Description:

Ism, Ism, Ism
Friday, November 1, 7 PM
FREE

Recycled Cinema
(Various Artists, 1958-2012, Various Countries, digital, 61 min total)

This evening offers two programs exploring alternative strategies of appropriation: found footage and camp. “Recycled Cinema” presents acts of decolonization and critique through collages of appropriated images and audio, challenging dominant modes of representation. In 1958’s ‘Cowboy’ and ‘Indian’ Film, Nuyoriquen artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz hacked the reels of an American western to pieces with a tomahawk “to release their evil,” while a more recent work, Artemio’s Apoohcalypse Now, is a mash-up of Disney’s Winnie the Pooh and Apocalypse Now. The filmmakers in “Estrellas de Ayer” borrow an alternative reading of Hollywood stars, emphasizing queer nostalgia and excess. Films such as Teo Hernandez's Estrellas de ayer and José Rodriguez Soltero’s Lupe pay homage to Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and Lupe Vélez with performative extravagance.

No D.R.
(Alfredo Salomón, 2002, Mexico, digital, 1 min)
Newsreel 49
(Institúto Cubano de Artes e Industrias Cinematográficas, 1960, Cuba, digital, 1 min)
Cowboy and ‘Indian’ Film
(Raphael Montañez Ortiz, 1958, USA, digital, 2 min)
Desde la Havana ¡1969! Recordar
(Nicolás Guillén Landrián, 1969, Cuba, digital, 17 min)
The Bombing of Washington
(Luis Ospina, 1972, Columbia/USA, digital, 1 min)
The Big Wack
(Ricardo Nicolayevsky, 2002, Mexico, digital, 3 min)
Prayer for Marilyn Monroe
(Marisol Trujillo, Miriam Talavera, and Pepín Rodriguez, 1983, Cuba, digital, 8 min)
Apoohcalypse Now
(Artemio, 2002, Mexico, digital, 8 min)
Pinochet’s Women
(Eduardo Menz, 2004, Canada/Chile, digital, 12 min)
The Ruins of Bahía Blanca
(Nicolas Testoni, 2012, Argentina, digital, 6 min)
Pobre del cantor
(Taller Independiente de Cine Experimental, 1978, Mexico, digital, 2 min)
Sloppy Work
(Enrique Colina, 1987, Cuba, digital, 11 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.