Description:

Ism, Ism, Ism
Friday, October 11, 7 PM
FREE

Dreams of Suitcases and a Blue Lobster
(Various Artists, 1933-1998, Various Countries, digital, 70 min total)

A program of short films that explore cinema’s oneiric, disturbing, and irrational potential. Filmed in 1954 in a Colombian fishing town, The Blue Lobster anticipates Magical Realism with a tale of a foreign secret agent who is investigating radioactive lobsters. Lost for decades in Chilean archive, La maleta, the first film by celebrated auteur Raúl Ruiz, offers a surreal mix of suitcases and somnambulists. Mariana Botey’s El dedal de rosas, in collaboration with the actor-director-artist Juan José Gurrola, represents an intersection between two generations of Mexico’s avant-garde.

In person: Ism, Ism, Ism co-curator Jesse Lerner

Traum (Sueño)
(Horacio Coppola,1933, Argentina, digital, 2 min)
Las ventanas de Salcedo
(Luís Ernesto Arocha, 1966, Columbia, digital, 6 min)
La langosta azul (The Blue Lobster)
(Álvaro Cepeda Zamudio and Gabriel García Márquez, 1954, Columbia, digital, 29 min)
La maleta (The Suitcase)
(Raúl Ruiz, 1963-2008, Chile, digital, 20 min)
El dedal de rosas
(Mariana Botey, 1998, Mexico, digital, 13 min)

About the Ism, Ism, Ism Series:
Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Cine experimental en América Latina) was organized by Los Angeles Filmforum as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Ism, Ism, Ism surveys Latin America’s vibrant experimental production from the 1930s through today. www.ismismism.org

Ism, Ism, Ism is accompanied by a bilingual publication, Ism, Ism, Ism / Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Jesse Lerner and Luciano Piazza, editors, University of California Press, 2017) placing Latino and Latin American experimental cinema within a broader dialogue that explores different periods, cultural contexts, image-making models, and considerations of these filmmakers within international cinema. Available worldwide, https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520296084.

Lead support for Ism, Ism, Ism is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation. Significant additional support comes from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.