Events of the Week: Maysles and Wiseman

Tonight, the International House is having a special event with Albert Maysles, the noted direct cinema documentary filmmaker. He will be participating in a discussion at 7:00. [event information]

And this upcoming Tuesday, Nov. 11, the Philadelphia Film Society at the Roxy will be screening Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary, National Gallery. Wiseman himself will be in attendance for the screening. 7:00pm [event information]

This Week at International House

This week is a busy one at the International House, so I thought I'd highlight the upcoming screenings.

Wed. 10/9 7pm
This is Not a Film 
dir. Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran, 2011, 35mm, Persian with English subtitles, 75 min.

Thurs. 10/10
Mekong Hotel
dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/UK, 2012, HD, Thai with English subtitles, 61 min.

Fri. 10/11
Our Nixon
dir. Penny Lane, US, 2013, HD, 84 min.

Sat. 10/12
The Illusionist
dir. Sylvain Chomet, France, 2010, 35mm, English, 80 mins.

Sun. 10/13
Revanche
dir. Götz Spielmann, Austria, 2008, 35mm, German with English subtitles, 122 min.

Marker (and Varda)

There's an embarrassment of riches this week, as Penn, Temple, and Slought are organizing a commemorative symposium on Chris Marker's work, with visiting filmmakers to include Agnes Varda. Here's a rundown of events:

Wed. March 13

6pm
Agnès Varda, in conversation with Molly Nesbit

University of Pennsylvania, Meyerson Hall

Thurs. March 14
7PM
Screening: Beaches of Agnes (Varda 2008)

Varda in person

International House

Friday, March 15

5:30PM

opening panel and reception for Chris Marker event

Slought Foundation

reservation recommended

Saturday, March 16

10AM-6PM

Chris Marker event

Slought Foundation

reservation recommended

Saturday, March 16

7PM

Screening: early Chris Marker collaborations

International House

Ross McElwee tonight

Ross McElwee will be presenting and screening his latest film Photographic Memory tonight at University of Pennsylvania:

Thursday, November 8, 2012
5:30pm
401 Fisher Bennett Hall
University of Pennsylvania

Africa, I Will Fleece You

The Cinémathèque Internationale of Phildalphia
presents in conjunction with The African American Museum in Philadelphia

Africa, I Will Fleece You! 

Directed by Jean-Marie Téno  

Cameroon/France/Germany 1993 

88 minutes 

French 

Thursday, September 20, 2012 
from 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

The African American Museum in Philadelphia
7th and Arch St, Philadelphia

Part of the Territories: Africa series

This documentary of repressive political realities in Cameroon begins with the 1990 publication of an open letter to President Biya calling for a national conference – and the immediate arrest of the letter’s author and publisher. The narration then examines the nation’s colonial history, beginning with the first German missionary in 1901.

Presented in partnership with The African American Museum in Philadelphia, Territories: Africa is a foreign film series featuring filmmakers and stories from Africa and across the Diaspora. The intention of these screenings is to expand the discussion surrounding international film language and to challenge and explore modern and historic representations of and by Africans around the world

Strong! at Haverford

STRANGE TRUTH Documentary Film Series presents

STRONG!
A screening and conversation with Filmmaker Julie Wyman and Olympic Weightlifter Cheryl Haworth

Wednesday March 21, 2012
7:30pm

Sharpless Auditorium, Haverford College

Cheryl Haworth is a young woman with a big dream: to be the strongest woman in the world.
As the 300-pound Olympic weightlifter prepares for Beijing 2008, she struggles with injury, confidence, and her place in a world where larger women are not readily accepted.


Sponsored by the John B. Hurford '60 Center for the Arts and Humanities, Leaves of Grass Fund, and Independent College Programs
Organized by Visiting Filmmaker Vicky Funari in conjunction with the Exhibitions Program

General Idi Amin Dada

I've been meaning to mention the regular screening series of the Cinematheque Internationale of Philadelphia. They screen films of video, but with full rights clearance and with a good discussion afterward - something useful to the repertory film experience.

I will be leading discussion next Wednesday at their screening of Barbet Schroeder's Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait.

Wednesday, February 22

Doors open at 6:30pm. Films begins at 7:00pm.

