News
Robert Gardner Awarded the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal
The Smithsonian awarded documentary filmmaker and Film Study Center founder, Robert Gardner the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal in honor of his commitment to excellence and support for public understanding and engagement.
Read more about the award on the Smithsonian's website
Film Study Center Announces 2013-14 FSC-Harvard Fellows
Cambridge, MA - The Film Study Center at Harvard University (FSC) announces the list of FSC-Harvard fellows selected for the 2013-14 academic year.
FSC-Harvard fellowships provide funding and technical resources for students and faculty undertaking compelling work in video, film, sound, or photography. These fellowships support advanced work, from the ethnographic to the experimental, that explores and expands the expressive potential of audiovisual media. The fellowships are open to Harvard faculty, graduate students, teaching assistants, teaching fellows, and postdoctoral and research fellows.
A wide range of works have been produced with the FSC's assistance over the years. Important nonfiction films have included John Marshall's The Hunters (1958), Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss (1985), Ross McElwee's Bright Leaves (2003), Sharon Lockhart's Lunch Break (2008) and Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s Leviathan (2012). While nonfiction film and video continue to be a main focus of this fellowship, widely divergent media and genres have also been supported, including animation, multimedia installation, and sound.
Fellows become part of a community of makers who participate in monthly gatherings where works in progress are shared and discussed. Fellows have access to recording and editing equipment, and technical assistance. Fellowships may also include funds to help defray production or postproduction expenses.
The Film Study Center welcomes its 2013-14 fellows:
Cynthia Browne is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her Project, Ginkgo Biloba, is a cinematic portrait of an older woman artist living in Werden, Germany that focuses on her practices of making creative work and how those practices embody and communicate their own form of practical wisdom.
Philip Cartelli is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. His project, Waterfront, is an evocation of the near and the far through a critical audiovisual exploration of social space and ethnographic proximity in a French Mediterranean city's downtown port.
Aryo Danusiri is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. His project, Sufi Bikers, is about how a young Muslim and his family from underclass Jakarta -- living underneath the intra-fly over-toll road of the city -- struggle to fight against a gentrification project by following and getting support from a leader of new Islamic movement.
Alex Fattal is a doctoral student in Anthropology. In his project, Mobility and Demobilization, former FARC rebels narrate their lives in a truck-camera as images of the city in motion fall inverted over their bodies, and behind them, creating a dreamspace that shatters conventional forms of representing the Colombian conflict.
Andrew Littlejohn is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. The Day is Like Wide Water is a film about the sea, interweaving a series of sequences on land and underwater in order to conjure the people, animals, and unseen particles that move by and through it, as well as the landscapes it shapes.
Heidi Matthews is a doctoral student in Juridical Science at the Harvard Law School. Ambivalenz is a feature-length documentary film that tells the story of seven German civilian women who experienced sexual violence perpetrated by Soviet forces as the latter swept westward during the end of World War II.
Ross McElwee is a faculty member in Visual and Environmental Studies. His project, Sherman's March 2, is a documentary about the making of a fictional version of Sherman's March, a documentary he made 28 years ago.
Finnian Moore Gerety is a doctoral student in South Asian Studies. His project, Chakyar, is a portrait of Sanskritic performance in contemporary Kerala, focusing on one teacher/performer of the Chakyar caste who has revitalized traditional modes of temple performance by teaching his art to teams of teenagers for youth festivals.
George Olken is a teaching assistant in Visual and Environmental Studies. His project, Daniel Wessius, is a movie about Frederick Wiseman's films Public Housing and Belfast, Maine, and about his friend David Wessels.
Joana Pimenta is a doctoral student in Film and Visual Studies, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, Grande Hotel, is set in a neglected old modernist-style beach hotel off the southern coast of Portugal, whose space is crosscut by a subjective visual cartography of Portuguese colonial architecture. This project is an experimental exploration of the narratives of three people arrested in passage, at home, nowhere, existing between the past promise of a collective memory and the present stasis of their enclosure.
Stephanie Spray is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Snow River is a feature-length film that follows porters and the loads they carry on precipitous trails in the Everest region of Nepal to portray backbreaking labor in a desolate, iconic and increasingly fragile mountainous landscape.
Maria Stalford is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her two projects are To Here or to There and To Know the Hour. To Here or to There is about coping with cancer and overcrowding in a Vietnamese cancer hospital. To Know the Hour is about ritual and community life in a lay-led Boston Buddhist temple.
Maria Stenzel is a teaching assistant in History of Science. Her project, The Difference Between Night and Day, is about blind children from rural India who receive free cataract surgery in exchange for participating in a study that investigates how the brain learns to see.
Pacho Velez is a teaching assistant in Visual and Environmental Studies. His project, MANAKAMANA (co-directed with Stephanie Spray), is about pilgrims making an ancient journey in a hi-tech cable car.
