Two Palermo (2022) by Antoinette Zwirchmayr
sympathetic bodies
Sunday, September 10 | 5:45pm at Gray Area
Echoing CROSSROADS program 7, works in this program ponder geological eternity and the enduring human impulse toward mark-making, communication across the ages. Considerations of continuity and generation warp and weft with meditations on mortality, corporeality, serenity and violence.
SCREENING: Fluid (2023) by Carleen Maur (US); digital video, color, sound, 8 minutes. Two Palermo (2022) by Antoinette Zwirchmayr (Austria); digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes, exhibition file from Light Cone. L’incanto (2021) by Chiara Caterina (Italy); digital video, color, sound, 20 minutes. TODAY IS A VERY SPECIAL DAY, Nov. 2003 (2022) by Matt Whitman (US); 16mm, color, silent, 8 minutes. Cave Painting (2023) by Siegfried A. Fruhauf (Austria); digital video, color, sound, 15 minutes, exhibition file from sixpackfilm. TRT: 61 minutes
program community partner: Screen Slate
PROGRAM TICKETS
$12 General/$10 Cinematheque Members, Gray Area Members & students (with ID)
FESTIVAL PASSES
$110 General/$88 Cinematheque Members, Gray Area Members & students (with ID)
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CROSSROADS 2023
Fluid (2023) by Carleen Maur
Fluid is a film centered on a body losing another body through a winding pathway of forests where two cyclists chance upon one another. It thinks about natural camouflage alongside one’s own agency in not wanting to be seen. (Carleen Maur) north american premiere
Two Palermo (2022) by Antoinette Zwirchmayr
A dully dyed cloth in the woods, stretched as a connective texture between the trees. The contours of two naked, pregnant bodies that come into contact with just that materiality—first in the midst of the empty black space, then in the nature surrounding them—leaning on the tree, rubbing together palms of hands and bodies. A tapestry of piano keys and vocals appends itself as an expression of this phase of life in the in-between. (Antoinette Zwirchmayr)
L'incanto (2021) by Chiara Caterina
The voices of five women gradually fill the sound space of the film, weaving a pattern: a tarot card reader; a woman who survived one of the most horrific cases of sexual violence and homicide in Italy in the 1970s; a woman who is accused of killing four people; a woman tells of her relationship with death and a woman who has found her way in life through religious practice. These voices deal, in different ways, with the relationship to life through the discourse of death. (Chiara Caterina) bay area premiere
TODAY IS A VERY SPECIAL DAY, Nov. 2003 (2022) by Matt Whitman
*Content note: contains flashing images*
Nov. 2003: “An exquisite corpse indeed”
then, years lost
just wanted it all to stop
(Matt Whitman)
bay area premiere
Cave Painting (2023) by Siegfried A. Fruhauf
In Siegfried Fruhauf’s dream-like etude, human traces from an unimaginably distant past appear as an intensified vision of the origin of painting. Cave Painting leads us to real natural phenomena that have been shaped by civilization. A seemingly spherical thunderstorm of individual images leads us to a rock face whose interior opens pulsatingly. The dizzying expedition along rock structures and cavities is increasingly determined by colors, contrasting lighting, three-dimensional effects, and illusions of movement. Fruhauf celebrates the movie screen in a loose way, following the example of Robert Smithson—namely, as a place of flickering apparitions whose blurred, floating perception is due to a specific environment. He understands the cinema experience as cave exploration. (Christa Blumlinger)
Carleen Maur (US) is an experimental filmmaker living and working in Columbia SC where she teaches at the University of South Carolina. She received her MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Iowa in 2017. Her work focuses on hybrid methods of both film and video that examine the intersections between gender, sexuality and camouflage.
Antoinette Zwirchmayr (Austria): Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her works have been featured in festivals including Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Indielisboa, Media City Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival and FID Marseille. She has been awarded with the Outstanding Artist Award (BKA 2020), a six month residency in New York (ISCP), the Start-Up Grant for Young Film Artists (Austria 2017), the annual grant for photography (Land Salzburg 2017) Simon S. Filmaward (2016), Kodak Cinematic Vision Award (Ann Arbor Film Festival 2016), among other awards.
Chiara Caterina (Italy) After completing a degree in film studies in Rome university and a diploma in cinematography, Chiara Caterina attended a post-degree in Le Fresnoy—Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Lille (FR). Her short film Avant la nuit was awarded and selected in many international festivals inclouding the 27 European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück; the 30th Hamburg International Short Film Festival; the 10th Berwick Film and Media Art Festival; the Videoformes 2015 International Festival in Clermont-Ferrand and the Kasseler Dok und Video Fest. Her documentary Il mondo o niente was selected among others at the 58 Festival dei Popoli and the Festival du cinéma de Brive. Her short film Enchantment was selected and awarded at 36 International Critics Week at 78 Venice Film Festival in 2021 and was screened in many other film festivals.
Matt Whitman (US) is from Pennsylvania and lives/works in Brooklyn. His 16mm and Super-8mm films have recently screened at the 2023 Mimesis Documentary Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, Light Field 2023, CROSSROADS 2022, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, ANALOGICA, the Athens International Film and Video Festival, Fracto Experimental Film Encounter, Process Festival and Light Work UVP at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. He teaches at Parsons School of Design.
Siegfried A. Fruhauf (Austria) 1991–1994: Training as commercial manager. 1995–2010: Lived and worked in Linz and Heiligenberg. Studied experimental visual design at the University of Artistic and Industrial Design in Linz where he first came into contact with the Austrian Film Avantgarde. 2002: Supporting Award for Filmart by the Austrian Federal Chancellery. 2018: Österreichischer Kunstpreis: Film. Since 2001 organization of film and art events. Since 2009 lecturer at the University of Artistic and Industrial Design, Linz. Numerous works and shows in the area of film, video and photography. Participation in various international film festivals (Festival de Cannes—Semaine Internationale de la Critique, International Filmfestival of Venice—Section Nuovi Territori, Sundance Film Festival…). Member of sixpackfilm. Lives and works in Vienna and Heiligenberg since 2010.