L'Etage at Beau Monde

624 South 6th Street

Discussion following each film.
$10.00 General Admission

$5.00 Students and Artists

Upcoming films:

03.11.12: THE SCAR – Krzysztof Kieslowski
03.28.12: VERONIKA VOSS – Rainer Werner Fassbinder
04.15.12: PERSONA – Ingmar Bergman
04.25.12: VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS – Jires
05.06.12: COME AND SEE – Elem Klimov
05.23.12: HUKKLE – György Pálfi
06.10.12: VEILED VOICES – Brigid Maher
06.27.12: BEIRUT: THE LAST HOME MOVIE – Jennifer Fox

Experimental: Austrian Avant-Garde and Canyon Cinema

There are two screenings of experimental work at the International House this week. The first, part of the "Archive Fever" series, features found-footage compilation films by Austrian avant-garde makers. The program is tomorrow (Wednesday) and starts at 7:00PM.

Tito-Material
dir. Elke Groen, Austria, 1998, 16mm, 5 mins, color

14. März 1938-Ein Nachmittag
dir. Christoph Weihrich, Austria, 2008, 16mm, 10 mins ,color

Notes on Film 05 CONFERENCE
dir. Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Austria, 2011, 35mm, 8 mins, color

Oceano Nox
dir. Georg Wasner, Austria, 2011, HDCAM, 15 mins, color

Coming Attractions
dir. Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2010, 35mm, 25 mins, color and b/w

Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth)
dir. Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1996-2003, 35mm, 13 mins, color

To the Happy Few
dir. Thomas Draschan, Austria, 2003, 16mm, 4 mins, color, sound

Metropolen des Leichtsinns (Metropolis of Recklessness)
dir. Thomas Draschan, Austria, 2000, 16mm, 12 mins, color, sound

This Saturday, Feb. 11, a Bruce Baillie retrospective screens at 5:00pm, while a Chick Strand retrospective starts at 8:00pm.

Program 1, at 5PM: Bruce Baillie’s Early Canyon Cinema Years
Early Canyon Cinema Years comprises seven of Baillie’s films of the early Canyon years. Made between 1961 and 1966, they include canyon “CinemaNews” films as well as some of Baillie’s most famous early experimental works.

On Sundays
dir. Bruce Baillie, US, 1960-1961, 16mm, 27 mins, b/w, sound

The Gymnasts
dir. Bruce Baillie, US, 1961, 16mm, 8 mins, b/w, sound

Mr Hayashi
dir. Bruce Baillie, USA 1961, 16mm, 3 mins. b/w, sound

Here I Am
dir. Bruce Baillie, US, 1962, 16mm, 11 mins, b/w, sound

Termination
dir. Bruce Baillie, US, 1966, 16mm, 5 mins, b/w, sound

Mass For The Dakota Sioux
dir. Bruce Baillie, USA, 1963-1964, 16mm, 20 mins, b/w, sound

Castro Street
dir. Bruce Baillie, US, 1966, 16mm, 10 mins, color, sound

Program 2, at 8PM: Chick Strand: Beginnings, Ends and In-Betweens
This overview of Chick Strand includes both experimental and documentary works. In the mid-1960s, Strand left Canyon Cinema to move to Los Angeles where she began her own filmmaking career. Her intimate, sensual camerawork combined with an exploration of women’s personal and domestic worlds, make her films, shot largely in California and in Mexico, absolutely unique.

Waterfall
dir. Chick Strand, US, 1967, 16mm, 3 mins, color, sound

Kristallnacht
dir. Chick Strand, US, 1979, 16mm, 7 mins, b/w, sound

Soft Fiction
dir. Chick Strand, US, 1979, 16mm, 54 mins. b/w, sound

Señora con Flores
dir. Chick Strand, US, 2011, 16mm, 15 mins. color, sound

Full descriptions of the Austrian program and Canyon Cinema programs available from the website.

Flaherty on the Road

The International House is exhibiting a series of films from the Flaherty Seminar.

Program 1: The Artist and the Process
Thursday, Feb 02
07:00 PM

The Artist and the Computer (dir. Lillian F Schwartz, US, 1980, video, 11 mins, color)

Pixillation (dir. Lillian F Schwartz, US, 1970, video, 4 mins, color)

UFOs (dir. Lillian F Schwartz, US, 1971, video, 3 mins, color)

From Zero (dir. Frank Scheffer, Netherlands, 2011, video, 60 mins, color)
From Zero incorporates extensive footage of Scheffer’s first interview with American composer, philosopher, and poet John Cage, much of it never before seen. A Cagecollaborator, Scheffer created From Zero expressly for the 2011 Flaherty Film Seminar, completing it on the morning of its premiere.

