The Index of Maladjustment

Bradley Eros & Jeanne Liotta

a film screening of Hand-Processed Super 8 & 16mm Films
curated by Lindsey Castillo

Saturday, January 28, 7:30pm
admission: $9 suggested donation

featuring:
Dagie Brundert
Kenneth Zoran Curwood
Bradley Eros & Jeanne Liotta
Rachael Guma
Sarah Halpern
Joshua Lewis
Shona Masarin
Phil Solomon
Kelly Spivey

in conjunction with this event…
Super 8 Movie Film Hand-Processing Workshop
Instructor: Kenneth Zoran Curword
Saturday, February 25, 12pm – 4pm

Union Docs and The Camera Club of New York are pleased to present The Index of Maladjustment, a screening of hand-processed Super 8 and 16mm films by contemporary artists and filmmakers, curated by Lindsey Castillo. This screening emphasizes the use of experimentation, imperfections, reference to the past, and the immediacy of erasure. The idea of the death of film is not new; over the past two decades, major manufacturers have severely halted their rate of production and processing of film and paper stocks. TheIndex of Maladjustment is celebrating this recently antiquated medium by showcasing film scratches, chemical traces, color shifts, and the inherent mysteries that are not possible with glossy digital processes. This championing of human slights, an antithetical concept within the present hyper-digital society, strives to find the beauty within what has been deemed an error, and subsequently altered. These maladjustments—evidence of mistakes, defects, and failures—are, in fact, something to be contemplated and foregrounded. Glorifying what has been lost in the current process of polished production, this celebration of the film medium and its patina-laden surface aims to present the intrinsic narrative that revolves around the process.

The Index of Maladjustment strives to connect the coexistent worlds of still and moving analog photography. The Camera Club of New York is one of the oldest creative not-for-profit organizations in New York City, dating back to 1884. One of its earliest members, master photographer Alfred Stieglitz, pioneered a interdependent relationship between process and image that is still adhered to today. Union Docs is a not-for-profit organization that acts as a platform for documentary arts; including film, video, sound, and performance-based works. The collaboration between these two organizations fosters a bond between motion and still photography; relying on the underlying process of physicality and chance in technology.

SELECTED ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES:

Dagie Brundert is a filmmaker from Berlin whose processes include hand-development, time lapse photography, and toning to “manipulate and bend space and time.”

Kenneth Zoran Curwood experiments with hand-processing Super 8 and 16mm films; E-6, Color Reversal, and Black and White. His home experiments also include solarization and optical printing, a process involving re-photographing single frames as a way to illuminate his music videos and short films.

Bradley Eros & Jeanne Liotta –
Bradley Eros is an artist working in myriad media: experimental film & video, collage, photography, performance, sound, text, contracted and expanded cinema & installation. Also a maverick curator, designer, researcher & investigator. Concepts include: ephemeral cinema, media mystics, subterranean science, erotic psyche, cinemapovera, poetic accidents and musique plastique.

Jeanne Liotta (NYC/CO) makes films and other ephemera including photographs, works on paper, and live projection performances. Her recent work takes place in a constellation of mediums at a lively intersection of art, science, and natural philosophy. Her 16mm filmOBSERVANDO EL CIELO received the Tiger Award for Short Film at the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival and her work has been represented in the 2006 Whitney Biennial; The New York Film Festival; The Wexner Center for the Arts; The Museum of Modern Art; Proteus Gowanus Interdisciplinary Gallery and Reading Room in Bklyn, and the Cornell Astronomical Society at Fuertes Observatory, etc. She has received awards from The Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, and The Museum of Contemporary Cinema. She maintains ongoing research into The Joseph Cornell Film Collection at Anthology Film Archives, and for many years ran Firefly Cinema , the free outdoor screening series at the 6th St /Ave B Garden which was curated out of the New York Public Library’s film collection. She has taught widely and variously, and is presently assistant professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College. More atjeanneliotta.net