Julia Yezbick is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, Into the Hinterlands, is a collaborative film/video project with the Detroit-based performance ensemble, The Hinterlands. Into the Hinterlands reworks the city symphony for a post-industrial era playing at the boundaries between life as it is and life as it is imagined, staged, played, and performed each reimagining evoking Detroit's legacy of recurring resurgence.
Dilan Yildirim is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, War of Landscapes, is an audio-visual exploration of how physical and discursive landscape becomes both a medium and mediation of struggle against oppressive conditions for the people of Dersim, Turkey.
PEOPLE'S PARK by J.P. Sniadecki in the New York Times
"In 'People's Park,' One Long Shot to Tell a Story" by Dennis Lim
Film Study Center Announces 2012-13 FSC-Radcliffe Fellows
Cambridge, MA - Cambridge, Mass.— The Film Study Center at Harvard University (FSC) announces its three Film Study Center-Radcliffe Institute fellows appointed for the 2012-13 academic year. They are among the 51 fellows selected for fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute and will join other artists, humanists, scientists, and social scientists, for a year of intensive individual pursuits in a rich multidisciplinary environment.
The FSC collaborates with the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard's institute for advanced study, in a fellowship program for artists in film, video, sound, and new media. Through the FSC, fellows have access to recording and editing equipment, technical assistance, and an immersive environment of artistic experimentation and collaboration.
"This partnership is wonderful for the individuals, the institutions, and all who are interested in innovative filmmaking," says Radcliffe Institute Dean Lizabeth Cohen. "Supporting these accomplished and creative artists contributes to the development of new work and enriches the arts at Harvard."
"The collaborative FSC-Radcliffe Institute fellowships in film, video, sound, and new media are enormously enriching for the university community, allowing us to invite some of the most original and innovative filmmakers and media artists practicing today to join us for a year, as they bring their latest projects to fruition," says Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Director of the Film Study Center, and Professor of Visual Arts and Anthropology, who was a fellow at the Institute in 2009-2010. "They often serve as informal mentors for GSAS student fellows in the FSC and for undergraduate concentrators in VES, and share their work through screenings and discussions at the FSC, the Radcliffe Institute, the Harvard Film Archive, and in classes in VES, Anthropology, and other departments. In 2012-13 we are fortunate to have three outstanding filmmakers join us, who in different ways stand at the forefront of contemporary developments in world cinema"
The 2012-13 incoming fellows are:
Romuald Karmakar
David and Roberta Logie Fellow and Film Study Center-Radcliffe Fellow
Film, Video, Sound, and New Media
Independent Filmmaker
Project: Maybe Rauff is a feature film on the post-war career of a former German SS officer. Based, among others, on the biography of Walther Rauff (1906-1984) who, between 1940-42, was substantially involved at the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Head Office) in the development and operation of mobile gas vans used for the extermination of the European Jews.
Véréna Paravel
Frieda L. Miller Fellow and Film Study Center-Radcliffe Fellow
Film, Video, Sound, and New Media
Institut des Sciences Politiques, Ecole des Arts Politiques (France)
Project: Pavor Nocturnus is a feature-length experimental non-fiction film about sleep, or more particularly an empirical inquiry into the quotidian process of going-to-sleep. The film explores the physical gestures and subjective fantasies and fears of people as they prepare for sleep. It contains an edge of sexual tension – of play around the fraught landscape of flesh, vulnerability, and intimacy – but it engages equally with boredom and the banal, semi-conscious routines of bedtime. The film will bring together a series of sequences that reflect on fear, loneliness, obsession, desire, voyeurism, the ambiguous and the influencing power of the camera, and the impulse to connect with others, both though media and apart from them.
Nicolas Pereda
David and Roberta Logie Fellow and Film Study Center-Radcliffe Fellow
Film, Video, Sound, and New Media
Independent Filmmaker
Project: The Heart of the Sky is an experimental fiction/documentary film project about an immigrant family of refugees that recently arrived in Canada. To escape the troubling times the youngest son constructs a fantasy world in which he and his sister are connected to some form of divinity.
About the Film Study Center
Founded in 1957 with Robert Gardner as its Director, The Film Study Center is Harvard's one center devoted to supporting artistic practice and creative work. It sustains endeavors, from the ethnographic to the experimental, that explore and expand the expressive potential of audiovisual media, especially through nonfiction. To this end, it provides annual fellowships to students and faculty drawn from departments across the University as a whole, as well as invites a small number of outstanding visiting filmmakers to Harvard to share their work with the University community.
Website: filmstudycenter.org
For additional information and high-res press photos, please contact Cozette Russell, FSC Program Coordinator, at 617-495-9704 or fsc@fas.harvard.edu.
About the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University is dedicated to creating and sharing transformative ideas across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. The Fellowship Program annually supports the work of 50 leading artists and scholars. Academic Ventures fosters collaborative research projects and sponsors lectures and conferences that engage scholars with the public. The Schlesinger Library documents the lives of American women of the past and present for the future, furthering the Institute's commitment to women, gender, and society. Learn more about the people and programs of the Radcliffe Institute at www.radcliffe.harvard.edu.
Contact: Alison Franklin 617-496-3078.
