quarterly pdf - Anthology Film Archives

MARTINA’S PLAYHOUSE
NEW YORK WOMEN
IN FILM & TELEVISION
PRESENTS
NYWIFT’s Member Screening Series provides members with
the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting. The
screenings are always followed by a Q&A and an after-party
with cash bar and complimentary food at Dempsey’s Pub, 61
2nd Avenue.
NYWIFT programs, screenings, and events are supported, in part, by grants
from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the
City Council, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support
of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
JANUARY:
RE-SCHEDULED FROM ITS HURRICANE SANDY-
CANCELLED SCREENING IN OCTOBER!
Byron Hurt
SOUL FOOD JUNKIES
2012, 64 min, video.
Food traditions are hard to change, especially when they’re
passed on from generation to generation. In this PBS documentary,
Hurt shares his journey to learn more about the African-
American cuisine known as soul food. Baffled by his father’s
unwillingness to change his traditional soul food diet in the face
of a health crisis, Hurt sets out to learn more about this rich
culinary tradition and its relevance to black cultural identity.
Presented by the film’s Associate Producer and NYWIFT
member Lisa Durden.
–Tues, January 29 at 7:00.
FEBRUARY:
Screening details TBA – please visit: www.nywift.org for
program updates.
–Tues, February 26 at 7:00.
MARCH:
Screening details TBA – please visit: www.nywift.org for
program updates.
–Tues, March 26 at 7:00.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
PEGGY AHWESH & JOE GIBBONS
The most recent edition of the Views from the Avant-Garde section of the New York Film Festival featured
the premiere of newly preserved works by two of contemporary experimental cinema’s most revered artists,
Peggy Ahwesh and Joe Gibbons. Pioneers of small-gauge filmmaking since the 1970s, Ahwesh and Gibbons
are both superior storytellers who don’t necessarily rely on actors or scripts to tell their inquisitive tales. The
filmmakers are longtime friends, and their works have a certain sympathetic resonance. Blown-up to 16mm
from Super 8, these crucial pieces have never looked or sounded better. Seen today, the films are as surprising,
thoughtful, and darkly funny as they were back in the day.
All films in this program were preserved by Bard College with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Preservation
undertaken by BB Optics. Thanks to Peggy Ahwesh, Joe Gibbons, and Vanessa Haroutunian.
Peggy Ahwesh
MARTINA’S PLAYHOUSE
1989, 20 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up
“In MARTINA’S PLAYHOUSE everything is up for grabs. The little girl of the title oscillates from narrator to reader
to performer and from the role of baby to that of mother. While the roles she adopts may be learned, they are
not set, and she moves easily between them. Similarly, in…Ahwesh’s playhouse of encounters with friends,
objects aren’t merely objects but shift between layers of meaning. Men are conspicuously absent, a ‘lack’
reversing the Lacanian/Freudian constructions of women as Ahwesh plays with other possibilities.” –Kathy
Geritz
Peggy Ahwesh
FROM ROMANCE TO RITUAL
1985, 20 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up
“FROM ROMANCE TO RITUAL invokes and inverts the title of the 1920 book by Jessie L. Weston as it, like
the book, draws connections between pagan history and ritual and mythology. In one scene, a very animated
woman digs and scratches at the earth to give us a show-and-tell history of the megalithic site at Avebury. A
bit tongue in cheek like playing around in the backyard (Prehistoric Sandbox 101) but not far from the truth in
its reading of the erasure of matriarchal tendencies from traditional histories.” –P.A.
Joe Gibbons
CONFIDENTIAL PART 2
1980, 26 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up
“Overtly a portrait of the filmmaker confessing his remorse at the scandalous manner in which he gathered
material for his near-classic SPYING, here an eerie interpersonal relationship is developed between the filmmaker
and his camera which culminates in violence. The ‘sin’ as act of the imagination and its degenerative
effect on the personality.” –Henry Hills
Joe Gibbons
SPYING
1977-78, 31.5 min, Super 8mm-to-16mm blow-up
“Too controversial to describe in detail, this film reveals the underlying voyeuristic nature of the cinema-phile.”
–Joe Gibbons
“An exercise in applied voyeurism – a hilariously perverse MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA – in which the filmmaker
secretly observes his neighbors (and their pets) sunbathing, gardening, or gazing out of the window.”
–J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE
Total running time: ca. 105 min.
CONFIDENTIAL PART 2
–Thurs, January 31 and Fri, February 1 at 7:30 each night.
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