Program 2: City Symphonies
Friday, Feb 03
07:00 PM

Window Cleaning in Shanghai (dir. Laura Kissel, US, 2010, video, 3 mins, color, Chinese w/English subtitles)
Media artist Laura Kissel describes her subjects simply as “two workers I met, hanging off the edges of my apartment building in Shanghai.” This arresting moment captures places, people, and events that suggested the qualities of everyday life in contemporary Shanghai. A work self-aware of the verité tradition it inhabits, Window Cleaning uses only location sound and defers to long takes. Yet Kissel also has a photographer’s eye for composition, structuring her window on the world in ways that are beautiful, honest, and only occasionally ironic.

Tan Mian Hua (dir. Laura Kissel, US, 2011, video, 15 mins, color, Chinese w/ English subtitles)
While documenting the contemporary textile industry in Shanghai, Kissel found the Zhu family on Chongming Island, who demonstrated the disappearing art of making a quilt with simple tools. Tan mian hua (beating cotton) is the process of assembling this type of handcrafted quilt.

Singapore GaGa (dir. Tan Pin Pin, Singapore, 2005, video, 54 mins, color, English, Mandarin and Arabic w/ English subtitles)
Tan Pin Pin’s work shows a studied devotion to the audio dimension of contemporary life, particularly as experienced in her home city. Official declarations – school songs, patriotic parades – are heard in contrast to marginalized voices: a wheel chaired busker, avant-garde musicians, and the
multilingual polyphony of everyday life.

Program 3: Heart and Soul
Saturday, Feb 04
05:00 PM

Multiple Sidosis (dir. Sid Laverents, US, 1970, video, 10 mins, color)
Sid Laverents, a retired Convair engineer, has long been a legend in the amateur film community. Multiple Sidosis is a kind of latter-day trick film, in which Sid reprises the one-man band act he performed as a traveling Vaudevillian in the ‘20s and ‘30s. This self-reflexive masterpiece features Sid– or rather many, many Sids – hysterically performing the song “Nola,” recorded with his ingenious sound-on-sound looping technique and filmed with the use of his handmade in-camera mattes. – Ross Lipman, Filmmakers

Yard Work Is Hard Work (dir. Jodie Mack, US, 2008, video, 30 mins, color)
What if Caroline and Frank Mouris (Frank Film, 1973) had made a narrative operetta about the difficulties of romance and home ownership in the cell-phone era? A handsome, hyperactive, funny, cut-out animation tour de force, Yard Work is of considerable length for such a labor-intensive form. Accomplished animation technique aside, the music is memorable and delightfully sung (by director Mack and others), with a “libretto” of wit. To go from making dozens of miniatures in this form to producing a film of such depth is a major achievement in the art of animation.

The Florestine Collection (dir. Helen Hill, completed by Paul Gailiunas, US, 2011, video, 30 mins, color)
Animator Helen Hill (1970-2007) was beloved for her enchanting, whimsical movies, her passionate advocacy for her craft, and her radical dedication to making the world better for more people in the experimental cinema and DIY art worlds. Her shocking murder in New Orleans after Katrina was incalculably tragic, but her life and work have since inspired many. Completed posthumously by her husband and creative partner Paul Gailiunas, The Florestine Collection was always conceived as being about the connection between two New Orleans DIY artists. The film tells the story of African American seamstress Florestine Kinchen, and Helen’s discovery of Kinchen’s handmade dresses on a trash pile one Mardi Gras morning.

Los Angeles Plays Itself

The ICA and The International House, with Penn Cinema studies, is hosting an ongoing series examining the use of archival image in moving-image art: Living Document / Naked Reality: Towards an Archival Cinema will present works in video, installation, and traditional “black box” cinema that respond to a particular historical moment and cultural movement through the engagement of archival material.

This Saturday, January 14, at 1pm, they will be screening Thom Andersen's LA Plays Itself (2003, 169 min.), an essay film that juxtaposes Hollywood's depiction of Los Angeles with the city's social and political history.

The will be followed with a roundtable discussion with myself and Timothy Corrigan, from Penn's Cinema Studies' program.

