I You He She… Essays in Identity and Alterity

Opening & Special Screening Art Night Thursday: 8 May 2014 | 6pm-9pm

Exhibition dates: 9 May - 7 June, 2014 | Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-7pm.

Mumbai Art Room 

Identity and the Other beyond the Fourth Wall - “At the Formal”, Andrew Kavanagh, Australia, 2012

Artists: Andrew Kavanagh, Isobel Blank, Umesh Kulkarni, Ayisha Abraham, Eva Vikström, Brian Comerford & Neoconjob, Humphrey J C Millett, Super Preachers and Karl Orff, Jesse McLean, Robert-Jan Lacombe, Adam Rosenberg, Scott Camac and Nick Flight, Edmund Dixon Jung and Haw Chan Jung, Bill Taylor, Trafalgar, Apiyo Amolo, Jean-Gabriel Périot, SaintSantana, Michael Truog, David Varela and Hans Op De Beeck.

Curated by Adi Chesson

A selection of local and international short films articulated along the theme of identity and otherness. These experimental works, a blend of fiction, animation and documentary, explore different modes of narration, and play on audience alienation and involvement. Bertold Brecht’s V-Effekt was a determining factor in the evolution of art in the 20th century and drew on the notion of estranging the spectator through atypical and perturbing mechanisms. As opposed to the classical cinema, where the spectator is lulled into an almost dream-like altered state of consciousness, these distancing texts break from the illusion of reality by disrupting the flow of fiction. Characters staring into the camera challenge and address us directly, break open the “fourth wall”, that crucial boundary separating the world of fiction (diegesis) from the real world. The audience is then no longer a passive receptor but must participate in the creation of meaning through a genuine dialogue with the work.

If it could be said that all narrative art since Brecht must position itself somewhere between the two extremes of this narrative spectrum, the selection of films at hand focuses on works that explore the more radical end of the continuum. Modulated along a series of sub-themes, these films depict the quest for personal and collective identities; challenge a priori notions of sexuality and gender roles; and reach out to the spectator beyond the fourth wall of the screen. The title of the programme itself is a quotation of Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s seminal 1975 film “Je tu il elle”, an avant-garde work on the search of self as well as a striking illustration of the gaze theory and scopophilia in cinema.

Adi Chesson is a Brussels-based film journalist from Bombay, assistant editor at Format.Court.com and curator for Short Screens. Created in 2008 by a small group of journalists and film aficionados, the webzine Format Court is dedicated to short films the world over. With numerous interviews, film and DVD reviews, considerable coverage of major European festivals, as well as a large collection of films online, it stands today as one of the leading references for the short format in the francophone world. Short Screens is an offshoot event that proposes thematic short film screenings on the last Thursday of every month in an independent art cinema in Brussels, and regularly curates cartes blanches in collaboration with Belgian and European festivals.

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Adi Chesson and Mumbai Art Room would like to thank The Internet Archives (in particular the Prelinger Collection and the Memories to Light Collection) and all the contributing artists.

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Program: 

Films marked with an asterisk will be part of the opening and Art night Thursday Special Screenings.

I. Us vs. Them: Encounters with the Other

i. Beyond East-West stereotypes – identity and politics: as the Orient encounters its most formidable other – Uncle Sam, the clash explores the modern scourge of media manipulation, profiling and soft-power propaganda.

1. Road to Isfahan – Eva Vikström (2007, 1’25”)

Synopsis: Fear visualized by using movies from the 1950s in the Prelinger Archives - “America For Me” and “Iran - Between Two Worlds”.

2. Petroleum Pirates – Brian Comerford & Neoconjob (2004/2006, 3’37”)

Synopsis: An ephemeral short featuring commercial, industrial, and instructional footage selected from the Prelinger Archive. Contrasts traditional seafaring piracy with contemporary energy imperialism.

The magic of montage brings together two arch-rival suitors to the cavern of Ali Baba that is the Middle East. The politics of war and terror have deep-rooted sources in the universal lust for exclusive power. Hardly a censurable phenomenon, provided all players start on the same footing.

Courtesy: Internet Archive, Prelinger Archive Mashups Collection

3. New Old School – Super Preachers and Karl Orff (2008, 4’15”)

Synopsis: “Do you speak English? This wacky video will help you in your first steps in Shakespeare’s language.