Film Study Center Announces 2012-13 FSC-Harvard Fellows
Cambridge, MA - The Film Study Center at Harvard University (FSC) announces the list of FSC-Harvard fellows selected for the 2012-13 academic year.
FSC-Harvard fellowships provide funding and technical resources for students and faculty undertaking compelling work in video, film, sound, or photography. These fellowships support advanced work, from the ethnographic to the experimental, that explores and expands the expressive potential of audiovisual media. The fellowships are open to Harvard faculty, graduate students, teaching assistants, teaching fellows, and postdoctoral and research fellows.
A wide range of works have been produced with the FSC's assistance over the years. Important non-fiction films have included John Marshall's The Hunters (1958), Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss (1985), Ross McElwee's Bright Leaves (2003) and Sharon Lockhart's Lunch Break (2008). While nonfiction film and video continue to be a main focus of this fellowship, widely divergent media and genres have also been supported, including animation, multimedia installation, and sound.
Fellows become part of a community of makers who participate in monthly gatherings where works in progress are shared and discussed. Fellows have access to recording and editing equipment, and technical assistance. Fellowships may also include funds to help defray production or postproduction expenses.
The Film Study Center welcomes its 2012-13 fellows:
Cynthia Browne is a doctoral student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her Project, Ginkgo Biloba, is a cinematic portrait of an older woman artist living in Werden, Germany that focuses on her practices of making creative work and how those practices embody and communicate their own form of practical wisdom.
Philippe Grandrieux is a Visiting Lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies. His films include Sombre (1998), La vie nouvelle (2002) and Un Lac (2008). His Film Study Center project, Meurtière (Murderess) approaches an originary image, the "body without organs," invented by Artaud and thought through by Deleuze, to confront the human figure. The face will be the primary subject of this project—silent portraits of men and women; large, mute images through which we will be made to feel the permanence of our passions, our anxiety.
Cuilan Liu is a doctoral student in Sanskrit and Indian Studies, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, Young Jigmed, follows a young Tibetan monk's struggles in the early days of his monastic life.
Heidi Matthews is a doctoral student in Juridical Science at the Harvard Law School. Her project, Envisioning Ambivalence: Sexual Violence in Berlin,1945, is a series of interviews with elderly German women who survived sexual violence during the fall of Berlin in 1945.
Finnian Moore Gerety is a doctoral student in South Asian Studies. His project, Chakyar, is a portrait of Sanskritic performance in contemporary Kerala, focusing on one teacher/performer of the Chakyar caste who has revitalized traditional modes of temple performance by teaching his art to teams of teenagers.
Kara Oehler is a Research Fellow at the Sensory Ethnography Lab and at metaLAB (at) Harvard. Her project, Known Unknown, is a new audio, video and interactive documentary series that immerses audiences in the particularity of places, while interweaving the ambiguities and surprising pathways that emerge during the documentary process.
Benjamin Shaffer is a doctoral student in Media Anthropology. His project, 15204, is a meditation on the aesthetics of ruins and the everyday experiences of local residents in a fallen steel town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
J.P. Sniadecki is a doctoral student in Media Anthropology. His project, The Iron Ministry, is a feature-length documentary that depicts China's sprawling railway system and examines the social experience of train travel during rapid and tumultuous development.
Stephanie Spray is a doctoral student in Media Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, Reflections on the Seasons, is a series of inter-related video and sound works thematically linked in their attention to the cycles of the seasons and how seasonal routines of labor connect people to the land.
Maria Stalford is a doctoral dtudent in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her two projects are Luc Hoa temple and Can Tho City Oncology Hospital. Luc Hoa temple is a portrait of community life in a lay-led Buddhist temple in Boston. Can Tho City Oncology Hospital is a glimpse of the social world of a Vietnamese oncology hospital.
Pacho Velez is a Teaching Assistant in Visual and Environmental Studies. His project, MANAKAMANA, documents the cable car ride taken by tourists and pilgrims to the Hindu temple of Manakamana, the wish-fulfilling goddess.
Julia Yezbick is a doctoral student in Media Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, How to Rust, explores how the aesthetics of labor and work are being mobilized to redefine what it means to make things (and places) in a "post-industrial" city.
2011-12 FSC-Harvard fellow JP Sniadecki to screen new film People's Park at 2012 VIENNALE.
FSC-Harvard Fellow JP Sniadecki to screen latest film, PEOPLE'S PARK at the 2012 VIENNALE, 2012 Beijing Independent Film Festival, and the 2012 Vancouver International Film Festival.
2011-12 FSC-Radcliffe fellow Kara Oehler awarded USA Fellowship Grant
Kara Ohehler and longtime radio collaborator, Ann Heppermann, have been named USA Rockefeller Fellows as a part of the United States Artists Fellow program. The award of $50,000 is given every year to 50 outstanding performing, visual, media, and literary artists.
Sweetgrass by Barbash and Castaing-Taylor on PBS's POV on July 5
Sweetgrass by FSC Director Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash will be shown on the PBS documentary series POV. It will air Tuesday, July 5—check local listings for specific times.