Saturday, January 14

1pm
International House (3701 Chestnut St.)
$9 and $7 for Students/Seniors (Free for ICA and International House members)

Nuremberg

Swarthmore College

Film & Media Studies presents:

NUREMBERG: ITS LESSON FOR TODAY (1948)
The Schulberg/Waletzky Restoration

One Screening Only

Monday, December 5, 2011

7:00 pm

Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema

Swarthmore College

Special guest Sandra Schulberg -- daughter of filmmaker Stuart Schulberg & producer of the restoration -- will speak about the making of Nuremberg and its subsequent suppression in the U.S.

Co-sponsored by German Studies, History, Peace & Conflict Studies. Event made possible by the Serendipity Fund

5 Short Documentaries at I-House

Five MFA graduates from Temple's film program are screening documentary work at the International House this Tuesday, November 27, at 7:00pm. I've personally seen some of this work, either in-progress or completed, and I can say that it's quite strong and represents a range of approaches to documentary, including observation, animation, self-reflexivity, and poetic approaches.

The program, titled "The Things They Carry," comprises five shorts:

3956 County Road 15 (Ellen Knechel) 26m

Inheritance (Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz) 29m
Pigment (Alexis McCrimmon) 12m
Roy: Dream Catcher (Andrew Bateman) 65m
Things We Keep (David Cooper Moore) 20m

More descriptions can be found at the event's homepage. In all, it's a cohesive program worth catching.

Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

This weekend the International House is showing the premiere of a local documentary, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, about the cryptic tiles appearing on city streets in Philadelphia and other cities. Philadelphian Jon Foy won an award for Best Documentary Director at Sundance 2011 for the film. (dir. Jon Foy, US, 2011, HD, 85 mins, color)

Showing:
Saturday, September 10 at 7pm and 9:30pm
Sunday, September 11 at 7pm
Monday, September 12 at 7pm

Each screening features the West Philadelphia director, producers, and cast members in person, answering questions as well as providing surprises including live music, tile-making demonstrations, photography exhibitions and more.

AV Club review

UPDATE: Because of the sell-out crowds so far, the I-House is adding an extra screening on Tuesday evening at 7pm. Having seen the film, I can say that it's a gripping experience, in part because of the invocation of the paradoxical publicity and anonymity of the subject matter and the insight into a previous period of history.

Pop Cinema series

A terrific series tomorrow and Friday at the International House:

Pop Cinema: Art and Film in the UK and US, 1950s – 1970s

Thursday, April 28 at 7pm
UK Pop

O, Dreamland
dir. Lindsay Anderson, 1953, 16mm, 12 mins, b/w
Mama Don’t Allow
dir. Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, 1956, 16mm, 22 mins, b/w
Pop Goes the Easel
dir. Ken Russell, 1962, video transfer from 16mm, 45 mins, b/w
When I Was Young
dir. Peter Whitehead, 1965, video, 4 mins, color
Trilogy: Cineblatz; White Lite; Marvo Movie
dir. Jeff Keen, 1967-68, 16mm, 9 mins, color
Richard Hamilton
dir. James Scott, 1969, 16mm, 24 mins, color

Friday, April 29 at 7pm
US Pop

Jamestown Baloos
dir. Robert Breer, 1957, 16mm, 6 mins, color
Broadway by Light
dir. William Klein, 1958, 35mm, 12 mins, color
Achoo Mr. Karoochev
dir. Stan VanDerBeek, 1960, 16mm, 2 mins, color
I Was A Teenage Rumpot
George and Mike Kuchar, 1960, 16mm, 12 mins, color
COSMIC RAY
dir. Bruce Conner, 1962, 16mm, 4 mins, color
Wrestling
dir. Marie Menken, 1964, 16mm, 8 mins, color
Kustom Kar Kommandos
dir. Kenneth Anger 1965, 16mm, 3 mins, color
Oh Dem Watermelons
dir. Robert Nelson, 1965, 16mm, 11 mins, color
— —— (aka Short Line Long Line)
dir. Thom Andersen and Malcolm Brodwick, 1966-67, 16mm, 11 mins, color
Superartist
dir. Juan Drago, 1967, 16mm, 21 mins, color
American Time Capsule
dir. Chuck Braverman, 1968, 16mm, 3 mins, color
Rockflow
dir. Bob Cowan, 1968, 16mm, 9 mins, color
Airborn
dir. Chas Wyndham, 1969, 16mm, 3 mins, color
Up Against the Wall Miss America!
dir. Newsreel Group, 1968, video transfer from 16mm, 6 mins, b/w