Courtesy: Internet Archive, Prelinger Archive Mashups Collection

* 4. Magic for Beginners – Jesse McLean (2010, 20’)

By revisiting television and new media that form an integral part of our lives today, American artist Jesse McLean presents an original take on the ubiquitous phenomenon of the contemporary viewer’s vicarious experience of emotions. Structured alternately between discrete images of pop culture, the (pseudo-)narration is punctuated from time to time with face shots and quotes from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. McLean’s technique consists primarily of recreating a familiar universe for the viewer, with references to American TV, and by extension classical cinema, both visually and aurally: a sci-fi/space fantasy-like musical score, the trite theme song from “Titanic”, scenes of DiCaprio signing autographs, etc. From this common ground – even universal judging by the innumerable covers of Dion’s number – the director elaborates an ironic discourse on the way emotions are experienced in the age of mass media culture. At the same time, she interrogates the relative notion of “reality” between the screen and real life. The fuzzy, prism-like TV images seem to symbolize the affective breach faced by today’s spectator-voyeur, who experiences fictional emotions at least as intensely as his own. Consequently, he is confronted with his own relationship with the image. The emotional component is further reinforced by the close-up shots of two people in tears, staring straight into the camera. These faces beckon the spectator to identify with them, at the same time shocking his sensibility through their artifice. The final karaoke scene made up of several different post-modern sources – reality TV shows, webcam images, home videos… – is representative of the entire media gamut the artist explores. Midway between video art, experimental cinema and conceptual art, “Magic for Beginners” stand out from established classic genres and is a perfect example of the cinema of otherness that questions and demolishes traditional cinematographic codes.

ii. Across cultures, bridging the unbridgeable gap; plural identities and the need to belong.

* 1. Jung Family in Disneyland –Edmund Dixon Jung and Haw Chan Jung (7’)

With their multiracial origins, the prosperous Jung Family embody perfectly the plurality of American culture and their history challenges notions of singular identity and cultural integration. This essay in the nascent genre of the home movie, underrated offspring of amateur cinema and the documentary autoportait, depicts the family’s foray in the magically nightmarish world of make-believe that is Disneyland. The ultimate manifestation of Baudrillard’s’ simulacrum combined with the film’s candid verisimilitude create an engaging essay in hyperrealism.

Courtesy: the collection Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies

* 2. Kwa Heri Mandima – Robert-Jan Lacombe (2010, 10’)

“Kwa Heri Mandima” (Goodbye Mandima) flirts with the genres of documentary and experimental cinema. Director Robert-Jan Lacombe draws up a poignant and personal portrait on the theme of uprooting. The film rests on a very minimalistic narration, with an image for the most part composed of a single old photograph explored in metonymic detail. The simple yet forceful narrative technique is perceptibly reminiscent of Chris Marker’s magnificent “photo-films”. Taking off from this ensemble, the author relives the fateful day and the rest of his life in the style of the dramatic monologue, addressing his own young self in the picture. In doing so he raises the complex question of identity and cultural differences between the worlds to which he belongs, while being necessarily excluded from them. The personal narrative takes on a historical dimension as the narrator alludes to the political conflicts in what was then Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Kwa Heri Mandima” could be seen as the quest for a plural identity, and gives a whole new meaning to Pliny the Elder’s dictum Ex Africa semper aliquid novi (Always something new out of Africa).

* 3. Not Swiss Made – Apiyo Amolo (2012, 2’)

The questions of immigration and integration and rarely treated as efficiently as when expressed by the subaltern him(her)self. It’s precisely this sort of first-hand documentary that Apiyo Amolo presents with “Not Swiss Made”. Singer, actor, film-maker, and a plethora of other talented identities, this Kenyan turned Swiss opts for a minimalistic form in conspicuous contrast with her own exuberant personality. The content of this 2 minute short is entire autobiographical: more than 13 years of a perfectly integrated life in Switzerland and finally an abrupt threat of expulsion following a divorce. A keen believer in “speaking the other’s tongue to be understood”, Amolo uses the most universal of languages to communicate her message – song. Two folk melodies make up the entirety of the narration and crystallise the dual identity of this “black sheep”. The first, Jambo Bwana, is a tribal Kenyan chant (most wrongfully attributed to Boney M. by their fans), heartily welcoming the visitor to the land of Hakuna Matata. The second, the very symbol of the Helvetic Confederation is a popular yodle named Mein Vater ist ein Appenzeller (My Father is from Appenzell). A constant close-up shot translates the complexity of the subject, with the made-up face of Amolo juggling between jocundity and grief without ever turning to the ridiculous or pathetic.