2011-12 FSC-Radcliffe fellow Kara Oehler and the Zeega team win the Knight News Challenge
Kara Oehler, Jesse Shapins, and James Burns have won the Knight News Challenge, a fiercely competitive international contest, and will use the funding to develop a prototype software called Zeega, an open-source web platform designed to make collaborative multimedia documentaries easier to produce.
Film Study Center Announces 2011-12 FSC-Harvard Fellows
The Film Study Center at Harvard University (FSC) announces the list of FSC-Harvard fellows chosen for the 2011-12 academic year.
FSC-Harvard fellowships provide funding and technical resources for people doing compelling work in video, film, sound, or photography. These fellowships support advanced work, from the ethnographic to the experimental, that explores and expands the expressive potential of audiovisual media. The fellowships are open to Harvard faculty, graduate students, teaching assistants, teaching fellows, and postdoctoral and research fellows.
A wide range of works have been produced with the FSC’s assistance over the years. Historically important ethnographic films have included John Marshall’s The Hunters (1958) and Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss (1985). While nonfiction film and video continue to be a main focus of this fellowship, widely divergent strategies have also been supported, including animation, multimedia installation, and sound.
Fellows become part of a community of makers who participate in monthly gatherings where works in progress are shared and discussed. Fellows have access to recording and editing equipment, technical assistance. Fellowships can also include funds to help defray production or postproduction expenses.
The Film Study Center welcomes its 2011-12 fellows:
Aryo Danusiri is a Graduate Student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. His project, Sufi Bikers and Arab Saints, is a series of video and sound works portraying the ambiguous processes of a new urban Islamic youth movement in contemporary Jakarta in proffering a peaceful face of Islam.
Toby Lee is a Graduate Student in Anthropology. She is re-editing an earlier project, Anepikaira, a video installation in and about a small abandoned cinema in Thessaloniki, Greece. She also has a new project, Composite, which uses the process of composite sketching to examine memory, language, visualization and recognition.
Ruth Lingford is a Faculty member in Visual and Environmental Studies. Her project, Ecce Homo, is an animated essay about the gendered body of Christ and the relationship between erotic and religious experience.
Cuilan Liu is a Graduate Student in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. Her project, Young Jigmed, is a narration-free documentary about a newly ordained eighteen-year old Tibetan Buddhist monk whose early days of religious life are interwoven with joy and struggle.
Ross McElwee is Faculty member in Visual and Environmental Studies. His project, Sherman's March Redux, is a new documentary about Hollywood’s attempt to make a fiction film, based on an old documentary of his, Sherman's March.
Adam Muri-Rosenthal is a Graduate Student in the Romance Languages and Literatures. His project, There Was the Sea, is a documentary that seeks to challenge the contrived timelessness of Venice by concentrating on signs of its transience: the accidentally overlooked and overtly ignored, the ugly and impermanent.
Véréna Paravel is a Research Associate with Sensory Ethnography Lab. Her project is an artistic work dedicated to the Willets-Point community struggle: a web-based extension and outreach for her previous film project, Foreign Parts. The website will promote and complement the film with oral history, still pictures, soundscape, and short video pieces.
Cozette Russell is a Teaching Assistant in Visual and Environmental Studies. Her project, Brookford Almanac, documents a year in the complex and beautiful life of young first-generation farmers. The film is about old and new rituals, physical labor, land ethics and what comes next for American farming.
J.P. Sniadecki is a Graduate Student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. His project, Shipbreak, is a portrait of China's shipbreaking industry, focusing on the human stories and global costs involved in feeding China's hunger for steel.
Stephanie Spray is a Graduate Student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, Reflections on the Seasons, is a series of inter-related video and sound works, recorded in Nepal, which are thematically linked in their attention to the seasons and how seasonal routines of labor link people to the land.
Julia Yezbick is a Graduate Student in Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Her project, Spaces In Which To Dwell: Manufacturing A New Detriot, is a non-fiction video exploring the re-making of Detroit through the lives of those who call it home.
Ivan & Ivana by Jeff Daniel Silva premiering at Visions du Réel in Switzerland and IFF Boston
Ivan & Ivana by former fellow Jeff Daniel Silva will have its world premiere in the International competition at Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland on Friday April 8th at 8PM.
Ivan & Ivana chronicles the lives of an émigré couple who uprooted from Kosovo to California to start anew after the last Balkan war. The film reveals their successes, trials, and tribulations over five years of turbulent economic, political and personal tides to reveal an unorthodox depiction of the American immigrant experience.
The U.S premiere will happen at the Independent Film Festival of Boston, with screenings on April 30th and May 1st at the Somerville Theatre.
Ivan & Ivana official film website
Foreign Parts wins Best Film at Punto de Vista
Foreign Parts, by FSC fellows Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki, wins the Punto de Vista award for Best Film. Judges described it as "...asubtle and sensitive record of an urban ecosystem that is surprisingly resilient, even in the face of governmental indifference and greed."