Saturday, April 30 at 2pm
Pop Art and Cinema panel discussion with:

Derek Boshier, Artist and Filmmaker
William Kaizen, Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Critical Studies, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Kalliopi Minioudaki, Art Historian
Jacob Proctor, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art

Saturday, April 30 at 7pm

Link
dir. Derek Boshier, 1970, video transfer from 16mm, 14 mins, color
Daddy
dir. Peter Whitehead and Niki de Saint Phalle, 1973, video, 90 mins, color

The curators may be taking a little bit of license in tying all of these films to Pop Art (then again I've not seen the majority of these), but with a screening of such hard to see experimental and documentary work from the 60s and 70s, who's quibbling? Having recently screened Momma Don't Allow, I was struck by how palpable the sense of a new cinematic vocabulary and a new postwar consumer prosperity was.

Temple Cinematheque: City Documentaries

This Friday, Temple Cinematheque pairs two influential but often overlooked documentary shorts that aim to give a snapshot of a city subculture. Both will be screened in 16mm.

In the Street

(1948, US, James Agee, Helen Levitt, and Janice Loeb, 16m)

A silent short using hidden cameras to document Harlem street life in New York in the 1940s. The work continues photography Helen Levitt's interest in street photography, especially portraits of children, and Agee's interest in social documentation.

Momma Don't Allow

(1955, UK, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, 22m)
Pioneering documentary of the Free Cinema movement, documenting one evening at a North London jazz club in the 1950s. The film influenced the soon-to-emerge British New Wave, and both Reisz and Richardson went on to become key figures in that movement.

The program screens this Friday, April 22, at 3 PM in Annenberg Hall (Room 3), 13th and Norris St.

Flaherty Seminar shorts

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, April 6, the International House is programming shorts from this past year's Flaherty Film Seminar, on the topic of "work." Screening is at 7PM.

Haiku
dir. Michael Glawogger, Austria, 1987, BetaSP, 3 mins, color

Haiku uses the clang of metal forming as the basis for an earsplitting rhythm that mirrors the repetition of life structured by the factory’s whistle.

Cheese
dir. Mika Rottenberg, US, 2008, BetaSP, 16 mins, color

Cheese conflates farm-girl imagery with the fairy tale Rapunzel into a story loosely based on the Sutherland Sisters, renowned for their extremely long hair. Floating through a pastoral yet mazelike setting of raw wooden debris cobbled together into a benign shantytown, six longhaired women in flowing white nightgowns ‘milk’ both their locks and their goats to generate cheese. As nurturing caretakers, these women represent maternal aspects of Mother Nature.

Me Broni Ba
dir. Akosua Adoma Owusu, US/Ghana, 2008, BetaSP, 22 mins, color, Twi and English w/ English subtitles

Who dictates the whims of fashion and what can these whims tell us? Me Broni Ba remixes the traditional anthropological documentary (including the classic story about Euro-colonialism) into a mad and inventive fusion of both forms and formats. Titled for an Akan term of endearment (me broni ba or my white baby), Me Broni Ba is a lyrical and impressionistic portrait of hair salons in Kumasi, Ghana, combining images of Ghanaian women who practice braiding on discarded white baby dolls with a child’s story of migrating from Ghana to the United States.

The Pottery Maker
dir. Robert Flaherty, US, 1925, BetaSP, 14 mins, b/w, silent

A humble experiment using the new Mazda incandescent lamps instead of mercury vapor lights, The Pottery Maker was shot in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s basement in collaboration with the Arts and Crafts Department and proved to be important as a preliminary study for the pottery-making sequence in Industrial Britain.

The Sixth Section
dir. Alex Rivera, US/Mexico, 2003, BetaSP, 26 mins, color, Spanish and English w/ English subtitles

The Sixth Section is a portrait of a Mexican migrant community inhabiting a transnational space between the village of Boquerón, Puebla and Newburgh, NY, where they formed a niche enclave, ready to supply their labor in menial occupations. Having come north with the intent of supporting families back home, Newburgh’s Poblanos shrewdly consolidate their efforts into Grupo Unión, a benevolent society (headquartered in a backyard tent) dedicated to public-welfare projects in Boquerón. Rivera leafs through Grupo Unión’s jaw-dropping portfolio: the construction of a 2,000-seat baseball stadium; purchase and delivery of an ambulance for the village clinic; instruments for a marching band; completion of an abandoned, half-dug well; and more — all done from upstate New York.

