earthearthearth (2021) by Daïchi Saïto
CROSSROADS at the ROXIE
in the distance
Saturday, October 16 at 1:30pm
CROSSROADS at the Roxie 1: In the Distance
facebook event here
Admission: Tickets on sale HERE! Discounts for Cinematheque Members!
Please read the Roxie’s Health and Safety Protocols & Precautions (relevant to COVID-19) and note special admission requirements before purchasing tickets.
CROSSROADS at the Roxie 1: In the Distance
In its first (non-online) public screenings since February 27, 2020, Cinematheque is overjoyed to be partnering with San Francisco’s Roxie Theater on the occasion of CROSSROADS 2021 for two programs of remixes of our online presentations, featuring 16mm and 35mm projection, artists in person (to be announced) and more!
CROSSROADS at the Roxie: In the Distance interweaves films on psychogeographic drift and street actions from tumultuous 2020 with exquisite and lyrical landscape studies, expressions of hauntings and lyrical, gothic horror. NOTE! This program includes Linda Scobie’s The Pendulum (2021), an ecstatic and percussive film presented in 16mm, and the west coast premiere of Daïchi Saïto’s astonishing eartheaarthearth (2021) presented in 35mm. This live screening is presented as a one time event and neither film is available for online viewing so book your tickets soon!
SCREENING: earthearthearth (2021) by Daïchi Saïto; 35mm, color, sound, 30 minutes. Recursive Lattice (2020) by J.M. Martínez; digital video, color, silent, 4 minutes. Displaced (2020) by Bettina Hoffmann; digital video, color, sound, 7 minutes. Primavera (2020) by Adrian Garcia Gomez; digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes. The Pendulum (2021) by Linda Scobie; 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes. June July (2021) by Kevin Jerome Everson; digital video, b&w, sound, 5 minutes. The House Is Empty (2021) by Dana Berman Duff; digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes.
TRT: 65 minutes
earthearthearth (2021) by Daïchi Saïto
Dawn breaks where land is flesh
And bones’ echoes;
You’ve lived through extinctions –
Stars, skies, sand and seas;
Future is catching us up at last,
And all the dead are ahead of us.
Recursive Lattice (2020) by J.M. Martínez
Refracted light commingles in spectrum pools.
The recursive lattice presents itself.
It gives us, for nothing in return.
The landscape senses indifference, vibrating impermanence.
Imagery created in-camera, the lens was flanked by double concave glass and prisms. Moving them by hand concentrically, at times intersecting with each other, provided encompassing views of the Sequoia Semperviren’s habitat. I am fortunate to live next to Big Basin State Park surrounded by an old-growth forest. California’s oldest state park and my backyard were the locations of Recursive Lattice. Made during the COVID-19 shelter in place order, before the August fires that burned through 97% of the park. Big Basin is a place of refuge and unbounded curiosity for me, one I hope to return to. (J.M. Martínez)
Displaced (2020) by Bettina Hoffmann
People fall into water. Seen from underneath the surface of a lake, those men and women, fully dressed in office attire, move around trying to find orientation while following and bumping into each other. Thrown into this involuntary situation, their movements are at times softly flowing, elegant and caring, but change in the next moment into fighting against each other and for air. They are submerged in an environment which is removed from our daily reality associating sparkling fairy-tale dreams and horrible visions of drowning at the same time. (Bettina Hoffmann)
Primavera (2020) by Adrian Garcia Gomez
Primavera is a frenetic experimental animation that documents the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests as they intersect in springtime Brooklyn. Shot during isolation on a phone, the video explores the effects of imposed distance on touch and intimacy, the proximity of an invisible virus and invisible deaths and the revolt against the racist, corrupt systems that commodify, exploit and render their most vulnerable citizens disposable. The video also parallels the current uprisings with the queer liberation movement which began as a riot at Stonewall and was led in large part by trans people of color who still experience violence at disproportionate rates. (Adrian Garcia Gomez)
The Pendulum (2021) by Linda Scobie
a tendency to stay in motion. (Linda Scobie)
June July (2021) by Kevin Jerome Everson
June July are represented with peonies and the year 2020. (Kevin Jerome Everson)
The House Is Empty (2021) by Dana Berman Duff