Foreign Parts wins at DocsBarcelona, opens at MoMA
Foreign Parts, by FSC fellows Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki, wins the Best Film award at DocsBarcelona Film Festival.
Foreign Parts will also play for a week at MoMA, New York, March 10-16.
Position Among the Stars wins at Sundance 2011
Position Among the Stars (Stand van de Sterren), directed by FSC-Radcliffe Fellow Leonard Retel Helmrich is the Winner of the World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Documentary Film at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Position Among the Stars investigates the effects of globalization on Indonesia’s rapidly changing society. It is the third part of his documentary trilogy, following the award-winning documentaries The Eye of the Day and Shape of the Moon (winner of the World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival).
IndieWire interview with Leonard Retel Helmrich
Moonwalk by former FSC-Radcliffe Fellow Clea T. Waite showing at Berlin Planetarium Jan 29 - Feb 18, 2011
Written and created by Clea T. Waite
with sound design by Helga Pogatschar.
2010. Running time 22min.
January 29 - February 18, 2011
Planetarium am Insulaner, Berlin
http://www.planetarium-berlin.de
A large-scale, immersive experience in fulldome format, Moonwalk is an experimental film about humanity's relationship with the Moon. It uses the exceptional hemispherical format for it's expansive scope and the somatic presence of the space to create a rare film combining art and science.
The film characterizes this placid heavenly body as a living, scintillating force. Decidedly multicultural, Moonwalk weaves together literature and science with iconic songs and imagery into a grand audiovisual hyperlink. Proceeding from the raw material of countless photos which comprise lunar atlases, the Moon shatters into pieces, and then rebuilds itself. The Moon evolves from it's familiar pregnant blackness to a jittering hive of voices and sounds. The film reaches beyond the idealized childhood daydreams of the heavens, past the familiar Apollo footage, and into the tender roots of culture which weave throughout our daily personal lives. The film reminds us of the Moon's ubiquity, compelling us to reconstruct our own personal history of the Moon. Watching Moonwalk we are reminded, as if for the first time, of the power, presence, and emotional gravity the Moon commands.
Moonwalk on facebook
Listening session with Ernst Karel at UnionDocs, NY
Sunday, January 23 at 7:30 p.m.
UnionDocs | 322 Union Ave | Brooklyn, NY 11211
Schütte and Aljafari featured in "ACROSS BORDERS. The Atelier Ludwigsburg - Paris" in Boston and New York, Dec. 14-16
December 14 - 15, 2010
Film screening and discussion
Harvard Film Archive
24 Quincy St., Cambridge
Ten short films over two evenings of screenings, complemented by a discussion on the world of filmmaking in the US and Europe and new approaches to film education on both sides of the Atlantic.
Speakers include representatives of ATELIER partner organizations, Berlin Film Academy Director Jan Schütte, Marc Nicolas of La Femis/Paris, along with the producers of the feature films screened, John Bernstein and Charles Merzbacher (Boston University) and Kurt Fendt (MIT). The discussion will be moderated by Professor Eric Rentschler.
December 16, 2010
Film screening and discussion
IFC Center
323 Sixth Avenue (W. 3rd Street), New York, NY 10014
Short films and discussion with Jan Schütte (DFFB, Berlin), Falk Nagel (executive producer: Takva), Christophe Bruncher (producer: L’Intouchable), Kamal Aljafari (Filmmaker, Port of Memory), and Anthony Bregman (adjunct professor, Columbia University).
J.P. Sniadecki'sChaiqian/Demolition wins Most Innovative Film at SIEFF
J.P. Sniadecki wins the Prize for Most Innovative Film from the 2010 Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival (SIEFF) for Chaiqian/Demolition. The jury's official statement proclaims: "A statement about observation, the photographic frame, and the qualities of digital photography that allow us to enter the world of Chinese migrant workers and the rapidly changing urban landscape of Chengdu; the deep phenomelogically informed style results in a detailed and sensuous ethnography."
Paravel and Sniadecki's Foreign Parts wins Best Ethno-Anthropological Film at Festival Dei Popoli
J.P. Sniadecki and Verena Paravel's film Foreign Parts was given the Gian Palo Paoli Award for the Best Ethno-Anthropological Film at the Festival dei Popoli.
The judging committee stated this award was given to Foreign Parts "for its courage of questioning the traditional approach of anthropological research by choosing the U.S. as the object of its investigation. The desperate community living in the Willets Point junk-yard embodies the conflicts of the American Dream."
Founded in 1959 by a group of humanities scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, ethnologists and experts in mass-media, the Festival dei Popoli has been working to promote and study social documentary cinema. The association organizes one of the most important international documentary festivals in Italy.
festivaldeipopoli.org
foreignpartsfilm.com
Lingford's Little Deaths wins "Best Experimental / Abstract Animation" at 2010 Ottowa International Animation Festival
At it's premiere at 2010 Ottowa International Animation Festival, Little Deaths by Ruth Lingford was awarded "Best Experimental / Abstract Animation." The OIAF is the largest animation event in North America, with 92 screenings and an attendance of over 27,000.
