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi.

See link below to r.s.v.p. to the online event.

FULTON LEROY WASHINGTON (MR. WASH) and IKECHUKWU ONYEWUENYI IN CONVERSATION

Made in L.A. 2020—a version

Hammer Museum and the Huntington Library

Thursday, February 11.

5 pm on the West Coast; 8 pm East Coast.

Fulton Leroy Washington (aka MR. WASH), from top: Mr. Rene # Man Power, 2011, oil on stretched canvas; Sands of Time, 2011, oil on stretched canvas; Political Tears Hillary, 2008, oil on stretched canvas; Eric Reese Tear Drop, 2011, oil on stretched canvas; Mondaine’s Market, 2005, oil on stretched canvas, collection of John and Juanita Mondaine; Michael Jackson Tears, 2010, oil on stretched canvas; Political Tears Obama, 2008, oil on stretched canvas. Images © Fulton Leroy Washington, courtesy of the artist.

STARS OF JAZZ

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The UCLA Film & Television Archive presents two newly preserved episodes of the groundbreaking television show STARS OF JAZZ, hosted from 1956–1958 on ABC by Bobby Troup.

The Max Roach Quintet and vocalist Mary Ann McCall are featured in the opening segment, and Hermosa Beach’s Lighthouse All-Stars and vocalist Julie London guest in the closing episode.

This virtual event includes a post-screening conversation with James A. Harrod—author of the book Stars of Jazz: A Complete History of the Innovative Television Series, 1956-1958—and archivist Mark Quigley.

STARS OF JAZZ

UCLA Film & Television Archive

Thursday, February 11.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

From top: Max Roach; Mary Ann McCall, Easy Living; James A. Harrod, Stars of Jazz, cover courtesy and © McFarland; Bobby Troup and Julie London; Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars Vol. 6.