Ism, Ism, Ism: Recycled Cinema (Cine reciclado)

Desde la Havana ¡1969! Recordar, by Nicolás Guillén Landrián

Oct 10, 2020, 7:00 pm

Online Livestream!

Q&A on Sunday, October 10, 8:30 pm (after the screening) with co-curator Jesse Lerner, filmmakers Artemio and Eduardo Menz

Information: (323) 377-7238

Tickets: Sliding scale, $20, $12, $8, $5, $0 – at https://bpt.me/4747385

Promotional Support for these online screenings from Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive; WNDX Festival of Experimental Film, Winnipeg; Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque; Lightbox Film Center, University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

In the spirit of Oswald de Andrade’s landmark 1928 provocation, the Manifesto Antropófagio, this program features a works of artists, dating from the 1950s up to today, that engage in found footage filmmaking, a subaltern practice of decolonization and critique through the collage of appropriated images and audio. This practice, sometimes called “recycled cinema,” “détournement,” or “cinema of appropriation,” has particular resonance in the region, where outsiders’ misrepresentations often dominate the local cinematic productions on screens. Nuyoriquen artists Raphael Ortiz Montañez took a 16mm print of Winchester ’73 (Anthony Mann, 1950), a Hollywood Western in which Rock Hudson plays a Native American, and hacked the reels to pieces with a tomahawk “to release their evil.” Placing the film fragments in a medicine bag, he performed a ritual exorcism inspired by his Yaqui grandfather before splicing together the random fragments, some upside down and others right side up, that comprise the Cowboy and ‘Indian’ Film (1958). A Cuban newsreel from 1960 shows the triumphant supporters of the Revolution taking over the former offices of major Hollywood studios, and repurposes the reels found within. The progeny of these forerunners are diverse in their strategies and aims, ranging from Cecilia Barriga’s The Meeting of Two Queens (1991), a queer romance between Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, to Artemio’s mash-up of Walt Disney’s adaptations of Winnie the Pooh and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). Eduardo Menz’s Las mujeres de Pinochet (2005) juxtaposes the testimony of Carmen Gloria Quintana, an activist badly burned by the Chilean soldiers while protesting against the brutality of Augusto Pinochet’s regime, with footage of the dictator congratulating Cecilia Bolocco, the nation’s first successive Miss Universe contestant. Through reframing and repetition, the contradictions of these two women’s experiences and of the totalitarian state’s parameters for acceptable female behavior slowly and painfully emerge.

This screening is part of Los Angeles Filmforum’s screening series Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Cine Experimental en América Latina). Ism, Ism, Ism is an unprecedented film series —the first in the U.S.—that surveys Latin America’s vibrant experimental production from the 1930s through today. Revisiting classic titles and introducing recent works by key figures and emerging artists, Ism, Ism, Ism takes viewers on a journey through a wealth of materials culled from unexpected corners of Latin American film archives. Key historical and contemporary works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the United States are featured. The online screenings in Fall 2020 will conclude the touring portion of Ism, Ism, Ism. www.ismismism.org

Ism, Ism, Ism is accompanied by a bilingual publication (from University of California Press) 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. 

Ism, Ism, Ism was originally part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles that occurred in 2017-18. Explore more at www.ismismism.org

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.

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Los Angeles Filmforum screenings are supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, the Wilhelm Family Foundation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and the American Cinematheque. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.