FSC Director co-curating series of FSC fellows' films at Spanish film festival
Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Director of the Film Study Center, and Ilisa Barbash have curated a series of works from the Film Study Center and from the Sensory Ethnography Lab for the 2010 Mostra de Ciencia e Cinema in Spain. The series is entitled "Sense and Sensibilia" and runs Oct. 25 - 30, 2010
Foreign Parts screening at multiple festivals worldwide
Foreign Parts by Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki, has been selcted for multiple festival screenings, including:
Vancouver International Film Festival 2010
Filmfest Hamburg 2010
Valdivia International Film Festival 2010
VIENNALE 2010
Festival dei Popoli 2010
BAFICI 2010
Synopsis
A hidden enclave in the shadow of the New York Mets' new stadium, the neighborhood of Willets Point is an industrial zone fated for demolition. Filled with scrapyards and auto salvage shops, lacking sidewalks or sewage lines, the area seems ripe for urban development. But Foreign Parts discovers a strange community where wrecks, refuse and recycling form a thriving commerce. Cars are stripped, sorted and cataloged by brand and part, then resold to an endless parade of drive-thru customers. Joe, the last original resident, rages and rallies through the street like a lost King Lear, trying to contest his imminent eviction. Two lovers, Sara and Luis, struggle for food and safety through the winter while living in an abandoned van. Julia, the homeless queen of the junkyard, exalts in her beatific visions of daily life among the forgotten. The film observes and captures the struggle of a contested "eminent domain" neighborhood before its disappearance under the capitalization of New York's urban ecology.
Razsa and Velez's Bastards of Utopia screens at UnionDocs in New York
Bastards of Utopia by FSC-Harvard fellows Maple Razsa and Pacho Velez screened Saturday, October 16 at UnionDocs.
Synopsis
Three Croatian activists struggle to change the world. As children, they lived through the violent collapse of Yugoslavia. But now, amid the aftershocks of socialism's failure, they fight in their own way for a new leftism.
The film applies a unique blend of observation, direct participation and critical reflection to this misunderstood political movement. Its portrayal of activism is both empathetic and unflinching—an engaged, elegant meditation on the struggle to re-imagine leftist politics and the power of a country's youth.
www.enmassefilms.org/bastards/index.html
Kamal Aljafari, director in person, at a screening of Port of Memory at the MoMA on Nov. 6
On November 6, 2010, at 4 p.m. Port of Memory will be screened at the Museum of Modern Art with director Kamal Aljafari in person. This vilm was produced while Aljafari was a 2009-10 FSC-Radcliffe fellow. There will be a second screening, without the director in attendance, on Saturday, November 20 at 7:00 p.m.
More about Port of Memory at http://montrealserai.com/tag/kamal-aljafari
Amie Siegel and Rebecca Meyers are selected for the ICA's 2010 Foster Prize Exhibition with FSC-sponsored works through Jan. 17
From September 22 through January 17, work by 2008-09 FSC-Harvard fellow Rebecca Meyers and 2010-11 FSC-Harvard fellow Amie Siegel will each be exhibited in the 2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. Amie Siegel's Black Moon and Rebecca Meyers' blue mantle are both works that were produced with the support of the FSC. Meyers and Siegel are two of the nine Boston-area artists who have been selected as finalists in the ICA's biennial award and exhibition program.
There is series of special "3x3@3" talks with the finalists. Amie Siegel will present on Sunday, Nov. 7 at 3 p.m. Rebecca Meyers will present on Sunday, Nov. 21 at 3 p.m.
For more information, go to the ICA exhibition page or view the ICA's press release
Rebecca Meyers
Amie Siegel
Foreign Parts by Paravel and Sniadecki wins two awards at Locarno
FSC-Harvard fellows Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki have been awarded the Pardo for Best First Feature and the Special CINÉ CINÉMA Jury Prize for their vilm Foreign Parts at the 63rd annual Locarno Film Festival.
This international film festival held annually in the city of Locarno, Switzerland is one of the longest running, largest, and most prestigious film festivals in the world, and is well known for discovering new talent.
The Pardo per la migliore opera prima (Leopard for the Best First Feature) Prize is awarded to the best first film screened at the two competitions (Concorso internazionale and Concorso Cineasti del presente.) The Special Jury Prize Ciné Cinéma is for the purchase of the winning film by the French television network Ciné Cinéma.
Foreign Parts was produced with the support of the Film Study Center.
FOREIGN PARTS by Verena Paravel
and JP Sniadecki, USA/France
© Festival del film Locarno / Pedrazzini
download full press release (pdf)
J.P. Sniadecki's work screened in two festivals
Chaiqian (Demolition) by FSC-Harvard fellow J.P. Sniadecki will be screened in the XIX International Festival of Ethnological Film, taking place in October 14-18, 2010 at the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. The festival program is available in the beginning of September at www.etnografskimuzej.rs
Demolition will also be screened at the XV Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival - SIEFF 2010 - in Nuoro, Italy, 20-25 September 2010.
