Screening

Framework / Directors in Person!

still from HUSTLERS & EMPIRES (Michelle Handelman, 2018)

An evening of Experimental Films by Four NYC Artists in celebration of the publication of their Visual Essays in the latest issue of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media.

Free! RSVP required filmmakerscoop@gmail.com

Please join us for an evening of Experimental Films by Four NYC Artists in celebration of the publication of their Visual Essays in the latest issue of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media.

In the spring of 2018, Framework invited four filmmakers, Michelle Handelman, Bette Gordon, Rob Roth, and MM Serra, to each devise a visual essay for the issue Framework 59-2, Fall 2018. As a method, the visual essay asks the artists to use images from their own work as a way to create a kind of ‘essay’ that utilizes the essay form, much as an essay film does, by tapping into the visual as a means to express a self-reflective series of thoughts. The essay can portray how the artist sees their own visual ideas, perspectives, career or more. The approach can be very personal or can be formal, whichever the artist prefers, can incorporate words or be only visual and can be of any length.

Drake Stutesman, PhD, is the editor of Framework: The Journal Cinema and Media and an adjunct professor at New York University. Her latest book is The Hat: Origins, Language, Style (Reaktion Books, 2019).

Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media is an international journal that has no single ideology but rather seeks to publish work from original thinkers in the forefront of new cultural and political perspectives, and follows all aspects of film and media, in any genre or type.

Film Program:

MICHELLE HANDELMAN, Hustlers & Empires (2018), 3-channel 4k video, 68 minutes, (excerpt).
HUSTLERS & EMPIRES is a three-channel video work and live performance that interweaves the stories of three aging hustlers from three different time periods who each find themselves pushed out of their own game and forced to confront what their lives have become.

BETTE GORDON, Variety (1984), 100 minutes, (excerpt).
A desperately unemployed Manhattan woman lands a job as a cashier in an X rated cinema where she finds herself drawn towards events on-screen.

ROB ROTH, Soundstage (2018), (excerpt).
Soundstage is a live theater and film hybrid created and performed by artist Rob Roth alongside his on-film counterpart, actor Rebecca Hall. The piece presents a ‘meditation on the muse’ through a highly personal and filmic lens.

MM SERRA, Enduring Ornament (2015), 14 minutes
Sourced from five 16mm peep show filmstrips (1946) found outside of a closing adult bookstore on New York's former 42nd Street sex district. Re-photographed andchemically hand-processed at Negativland M. P. L. with Josh Lewis.