Thursday, June 7–Sunday, June 10

CROSSROADS 2018
SFMOMA White Box Program 1
A World of Images: An Unexpected Response to René Magritte: The Fifth Season
Curated and presented by San Francisco Cinematheque at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as part of CROSSROADS 2018
pictured above: Model of a Hand (2018) by Rosa John

This screening is presented in SFMOMA’s White Box Gallery on a recurring basis (alternating with Trains & Flags) June 7–10, 2018 during regular Museum hours. Screening is FREE with general Museum admission and is accessible to those holding a CROSSROADS festival day pass. Information on ticketing and CROSSROADS day passes can be found here.

Presented in dialog with SFMOMA’s exhibition René Magritte: The Fifth Season, the short films in this program engage resonantly with the major themes of the exhibition. Deploying surreal juxtaposition of images, canny visual fluidity, surprising lyrical impressionism and a fascination with mundane objects and scenes, the films in this program explore the philosophical paradoxes inherent in the representation of reality, while presenting powerful visual experiences, conceptual cinematic conundra and incisive calls to urgent political action.

SCREENING:

Model of a Hand (2018) by Rosa John (Austria); 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 6 minutes
The film is a meditation on the photographic image as a result of touch: an interplay of sun, space, camera, aperture, film stock, the object of a hand and manual movement. (Rosa John)
NOTE: Model of a Hand also screens in CROSSROADS program 4: lines are drawn on Saturday, June 9 at 1:45pm. Full details here.

Void Vision (2018) by Alexander Stewart (USA); 16mm, color, sound, 8 minutes
An abstract science-fiction short in which the real and the simulated are equally constructions; a space where doubles, twins, duplicates, re-creations and copies blend into one another. (Alexander Stewart)
NOTE: Void Vision also screens in CROSSROADS program 4: lines are drawn on Saturday, June 9 at 1:45pm. Full details here.

Down Wind (1973) by Pat O’Neill (USA); 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 15 minutes
A dynamic play of figures and grounds created by a 16mm virtuoso. (Steve Polta)
A thoughtful treatment of some of the problems we (mankind) have been having in dealing with our fellow species, animal and vegetable. Actually an undercover “structural” film, this one seems at first to be some sort of berserk travelogue. (Pat O’Neill)

Les Chaises (2008) by Vincent Grenier (Quebec/USA); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes
Worn red vinyl chairs provide openings or internal views, into color fields, their standard issue “natural textures” upholstery, oval screens for the light projected through windswept tree leaves. Landscapes near and far fuse and confuse. (Steve Polta)

Rose (2013) by Shiloh Cinquemani (USA); 16mm screened as digital video, color, silent, 8 minutes
A blow to the heart. An ecstatic and explosive portrait of impressionistic floral eroticism. (Steve Polta)

Season of Doubt (2015) by Seth Pimlott (UK); 16mm screened as digital video, b&w, sound, 4 minutes
Music video for Mute Records artists Cold Specks. Vocalist Ladan Hussein’s appartitional visage materializes, hovers over and dissolved into spectral scenes of nighttime anti-police violence actions in Ferguson, Missouri, 2014. (Steve Polta)

 

CROSSROADS 2018 is generously supported by: the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund/Grants for the Arts, the Willow Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Cinematheque’s Members and Donors.