FSC fellows' works at the Migrating Forms Festival
May 14-23, 2010
Anthology Film Archives, New York
The FSC is well-represented at the upcoming Migrating Forms Festival. Current FSC-Harvard fellows Stephanie Spray and Amie Siegel, former FSC Director Lucien Taylor, 2009-10 FSC-Radcliffe fellow Kamal Aljafari, and 2007-08 FSC-Radcliffe fellow Sharon Lockhart all have screenings at this festival of new work.
SATURDAY, MAY 15
7:45 p.m.
GROUP PROGRAM 3 including:
My Way 1 (10 min., USA 2009) dir. Amie Siegel
My Way 2 (13 min., USA 2009) dir. Amie Siegel
THURSDAY, MAY 20
As Long as There's Breath (57 Min, Nepal/USA 2009) dir. Stephanie Spray
SUNDAY, MAY 23
2:00 p.m.
GROUP PROGRAM 9 including:
The High Trail (7 min., USA 2010) dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor
3:45 p.m
GROUP PROGRAM 10 including:
Podwórka (30 min., Poland/USA 2009) dir. Sharon Lockhart
5:30 p.m.
Port of Memory (63 min., Palestine 2009)
dir. Kamal Aljafari
Artists in Context screening FSC-Harvard Fellows Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki
Saturday, 8 May 2010 | 6:00 p.m. reception, 7:00 p.m. screening
Foreign Parts
2010, rough cut
Free admission. An informal discussion with Verena Paravel will follow.
Location: Aladdin Auto Service, 162 Alewife Brook Parkway (directly behind the Fresh Pond Cinema in Cambridge -- follow the Big Green Arrows to the back of the cinema)
Foreign Parts documents the changing daily life of a New York City junkyard as the threat of demolition looms.
This in-context screening will feature an artist talk by Mahmood Rezaei-Kamalabad, a Spiritual and Visionary Artist, an inventor, who owns Aladdin autobody-mind-and-soul mechanic.
Production of Foreign Parts has been supported by the Film Study Center at Harvard University and by the LEF Moving Image Fund. This Artists in Context screening is made possible by funding from an anonymous donor and the generous in-kind contributions of Mahmood Rezaei-Kamalabad, owner of Aladdin Auto Service, and by the Harvard Film Study Center.
2010-11 Fellows Announced
The Film Study Center is proud to announce the fellows for the 2010-11 academic year:
Film Study Center-Harvard Fellows:
- Felicity Aulino, Graduate Student, Anthropology
- Edgar Barroso, Graduate Student, Department of Music
- Sharon Harper, Faculty, VES
- John Hulsey, Graduate Student, VES
- Ruth Lingford, Faculty, VES
- Robb Moss, Faculty, VES
- Verena Paravel, Research Associate, Anthropology
- Maxim Pozdorovkin, Graduate Student, Slavic Languages and Literatures
- Amie Siegel, Faculty, VES
- Stephanie Spray, Graduate Student, Anthropology
Film Study Center-Radcliffe Fellows:
- Irene Lusztig
- David Redmon
We offer congratulations to our incoming fellows and look forward to their projects in the upcoming year.
FSC-Radcliffe fellow Leonard Retel Hemrich, with puppeteer Agus Nur Amal, both in person at Goethe-Institut
Monday, April 26, 7:00 p.m.
Promised Paradise
2006, video, 52 min
Banned in Indonesia, Promised Paradise (2006) follows the quest of an Indonesian puppeteer to meet three men convicted of the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali. Along the way, director Leonard Retel Helmrich shows the puppeteer’s unique method of exploring the issue of terrorism through puppet shows, featuring – among other things – a dancing Osama Bin Laden doll and a shadow-play attack on the World Trade Center.
For this very special event, the main character of this film, the puppeteer Agus Nur Amal, from Indonesia, will be present along with director Leonard Retel Helmrich. Agus Nur Amal will also give a special performance both before and after the film.
Location: Goethe-Institut, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02116
FSC-Radcliffe fellow Kamal Aljafari, upcoming screenings
Kamal Aljafari's new film Port of Memory screened at the Cinema du Reel International Competition, Centre Pompidou, Paris. It is the recipient of The Louis Marcorelles Award, given by the Culturesfrance Jury.
April 1
Port of Memory will open the Images Festival in Toronto in April 1st.
April 9, 7 PM
Screenings of both Port of Memory and The Roof at the Harvard Film Archive
April 14-16
Screenings and visiting artist engagement at Haverford College and Pen University
May 7-8
Screenings with attendance at the Barbican Center, London
Recent screenings include:
Feb. 24-25 screenings of The Roof and Port of Memory and visiting artist engagement at the New School NYC
Mar. 4-15 screenings with attendance at Anthology Film Archives, Cinema Project Oregon Portland, UC Berkley, UC Santa Cruz, California Collage of the Arts SF, Vancouver Cinematheque
"Sweetgrass" Screenings in Cambridge
Friday, March 5, 7 PM
at the Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge
April 2-9
Kendall Square Landmark Theatre, Cambridge
A highly-acclaimed new film by former FSC Director Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash with the filmmakers in person.