The finale of the Catalogue series (2014–2020): A cockroach, a woman, a dramatic encounter in a closet—from the roach’s point of view. Inspired by The Passion According to G.H. (1964) by Clarice Lispector, which demonstrates Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection. Chicago sound artist A.J. McClenon was commissioned to “play” the empty house by knocking, pounding, tapping, and scraping different surfaces and objects creating fourteen audio tracks. (Dana Berman Duff)
Daïchi Saïto (Canada/Japan) is a filmmaker based in Montreal, where he co-founded the artist film collective Double Negative. His film Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis (Jury Grand Prize, Media City Film Festival 2010; Best of the Festival Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival 2010) was named one of the “150 Essential Works in Canadian Cinema History” by Toronto International Film Festival in 2016. With Engram of Returning (Best Experimental Film Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival 2016), Saïto won a Tiger Award for Short Film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His films are in the permanent collections of the Academy Film Archive (Los Angeles), the Austrian Film Museum (Vienna) and the Slovenian Cinematheque (Ljubljana). Saïto was a commission artist of Media City Film Festival’s Mobile Frames and Underground Mines residency programs, which resulted in his latest film earthearthearth (2021).
J.M. Martinez (US) is a Santa Cruz Mountains-based artist working with the still and moving image. With an intention on abstraction and biomorphism, his work explores the evolving landscape.
Bettina Hoffmann (Germany/Canada) is an artist originally from Berlin, based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. Hoffmann’s work has been exhibited in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, United Kingdom, Rumania, South Korea, Japan, USA and Canada. Solo exhibitions include Choreography of Movements, Goethe Institut Montreal, 2019; Touch at Occurrence, 2016; Drain at Oboro, Montreal, 2014; Émile, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2009; Décalage at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto; Kristi Engel Gallery, Los Angeles 2008; and Mois de la Photo à Montréal, 2007. Her videos have been presented at film festivals and video art fairs internationally. Her performances have been presented at the Darling Foundry, Tangente + Occurrence in Montreal and several venues in Tokyo. Hoffmann received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and attended the California Institute of the Arts and the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam.
Adrian Garcia Gomez (US) is an interdisciplinary artist working in film/video, photography and illustration. His artwork, which is largely autobiographical and often performative, explores the intersections of race, immigration, gender, spirituality and sexuality. His short experimental films, photographs and drawings have exhibited around the world. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Linda Scobie (US) is an artist working in film and neon glass bending. She lives in Los Angeles.
Kevin Jerome Everson (US) lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. He holds a MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron. He is Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. His films have been the subject of mid-career retrospectives at the Tate Modern; Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul; Viennale (2014); The Whitney Museum of American Art and Centre Pompidou, among other venues. His work was featured at the 2008, 2012, and 2017 Whitney Biennials and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial. Everson was awarded the 2012 Alpert Award for Film/Video and co-curated the 2018 Flaherty Film Seminar with writer/curator Greg DeCuir Jr. Everson’s films—including eleven features and over 200 short form works—have been exhibited at film festivals worldwide.
Dana Berman Duff (US) was named a Cultural Trailblazer by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in 2020 and a retrospective of her short films is scheduled in Los Angeles for Fall 2021 at Disney Hall, REDCAT. In 2019, in collaboration with the late Sabina Ott, she mounted a multi-channel video installation, What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes at Aspect Ratio, Chicago, and Alchemy Film & Arts, Scotland. Her film A POTENTIALITY (2020) was awarded an Alice Guy Special Mention at the 2020 FIDMarseille Film Festival. Her works in small format film and video have been screened in the Toronto International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, EXiS Festival (Seoul), Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque), Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin), Dortmund/Cologne International Women’s Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS and others. She lives in Los Angeles and rural Mexico.