Dylan Redford

In reprising a 2005 film work—in which actors pantomime scenes from Kim Jong-il’s favorite Hollywood movies—Mario García Torres decided to do the same thing with films beloved by the late dictator’s son, with one twist: this 2018 edition would include a made-up list of Kim Jong-un’s top films. Dylan Redford, the producer of García Torres’s new Walker-commissioned film, considers this choice, examining the role of arbitrariness, spectacle, and absurdity in dictatorial tactics.

“The Last Jazz Fest is productively uncomfortable; it asks audience members to interrogate their expectations and assumptions around jazz, to melt our fantasy of artistic transcendence, and to expose what is erased or ignored to feel “present.” Dylan Redford reviews the recent Walker-commissioned performance work by Jason Moran and The Bandwagon with Ryan Trecartin, Lizzie Fitch, and Ashland Mines (DJ Total Freedom).

In his film works, Israeli-born, US-raised artist Omer Fast utilizes confusion as a way to provoke a shift in attention, what he calls “confusion as cause and not as effect.” In this new interview, he discusses the locus of such confusion—the messy space between truth and fiction, right and wrong—through the lens of his most recent films, Remainder (2015) and Continuity (2016).

Stories are the connective tissue in Robert Redford’s family: the Hollywood icon’s son James is a filmmaker, and his grandson Dylan is the Walker’s Bentson Research Associate. Here, Dylan and Robert discuss the power of narrative, celebrity, and news that Robert will be retiring from acting.