Flaherty NYC CLOSING NIGHT - METROGRAPH

CONTACT HIGHS
Panetta and Andrei Ujicăin person. In conversation with Jackie Goss, filmmaker and professor of film and electronic arts at Bard College.

Co-presented with Verso Books.

Saturday, December 14 at 7pm, Metrograph - GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!

FLAHERTY NYC: SURFACE KNOWLEDGE
CURATED BY Courtney Stephens & Mathilde Walker-Billaud

A feature documentary film from Europe and two short films from the USA explore the space race, public spectacle, and the gaze from afar. Out of the Present captures the fall of the Soviet Union from the perspective of outer space through Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who lived on the Mir space station from May 1991 to March 1992. A blend of betacam and 35mm footage shot on Mir, and amateur archival footage of the August Putsch and other events on earth below, the film is a meditation on the timescales of human history against the cosmos. Director Andrei Ujică (Videograms of a Revolution, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu) experiments with perspective and relative time, courting science fiction. Indeed, when Krikalev returned to earth after his unexpected ten months in space he returned to the future, carrying the passport of a state which no longer existed. 

The screening will be preceded by Katherin McInnis’s Hat Trick and Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund’s In Event of Moon Disaster, two short films that reevaluate the moon landing, and the thin boundary between cinematic and scientific knowledge.

FILMS:

Katherin McInnis Hat Trick 2014, 4 min, digital
Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund In Event of Moon Disaster 2019, 6 min, digital
Andrei Ujică Out of the Present 1995, 96 min, digital

Total running time: 106 min

SYNOPSES 

Katherin McInnis, Hat Trick, 2014, 4 min

an animated exploration of magic and moon landings, made entirely with behind the scenes stills from pre-digital cinema and NASA simulations.  The movie also features an original soundtrack by Matthew Leonard, played on a reconstituted theater organ. (artist’s website)

Halsey Burgund and Francesca Panetta, In Event of Moon Disaster, 2019, 6 min

In July 1969, much of the world celebrated “one giant leap for [hu]mankind.” Fifty years later, nothing is quite so straightforward. In Event of Moon Disaster illustrates the possibilities of deepfake technologies by reimagining this seminal event. What if the Apollo 11 mission had gone wrong and the astronauts had not been able to return home? A contingency speech for this possibility was prepared, but never delivered by President Nixon until now. This six minute film originally conceived as a three channel immersive installation, invites you into this alternative history and asks us all to consider how new technologies can bend, redirect and obfuscate the truth around us. (artists’ description)

Andrei Ujică, Out of the Present, 1995, 96 min

In August 1991, tanks advanced on the White House in Moscow, the government seat of the Russian Soviet Republic. Although the coup failed, the Soviet Union rapidly dissolved in the following months. Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev wasn’t there when it happened: in May 1991, he had left for the Mir space station from the Soviet Union[...] 

For his film about the last Soviet cosmonaut, filmmaker Andrei Ujica drew from video material filmed during the mission, to which he added a fictional commentary. He also sent a 35mm camera to the Russian space station. He asked director of photography Vadim Yusov—as a tribute to his camerawork in Tarkovski’s Solaris—to prepare the filming process and coordinate it from mission control on Earth, thus creating the first purely cinematic images shot in space. These long takes of Mir’s space orbit contrast with short, chaotic takes of the rapid changes on Earth, providing the background to Krikalev’s sober comment: “For a cosmonaut, the speed with which day and night and the seasons fly by is more impressive.” (IDFA)

BIOGRAPHIES

Halsey Burgund is an independent sound artist and technologist whose work is a combination of socio-anthropological ‘research’, musical documentary and participatory experience.

Katherin Mcinnes works with video and new media. In her projects, she exploits the convergence of still and moving images and uses both original and archival material. She currently lives in New York, where she teaches at Pratt Institute and the City University of New York.

With a background in literature, Andrei Ujică decides in 1990 to devote himself to cinema and creates Videograms of a Revolution (1992), co-directed with Harun Farocki, which becomes a landmark film on the relationship between political power and the media in Europe at the end of the Cold War. His second film, Out of the Present (1995) has been compared to such emblematic titles in film history as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris, and is famous for being one of the most recognized non-fictional films of the 90’s. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (2010), widely regarded as a monumental achievement, concludes his trilogy dedicated to the end of communism. Andrei Ujică also made two commissioned works for Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris: 2 Pasolini (short, 2000) and Unknown Quantity, with Paul Virilio and Svetlana Alexievitch (installation 2002, screen version 2005).

Francesca Panetta works as Creative Director in the Center for Advanced Virtuality. Previously she was Executive Editor for VR at the Guardian. Her work has shown at film festivals around the world including Sundance, Tribeca as well as being installed in the White House. 

MODERATOR

JACQUELINE GOSS  makes movies about scientific systems and how they change the ways we think about ourselves. Her two most recent works are “The Observers” --a feature-ish length portrait of a weather observatory on the windiest mountain in the world and “The Measures” – an essay film and artist’s book made with artist Jenny Perlin about the history of the metric system and “invention” of the meter. A native of New Hampshire, Goss is a 2008 Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in Film and Video. Goss teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts program at Bard College in the Hudson Valley of New York.

CO-PRESENTER

Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year. All books are on sale for 50% off until January 1st. See more details here.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
Metrograph is an assigned-seating movie house. To choose your preferred seats, we recommend that you buy tickets in advance online.

Back to full series info: SURFACE KNOWLEDGE

Photo: Andrei Ujică’s Out of the Present