iii. The Other as source of fear and conflict, to be dominated or annihilated

* 1. Eut-elle été criminelle (Even If She Had Been A Criminal) – Jean-Gabriel Périot (2006, 9’30”)

France, summer 1944, the Liberation: jubilation in the streets and collective festivities to the august strains of la Marseillaise, the elation of an entire nation freed from more than 5 years of Nazi oppression. Périot’s montage of archival footage confronts the viewer several generations later with this fateful and darkest of pages in the history of the Hexagon, Allied Europe and indeed the entire continent. But this is not the end of the human atrocity; for all is not rose on the liberated front. A marked decrescendo in the rhythm reveals the darker side of things. Women accused of collaboration (and often relations) with the Nazi occupants are made to parade, their heads publically shaven, as the ultimate sign of humiliation. With its accusatory title, Périot’s film shows what tyranny can do to man, and how man in turn can sink to the same levels to return the favour. The supremacy of the public will, the need for vengeance at the cost of the humane, the total breakdown of the distinction between public and personal space (many of these women were wives and lovers of Nazis), all rear out their bare head through these gruesome and disturbing images of reality.

II. Of bygone ways and persistent errors

Worldviews that may or may not have stood the test of time and the inevitable if often tortuous shift from modernism to postmodernism

1. Philip Morris Ball-Arnaz (1964, 1’21”)

Synopsis: Animated and live commercials with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz advertising Philip Morris cigarettes.

The ubiquitous pre-ban tobacco commercial at its unabashed best, promoted by Hollywood and television’s darling duo Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. 60 years down the line, the quaintness of the olde-worlde cigarette propaganda reveals a more disturbing subtext of outmoded unequal gender roles and the domestic abuse that characterized the iconic couple. Courtesy: The Internet Archive and the UCSF Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

2. Jealousy (1954, 15’50”)

Synopsis: Dramatizes the origin and nature of a wife’s jealousy.

Jealousy, that odious and base emotion too often attributed to the female sex, symptomatic of the “weaker vessel”’s penchant for delusion and paranoia. The film cleverly and convincingly constructs the psychology of doubt and reverses the blame game in favour of the dominant male group. A supreme gesture of the acquittal of Adam thrust upon Eve, in spite of herself.

Courtesy: The Internet Archive (Associate Film Producers)

III. Cheeky Monkey

Sexuality unravelled, demystified and demythfied, post-taboo narratives of a post-pornographic society

1. You Touch My Tralala – Adam Rosenberg (3’11”)

Synopsis: Gunther’s Ding Ding Dong music video mixed with various vintage sex-ed. tapes.

Sex-education, one of mankind’s more tremendous oddities, revisited here through the droll kitsch of 80’s technopop. Between the fear of genitalia and the inanity of pop culture, this parody of extremes diverts the male gaze from the sempiternal objectification of women onto its queer counterpart.

Courtesy: Internet Archive, Prelinger Archive Mashups Collection

2. Unnatural Sex Acts – Bill Taylor (2005, 32”)

Synopsis: Uh-uh-uh-uh.. etc.

3. The Pervert – Adam Rosenberg (5’)

Synopsis: A boy succumbs to the evils of perversion.

4. Come Join the Fun – Trafalgar (2004, 2’40”)

Synopsis: Outstanding news reporter George Putnam, star of the Prelinger Archives classic “Perversion for Profit”, shares his true feelings about pornography in this heart-felt appeal to the public.

Three films, cruel but fair, poke fun at the taboos of sexuality that plagued the modernist world. Today, this seemingly distant prudishness still thrives in cultures like India where such aberrations persist and cause unnecessary distress to humanity. Formally, it is interesting to see the propagandists’ agenda boomerang with a vengeance, as editing alone manages to fully reverse the ideologies of the past.

Courtesy: Internet Archive, Prelinger Archive Mashups Collection

IV. Sweet Bird of Youth

Rebellion, conformity, provocation, counterculture, so many synonyms of youth in search of self.

1. Drugs Are Fun – Adam Rosenberg

Synopsis: A commercial advocating drug use by mocking old anti-drug PSAs

On the surface, a light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek “don’t do as I say, don’t do as I do” clip on drug use. However, amateur video-making here becomes a celebration of the democratizing of art, leaving the question of responsibility of the artist up in the air. Never before had the Platonic poet so much to answer for.