The Way
dir. Uruphong Raksasad, Thailand, 2006, BetaSP, 6 mins, color, Thai w/ English subtitles

A man with a young boy on his shoulders maneuvers through a tall thicket. “This is the old way,” he says, reassuring the boy that they have not much farther to go.

Sam Green at Temple

Weather permitting, this Wednesday evening (Feb. 2) documentary filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground, Utopia in Four Movements) will be presenting and discussing his work at Temple University's Film and Media Arts department. The event starts at 5:15 in Temple's Annenberg Hall (13th and Norris), room 3.

This is the first in a series of visiting filmmakers, so stay tuned for future announcements.

Temple Cinematheque

Temple Cinematheque is beginning a semester of (mostly 16mm) Friday afternoon screenings. First up is a pair of Student Academy Award-winning documentary films made by students in Temple's Film and Media Arts (nee Radio Film and Television) program in the 1970s. The films screen this Friday, February 4th, at 3 PM in Annenberg Hall (Room 3), 13th and Norris St.

You See I've Had a Life

1972, B/W - a film by Ben Levin

- A 13-year-old boy does his best to live a normal life despite the fact that he has been diagnosed with leukemia.

Ben Levin was born in Joliet, Illinois. After attending the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, he served in the United States Marine Band in Washington D.C. He then entered Temple University to pursue an MFA with an emphasis in documentary production -- the start of a 17-year relationship with that institution -- culminating in his directing the MFA program there for seven years. Levin is currently Film Professor at the University of North Texas

Through Adam's Eyes

1978, B/W - a film by Bob Saget

- A portrait of a young boy with a facial birth defect. Narrated by Adam, it deals with corrective surgery performed on him and his post--surgical social adjustment.


Bob Saget - TV actor, writer, director, and producer - was born in Philadelphia. His father, Benjamin, was a supermarket executive, and his mother, Rosalyn, was a hospital administrator. Saget lived in Norfolk, Virginia, and Encino, California, before moving back to Philadelphia and graduating from Abington Senior High School. Saget originally intended to become a doctor, but his Honors English teacher saw his creative potential and urged him to seek a career in films. He attended Temple University's film school, where he created Through Adam's Eyes, a black-and-white film about a boy who received reconstructive facial surgery, and was honored with an award of merit in the Student Academy Awards. He graduated with a B.A. in 1978.

Ulrike Ottinger

Next Tuesday, October 19, the Slought Foundation is hosting a day-long retrospective of Ulrike Ottinger's work. Ottinger's work has ranged from narrative work on the more avant-garde side of the New German Cinema to experimental documentaries, including the 8- hour Taiga, about Mongolia (see this NYT review). Even including the couple of films to be distributed by Women Make Movies to educational and repertory audiences, very little of Ottinger's work has been available in the US.

I do wish for a proper theatrical screening of some of it, but short of that, gallery exhibitions like at the Slought may be the only way to watch it easily. They will have simulatenous video projection of her longer works throughout the day (9am-5pm): Twelve Chairs (198 minutes, 2004), The Korean Wedding Chest (82 minutes, 2008), Taiga: A Journey to Northern Mongolia (501 minutes, 1991/2), and Exil Shanghai (275 minutes, 1997)

From 5-7pm, there will be an evening screening of Still Moving (29 minutes, 2009) and Prater (104 minutes, 2007).

The main event (7-8:30pm), is a presentation by Ottinger herself, followed by public conversation with Kaja Silverman (University of Pennsylvania), Patricia White (Swarthmore College), and Homay King (Bryn Mawr College), moderated by Nora Alter (Temple University).

Top Secret Rosies

My colleague LeAnn Erickson has just completed her documentary on the women who worked as mathematicians for the US Army and later programmed for ENIAC, the first electronic computer. Titled Top Secret Rosies, it covers a fascinating subject, with a local angle, shot with engaging interviews from the women involved.

The film has a couple of screenings, in HD video, in the coming weeks:

County Theater

Monday, October 4, 7:00 pm

Ambler Theater
Wednesday, October 13, 7:00 pm

Running time is 60 minutes. For more information, you can visit the film's website.