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[Nettime-nl] free video program in SMART Cinema, A Close Watch (Undermining the Overview: Part 1) |
SMART Project Space | 1st Constantijn Huygensstraat 20, Amsterdam +31 (0)20 427 5951 A Close Watch (Undermining the Overview:
Part 1) Every Sunday and Wednesday at 17.00 SMART
Project Space presents free video programs in Smart Cinema. This video program accompanies the
exhibition, Someone To Watch Over Me | January 12 – February 16,
2003 Sunday, January 12 and Wednesday, January
15, 17.00 hrs. Saiki Hiromi │ You Can’t Always Blame the
Sky (2000, Japan, 18 min.) Submitted
for close study is “example #792813” who is obsessed with how she appears to
others. Her own self scrutiny
becomes our entry into our own studied overview. Mark Rappaport │ From the Journals of Jean
Seberg (1997, USA, 100
min.) The
intimate view of a small town girl turned iconic creature turned multiple
surveillance subject. Beyond the
chilling inexorability of the biographical details, Rappaport explores the
ideological attitudes that commercial films subliminally offer above and beyond
the story, the stars and the price of admission: the message and value assumptions that
linger on long after the plot is forgotten. A tape about film theory: semiology in
practice. Sunday, January 19 and Wednesday, January
22, 17.00
hrs. Rashid Mashawari │ Tension (1998,
Palestine, 26 min.) A study in
the malaise of living under the panoptic watchful eye of security and control
which is in turn exposed to close and detached scrutiny. Michael Klier │ Der Riese (1983, Germany, 82 min.) Klier’s
by now immortal compendium of urban surveillance material from traffic
control to department store security practice reaches symphonically paranoid
heights and finally resolves in an image of cathartic and breathless
paradox. Kurt Sayenga │ Spies Above (1996, USA,
55 min.) Taking a
little more distance than Der Riese, this work collects the products of
industrious spy satellites in space and presents a confidential history of the
secret CIA agency which initiated and maintains their use since its inception
during the Eisenhower fifties. Sunday, January 26 and Wednesday, January
29, 17.00
hrs. Jane Campion │ Passionless Moments
(1993, Australia, 13 min.) An incisive
panoptic scrutiny of a few particular specimens at a few particular moments that
prove particularly pertinent. Manthia Diawara │ Rouch In Reverse
(1995, Mali/U.K., 51 min.) A
conceptual coup of sorts: an effort at what its maker calls “reverse
anthropology”; the first work to look at European anthropology from the
perspective of its subjects.
Diawara’s provocative tape examines the anthropological enterprise
through the work of reknowned ethnographic film-maker Jean Rouch. Gene Searchinger │ Paradox on 72nd
Street (1980, USA, 55
min.) The
intersection of West 72nd street and Broadway in New York City becomes, under
close scrutiny, a microcosm of human interaction. This active and attuned
surveillance delineates the struggle between individualism and collectivity. Systems and
institutions which provide order
and control are analysed as well as the unconscious gestures and modes of etiquette which
human beings impose on themselves. This work was suggested by ideas in Philip
Slater’s book The Pursuit of Loneliness and was made with the
collaboration of sociologist Slater and biologist Lewis
Thomas. Sunday, February 2 and Wednesday, February
5, 17.00
hrs. Mori Fumitake │ A Tick By the White
Tower (2000, Japan, 30 min.) Having
grown up under the panoptical gaze of the impassive central tower of his high
school campus, our inveterately self-conscious hero is determined to become a
tick that might risk stopping time. Alan and Susan Raymond │ American Family
Revisited (1990, USA, 58 min.) Another
anthropological/media turnabout in the form of an epilogue which provides a ten
years after update on the Loud family: the subjects of the Raymond’s pioneering
documentary program An American Family of the seventies and the true dawn
of “reality TV”. Here is a case where the subjects have
been completely altered by the process of scrutiny and tele-visual
surveillance. Sachiko Hamada and Scott Sinkler │ Inside
Life Outside (1988, USA, 57 min.) Following a
closely knit group of homeless people living in a lower east side shantytown
over a two and a half year period. This work proposes an alternate anthropology
of the self where all categories are mediated and found contradictory. Unlike
the typical television family, these people thrive on the self awareness that
the watchful eyes inspire. Sunday, February 9 and Wednesday, February
12, 17.00
hrs. Jane Campion │ A Girl’s Own Story (1991,
Australia, 27 min.) The dawning
of rigorous self-scrutiny and its reflexive desire: a clarion call for “someone
to watch over me”… Danielle Smith │ Song of Umm
Dalaila (1993, Algeria, 35
min.) Smith shot
this work in a Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria concentrating on the women which
made up 80% of the adult population of the camp. What interests us here is how
these women come to assume primary responsibility for the survival of the
refugees and offer a different paradigm of the watchful eye of
scrutiny. Nina Rosenblum│ Through the Wire (1990,
USA, 77 min.) The brutal
flipside of the implications of Umm Dalaila: Locked in a basement, deprived of sleep,
psychologically tormented, strip searched daily by male guards, video taped in
the bathroom—three women are political prisoners in the USA—where they say this
can’t happen. In a high security
dungeon in Lexington, Kentucky is the United States government conducting secret
experiments in brainwashing and behavioural modification on these women? Is this
what we can expect from the brave new world of panoptic
security? Sunday, February 16 and Wednesday, February
19, 17.00
hrs. Sven Augustijnen │ Something on Bach
(1998, Belgium, 37 min.) The rear
window surveillance approach is taken to a rehearsal of Alain Platel’s Les
Ballets C. de la B. seen through the windows of the rehearsal space from a
vantage point across the street which produces a multivalent reading of a
complex set of events. Ross McElwee │ The Six O’Clock News (1997, USA, 102
min.) We now
seize that ultimate daily moment of scrutiny and world surveillance: the six o’clock news and what’s more we
choose to engage it directly and call its bluff. McElwee decides to enter into the events
of the news when they come close to home after a hurricane has leveled the town
where he has previously filmed and where his friend Charleen Swansea, a frequent
McElwee subject, lives. Thus a new
journey for the ever watchful eye begins.
This work also constitutes a sequel of sorts to Time Indefinite
included in last month’s program “Like Real”.
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