Courtesy: Internet Archive, Prelinger Archive Mashups Collection

2. First Love – Scott Camac and Nick Flight (2006, 6’50”)

Synopsis: First Love is a short film about a young boy seeking the affection of his first and one true love.

Puppy love in a precocious yet no-nonsense context from Down Under. A modern take on first love, that inevitable and decisive rite of passage whose fragile outcome follows some people to the grave.

Courtesy: Internet Archive

* 3. At the Formal – Andrew Kavanagh (2012, 9’50”)

Synopsis: Modern and ancient rituals collide in this macabre depiction of a high school formal.

Coolly hovering between fiction and documentary, this Australian short film is a hypnotic voyeuristic trip across a graduation celebration. A crucial moment in life, this rite of passage from careless youth to the responsibilities of adulthood raises the question of conformity and belonging linked to the coming of age. Watlzing to the rhythm of a lullaby in slow motion, the camera slithers through the congregation in a single, barely perceptible long take. Central to the work is the sense of visual dissonance brought about by the contrast between the languid camera movement and frenzy of the scene of depravity being filmed. Now and again, the fourth wall breaks open as interspersed shots of rebellious girls facing the camera blow defiant wreaths of smoke at the viewer. The crescendoing debauchery culminates in an unexpected dip into the fantastic, heightening the already potent distancing effect.

V. Herstory/The Female Voice

Films on or by women revisit questions of gender role, the gaze and the subaltern theory.

* 1. The Game Changed – Michael Truog (5’25”)

"A presentation of sexism and the exploitation of women from the 1940s and the 1950s. Film clips from this time period are used to provide a real reference that today may seem comical. The contrast between our lives and these clips can show us how our understanding of equality has advanced. Comparisons between this film and our experiences can show us how these injustices have changed."

Courtesy: Michael Truog

2. The Catholic Girls Guide to Feminism – SaintSatana (2’41”)

Synopsis: A fourteen year old girl in St. Paul, Minnesota was kicked out of Catholic middle school for making this video as a school project. She goes by the name of SaintSatana.

Courtesy: Internet Archive

3. Got to Have Boobs – Samphilomath (4’12”)

Legendary Hollywood stripper Cherry Knight of “Teaserama” fame dances posthumously to a brazen jazzy number by Ruth Wallis on Mammalia, that baneful female feature, at once a source of complexes and empowerment.

Courtesy: Internet Archive, Prelinger Archive Mashups Collection

* 4. Selfportrait – Isobel Blank (2009, 2’54”)

Prevaricating between coquettishness, temerity and an almost narcissistic modesty, Tuscan artist Isobel Blank signs her “Selfportrait” with panache. This delectable clip inverses the codes and conventions of cinema to join the ranks of contemporary experimental video art.

Armed with her paintbrush – a fixed camera; her canvas – a living room; and her distinctive stroke – the jump cut, Blank conjures up a portrait of herself as an artist and as a woman, all in the space of a few fleeting minutes. Taking turns hiding and unveiling herself, she explores space in her own manner, oblivious to the edicts of traditional narration. By alternating between close-ups and long shots, the artist successfully evades the viewer, who at the end of the exercise has only a very vague notion of who the aptly named Ms Blank really is. This essentially “feminine” manner of filming femininity is reminiscent of the earlier works of Chantal Akerman: indeed the spectator of “The Room” or “I You He She…” too was similarly lured into a deceptive display of exhibitionism, where the frustrated gaze was riveted in vain to an elusive, almost imperceptible subject.

With “Selfprotrait”, Isobel Blank effectively demonstrates the “less is more” principle, and unfurls her large palette of pictorial, musical and cinematographic talents. Bizarre and eccentric, the film is a perfect reflection of its author, and most certainly one of the most atypical of showreels!

VI. Indomania

Land of a billion faces and facets, undisputed champion of the cinematographic medium, the elusive subcontinent waxes eloquent, both in self-expression and seen through the curious eyes of the foreigner.

* 1. Gaarud – Umesh Kulkarni (2009, 13’)

"Gaarud" (The Charm) is a tour de force by Pune-based film-maker Umesh Kulkarni, a well-known name in the international short film circuit. The depiction of a physical space, a run down hotel by a train station, becomes the psychological portrait of the panoply of characters that temporarily inhabit the place. With the simple technique of a slow tracking shot (edited to resemble a single long take), Kulkarni adds a theatrical dimension to his film thereby breaking open the fourth wall. The slow imposed rhythm gives each vignette its own narrative autonomy. Now and then, an empty shot invites the viewer into the space, giving him the possibility to construct his own narration, or to question his rôle as spectator.