Shape of the Moon at the MassArt Film Society
Massachusetts College of Art Film Dept. Screening RM 1
8:00PM Wednesday, February 17th
FSC-Radcliffe fellow Leonard Retel Helmrich has a screening at the MassArt Film Society on Wednesday, Feb. 17. (Originally scheduled for Feb. 10 but cancelled due to snow.)
Shape of the Moon (Stand van de maan)
by Leonard Retel Helmrich
Frame by Frame: Animated at Harvard
Jan 28–Feb 14: Frame by Frame: Animated at Harvard
Former FSC fellows included are Jan Lenica (Landscape), Steve Subotnick (Glass Crow), Lorelei Pepi (Happy and Gay), Tim Szetela (Romaji), and Ruth Lingford (Little Deaths). There's a wonderful review of this exhibition in the Boston Globe.
"Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness" on PBS
February 2 on PBS: an FSC-sponsored film by former fellow Vincent Brown.
More information about this project is on the PBS link, or on our fellows page.
Independent Lens | PBS
HERSKOVITS AT THE HEART OF BLACKNESS examines the life and work of the Jewish-American anthropologist, Melville Herskovits, whose writings challenged prevailing notions of race and culture.
DDR/DDR at Harvard Film Archive
(US 2008, HD, color, 135 min.)
Directed by Amie Siegel, appearing in person
7:00 PM, Saturday, February 20th
Harvard Film Archive
This work was supported by the Film Study Center.
Amie Siegel was the 2007-08 FSC-Fulton fellow.
"Lunch Break" by Sharon Lockhart at USC faculty exhibition
November 21, 2009 – January 18, 2010
LUNCH BREAK is programmed at the University of Southern California, in the Faculty Sharon Lockhart – solo exhibition: Lunch Break at Secession.
LUNCH BREAK was created with the support of the FSC
during Lockhart's FSC-Radcliffe fellowship in 2007-08.
Robert Gardner at the Harvard Film Archive
7:00pm , Friday 4 December 2009
Robert Gardner, in person, will present a program entitled
Fragments from a Few Forsaken Films:
"An evening of films that might have been. I will try to explain why they were undertaken and why they were abandoned. It could be a lesson in how (or why not...) to make films." - R.G.
Robert Gardner was the Director of the Film Study Center from 1957 until 1997. He is a prolific and renowned filmmaker, whose best-known works include "Dead Birds" (1964), "Rivers of Sand" (1974), and "Forest of Bliss" (1985). This year he released a book of photographs entitled "Human Documents: Eight Photographers" in which he introduces the work of photographers with whom he has worked under the auspices of the Film Study Center, and whose images achieve the status of what Gardner calls "human documents": visual evidence that testifies to our shared humanity.
Kapsis by Barroso, Vázquez, Danusiri, and Cho, is selected for several festivals.
Kapsis is a collaboration by composer and FSC-Harvard fellow Edgar Barroso, poet Juan de Dios Vázquez, filmmaker Aryo Danusiri, and designer Yen-Ting Cho. Congratulations to these four on this animated work being selected for four festivals:
- LA Reel Film Festival, Dec. 30, 2009 (2nd Place, Experimental Film)
- International Film Festival Ireland
- Festivus Film Festival, Denver, January 14 - 17, 2010
- da Vinci Film Festival, Corvalis, Oregon, March 12-14, 2010
Short films by Rebecca Meyers and Amie Seigel in Views from the Avant-Garde at the 2009 New York Film Festival
Former fellows Rebecca Meyers and Amie Seigel have their short films featured in the 13th Annual Views from the Avant-Garde on
October 2 - 4, 2009 at the New York Film Festival. night side by
Rebecca Meyers (2009, 4.28m) screens on Saturday, October 3. My Way 1 by
Amie Siegel (2009, 9.25m) screens on Sunday, October, 4. Tickets are available on the Schedule page.
Sweetgrass by Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Ilisa Barbash at the 2009 New York Film Festival
Former FSC Director Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash's new film screens at
Alice Tully Hall on Sept 26th, 2009 as part of the New York Film Festival.
According to the New York Times, "...with great attention to beauty, this observational documentary focuses on Montana sheepherders who run their flocks up mountains in the summer to graze, grindingly difficult work that only looks romantic." Read the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/movies/25festival.html which includes "Festival Films to Admire", a narrated slideshow with clips from the film.
Sweetgrass
Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, USA, 2009, 105m
This breathtaking chronicle follows an ever-surprising group of modern-day cowboys as they lead an enormous herd of sheep up and then down the slopes of the Beartooth Mountains in Montana on their way to market.
Festival information at www.filmlinc.com/nyff/nyff.html
Film information at sweetgrassthemovie.com
News archives 2008-2009 >
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