Rachael Guma is a filmmaker and sound artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Through her experiments with Super 8 film and analog sound, Rachael strives to create an engaging live viewing experience that embraces the idiosyncratic qualities of technology, while maintaining a hand-crafted approach to her output. Ever since graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute, her films have screened at the San Francisco Cinematheque, RX Gallery, Mono No Aware, Northern Flickers, Microscope Gallery, and AXWFF 2011 where she was asked to take part in a lively panel discussion on women filmmakers. As a member of Optipus Film Collective, she has performed live foley sound at Participant Gallery, Dense Mesh IV, and the 2011 Index Festival.

Sarah Halpern is in a love/hate relationship with Film. Lately he’s been threatening to walk out on her. If only she weren’t so dependent. One day she’ll show Film that she doesn’t really need him. One day she’ll find another format and move on… that sonofabitch.

Josh Lewis is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker whose images are teased out from the same incoherent tangle of memory, personal neurosis and sopped-up material culture that also makes up his personality. His work has screened at The Commons Gallery (NYU), Millennium Film Workshop, Spectacle (MASS), Magic Lantern, Anthology Film Archives, and Mono No Aware IV. Josh processes most of his films by hand and is continually in pursuit of a more proximate relationship with the medium through ongoing explorations of photographic reactions. He teaches hand-processing workshops for Mono No Aware and was recently invited to teach as a visiting artist to NYU‘s Tisch School of The Arts.

Shona Masarin is a New York City-based Australian film artist whose work involves the physical, alchemic, and sculptural manipulation of found images and materials to create abstract animations. Finished works have taken the form of of Super 8mm or 16mm films, film performances with live music, and installations; presented at film festivals in Australia, including the Melbourne International Film Festival, and at various alternative art spaces and galleries in Brooklyn. She has received funding for her work from the Australia Council for the Arts and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

Phil Solomon is an internationally renowned film and digital video maker and has been teaching both film history/aesthetics and film production at the University of Colorado since 1991. Mr. Solomon’s work has been screened throughout the U.S. and Europe, including three Cineprobes at the Museum of Modern Art and two Whitney Biennials, and have won ten first prize awards at major international film festivals for experimental film. He has collaborated on three films with his late colleague and friend, Stan Brakhage, who named Solomon’s Remains to be Seen on his Top Ten Films of All Time forSight and Sound. In recognition of his film art, Philip Solomon has been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1993), a Creative Capital Grant (2000, 2001), The Thatcher Hoffman Smith Award (2007), The Stan Brakhage Vision Award from the Denver International Film Festival (2007) and the Boulder Faculty Assembly Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work (2008). The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote: “Although part of a long avant-garde tradition, Mr. Solomon makes films that look like no others I’ve seen. The conceit of the filmmaker as auteur has rarely been more appropriate or defensible — The liberating effect of Mr. Solomon’s work suggests a rather different realm: Film Meets Vision, Rejoice!” Further information on Phil Solomon, including writings, clips, stills, and reviews can be found on his website:www.philsolomon.com

Kelly Spivey has been making experimental films since 1998. Her films explore themes of class, gender, women‘s roles and more recently, anxiety, especially in relationship to our increasingly frenetic urban lifestyles, and information overload capabilities. Her work has screened nationally and internationally and has won awards. Several of her film projects have received support from the Queens Council on the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, and she was a New York Foundation on the Arts Fellow in 2005. She works in New York City in post-production sound and picture editing and video preservation at Mercer Media.

Lindsey Castillo (curator) is an artist and curator based in New York City. Her art works have been exhibited throughout New York and Europe. She is currently working on ceramic sculptural pieces, zines, and Super-8 films. Lindsey has been curating events for The Camera Club of New York for the past three years, and continues to develop projects that seek to inspire and create new and diverse conversations that pertain to photography and film. To see more of her work and ideas visit www.lindseycastillo.blogspot.com