Insider/Outsider: Artists & Industry
Is film an art or an industry? This program of shorts looks at the filmmaker's role as outsider or insider on either end of this spectrum.
La mort du rat
The man Tarkovsky called "the great hope of French cinema" is virtually unknown now, both in the United States and in France. Aubier plays with the industrial film format in this experimental short.
Director: Pascal Aubier. 5 min. 1975.
Chicken Real
This surprisingly gorgeous 16mm short about chicken factory farming has been described as “probably the most hilariously subversive industrial film ever made.” Commissioned by Holly Farms Poultry and one of the last industrial films Les Blank made, his identifiable tone of arch cynicism with an overriding sensuous pleasure was established with this film. Don't miss your chance to see this rarely seen film.
Director: Les Blank. 23 min. 1970.
Ukiah
This ambiguous utopian dreamworld was shot at an artists' project in Northern California. The gorgeous images were shot using the movie setting on a still camera, so he was able to document the project almost unnoticed, from completely inside. Haunting and funny, the film has the logic of a child's mind making sense of the unreal. Fleischner, the director of Wah Do Dem and Below the Brain, will be in attendance to discuss.
Director: Sam Fleischner. 15 min. 2010.
Sway
Sway is a free form doc edited from 14 years of shooting video in the New York City subways.
Director: Richard Sandler, 2006.
Tickets: $12
Part of the Flaherty series.
Brief Bio
Sam Fleischner is a New York based filmmaker. His first narrative feature, Wah Do Dem, won the grand jury prize at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival and was theatrically released in 2010. Art Forum named it one of the best feature debuts of the 21st century. This past September Below The Brain - an experimental documentary about the West Indian parade - premiered at BAM cinematheque. Sam also makes music videos, short films, and installations, including Cave Flower, an award winning short narrative about a homeless elevator operator, and Ten Trees, a 60 minute, real-time film about ten trees getting turned into plywood. Sam used that same wood to construct a movie theater in which the film was projected (exhibited at the 2008 Spoleto Art Festival in Charleston, S.C.). Sam is currently in pre-production on a new narrative feature, Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, a true story about a 13 year-old autistic boy who runs away on the subway for 11 days.
Richard Sandler is a documentary filmmaker and street photographer. His docs include, The Gods of Times Square (1999), Brave New York (2004), SWAY (2006) and Everybody is Hurting (2006). More recently, Sandler completed Radioactive City (2011) a short film about Los Angeles. Currently in post-production is AKA Martha's Vineyard, a doc that tells the history of the lovely island only from the Wampanoag tribe's points of view. In film, Sandler is a Guggenheim fellow (2006) and a NYSCA fellow (2009). Sandler is also a two time recipient of NYFA fellowships in still Photography, (1992, 1998).