2. Voyage around Bombay Harbour – Humphrey J C Millett (c. 1937, 4’06”)

Synopsis: Film shot circa 1937, depicting a boat voyage around Bombay Harbour, India

An early home movie from British India, depicting a quiet deserted Mumbai that was to become the country’s most bustling and choked megalopolis. The eternal allure of the boat tour around the Front Bay seems to have been forever ingrained in the mores of its inhabitants.

3. Coronation Bombay King George VI 1937 – Humphrey J C Millett (c. 1937, 7’37”)

Synopsis: Footage shot by the producer’s Grandfather of Coronation celebrations held in Bombay, India for King George VI.

Filmed at a crucial stage in the history of the city of Goddess Mumba (the year the Bombay Presidency became a province), this little clip offers a rare glimpse into the pomp and circumstance reserved for the last Emperor of India. The king’s stammer might well have been the harbinger of the fall of almost two centuries of the British Raj.

4. 90 Degrees in the Shade – Humphrey J C Millett (c. 1937, 8’19”)

Synopsis: Film shot in the mid-late 1930’s, depicting a day in the life of British expats in Bombay, India as they spend time at a swimming hole. Light-hearted, with some nice views of Bombay of the period.

Courtesy: Internet Archive, Home Movies Collection

5. Last Portrait – David Varela

Synopsis: Epilogue for an unknown man (on the way to Nirvana)

6. Diarios indios (Indian Diaries) – David Varela and Chantal Maillard

* 7. No hablar (Indian Diaries) – David Varela and Chantal Maillard

“Indian Diaries” is a multidisciplinary work based on the texts and poems by the writer and philosopher Chantal Maillard in the city of Banaras, and the images recorded there by the filmmaker David Varela.

Through audiovisual experimentation and the performance of Chantal Maillard on stage, her texts take on a new dramatic dimension. Alternately live and off, her voice traces a route which is compensated, counteracted, corroborated or followed by the image, bringing us progressively into an odd and fascinating universe.

Varanasi, one of the traditional holiest cities of India, leaves no one indifferent. Those who have lived the experience have been able to share their fascination for the place. Given its progressive transformation, both artists have designed a poetic and visual spectacle in which voice and image talk about the future of a culture that is not recognized in the new globalizing models.

“Indian Diaries” is also an experience that defies representation, the timelessness of a place that is forced to live in the intensity of pure present. This is the challenge: to represent the pursuit of the impossible representation.

- David Varela

* 8. Straight 8 – Ayisha Abraham (2005, 17’)

Straight 8 revisits the history of the subcontinent as well as that of the cinema. Filmmaker Ayisha Abraham retraces the life and career of Tom d’Aguiar, an Anglo-Indian civil servant in telecommunications. He recounts his professional and personal experiences through the crucial decades of India’s history. A frank and moving portrait of life in early post-Independence years, and of an India yet untouched by Nehruvian socialism. The point of view of the Anglo-Indian subject is of particular interest, finely balanced between the occupant and the colonised, belonging to both worlds without really belonging to either.

The film also exhibits rare footage of legendary dancer Ram Gopal shot by d’Aguiar. His detailed descriptions of photograph and film apparatuses reveal a strong passion for filming and offer a precious commentary on amateur cinema in the 40s, in the specific context of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, and a perfect incarnation of the traditional/modern duality characteristic of the nation.

9. Before the Rain – Hans Op De Beeck (2013, 12’)

An unassuming and moving portrait of an Indian village, free from all judgement or artifice, “Before the Rain” offers fleeting impressions of Anegundi, on the Tungabhadra across from Hampi. The film depicts that long awaited moment of respite from the scorching heat, a point of cultural difference between India and the West. Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck shot this sensitive and contemplative documentary expressedly for the Europalia India exhibition in Brussels.

- Text Adi Chesson (unless otherwise indicated)

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Special Screening: (100’)

Preview & Special Screening Art Night Thursday: 8 May 2014 | First loop: 6pm-7.40 | Second loop: 7.40pm-9.10pm

1 The Game Changed, 5,5

Daily screening: (196’)

Friday 9 May - Saturday 7 June, 2014 | Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-7 pm