Ruth Hodgins

Deborah Stratman’s commissioned video work draws on several sources: unused footage shot by Barbara Hammer during a motorcycle trip to Guatemala in 1975, evocative sounds from Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), and Deren’s 1953 book Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. As the Walker’s Ruth Hodgins writes, Stratman’s Vever brings together three generations of women who separately, and now together, confront moments of vulnerability and disruption. Each filmmaker at different points in time finds herself questioning the integrity of her work and her intentions while searching for the poetics in her creative practice.

Rappers and gospel singers, on the streets and in their homes—Kevin Jerome Everson’s music from the edge of the allegheny plateau, screening online through January 8, 2019 as part of the Walkier’s Moving Image Commissions, presents different generations from the African American communities of Mansfield, Ohio, sharing their passions, their talents, and their messages of faith and ambition through music and gesture. Everson was inspired by William Klein’s The Little Richard Story (1980), a film that tell the story of the rock-and-roll icon’s life through the eyes and experiences of friends, family, and impersonators.

In the second of a two-part look into the curatorial thinking behind the Walker’s programmatic focus on the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, the Walker’s Moving Image staff describes how films selected for the Summer Heat ’68 film series capture the atmosphere and mood of a time when filmmakers and revolutionaries were in constant conversation and asks: is it truly possible to join the revolution and profit as an artist?

“We believe that these stories—the stories of everyday, regular people that were documented on film—are extremely valuable to our understanding of what life was like in the 20th century.” The staff of the Chicago Film Archives discusses the collection of more 26,000 titles, the archive’s important work with film preservation, and the history behind the three films they provided for the Walker series Expanding the Frame: Imagination is Power.

“Art is a tool of expression and resistance. It is important to show and represent artistic views and films in times of revolution.” As part of the multi-part examination of the ideas behind the film series Expanding the Frame: Imagination Is Power, the arts organization Bidayyat, discusses its work to support and produce Syrian documentary films, giving voice to new artistic expressions in and around the region.

“Protest for me is part of citizenry.” In part two of our multi-part examination of the ideas behind Expanding the Frame: Imagination Is Power, series co-organizer Valérie Déus discusses how her upbringing in a New York immigrant family shaped her engagement with activism, her multidisciplinary art practice, and her approach to this month’s selection of short film and video works from the 1960s.

How does art, literature, film and TV influence and communicate the power of radical action and social mobilization? Bentson Archivist/Assistant Curator Ruth Hodgins and artist Valérie Déus discuss their recent collaboration on Imagination is Power, a four-part program that looks at the revolutionary spirit from the late 1960s until today.

With daylight fleeting, a few things remain constant for dog musher Brent Sass: the unrelenting cold, the appetite of his 56-dog kennel, and his infectious singing. During December the Mediatheque is dedicating a playlist to Jonathan Rattner’s films Further In (2016) and The Interior (2015), which document Sass’s life in the Great Frontier. Here, a discussion with Rattner on his documentary approach, influences, and inspirations.

Deer of North America is an experimental film that intersects the relationships between humans and deer. With clear references to the genre of wildlife documentary, Jason Coyle and Laska Jimsen explore the blurring lines between artificial and natural, domesticated and wild.

Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, and René Clair, three enigmatic pioneers in early artist film, were risk-takers—which could explain what drew Ryan Olson and Marijuana Deathsquads to their work when selecting films for a new Walker film and music commission.

Focused on gay cruising culture, Frédéric Moffet’s two-channel video installation isn’t about monogamy. “It is about being faithful to a way of life: the project is contemporary but deeply rooted in the philosophy of the early gay liberation.”

Ruth Hodgins looks at the seven-film program—titled after the closing words in George Kuchar’s camp masterpiece Hold Me While I’m Naked—which will be screened at the British Film Institute’s Southbank Theatre on May 30 as part of the Films in Experimenta series in collaboration with LUX.

More than a portrait of “man’s best friendm” Rini Yun Keagy’s White Dog addresses the uncomfortable facts of human-animal relationships, where “owners” have to make life changing decisions for a creature they ultimately can’t communicate with.

Minneapolis artists Sam Hoolihan, John Marks, and Crystal Myslajek discuss their Walker commission, Stasis & Motion, an experiment in visual and acoustic space that is both a new artwork and a performance of multiple-projection coupled with live sound and music.

Kevin Obsatz’s discusses experimental cinema, the moving image community in Minneapolis, and future plans for Cellular Cinema.