Date: Thursday, March 12 2015
Screening: 7:30pm
Location: kunstraum t27, Thomasstr. 27, 12053 Berlin
Visiting filmmakers and co-programmers of the Balagan Film Series Stefan Grabowski and Mariya Nikiforova will be presenting a program of recent films by Boston-based filmmakers.
As onerous amounts of snow continue to bury the city of Boston and it’s surrounding areas, a nascent film collective is incubating beneath the frozen mantle. The goal, outlined in a meeting this past January, is to facilitate the continued practice of 16mm and Super-8 filmmaking by uniting the community and creating a shared workspace with access to resources that may be otherwise unobtainable.
Thanks in part to the numerous educational institutions which regularly draw in fresh students and established artists alike, Boston has long been a hub for experimental and avant-garde film; Yet these same institutions often leave the community feeling fragmented and precarious, as people leave when they are finished with the schools or when the schools finish with them. Still, as anyone working in the physical medium of film today can attest, there is a certain level of uncertainty that is intrinsically bound to the craft, and one must be tenacious to continue working in a medium constantly threatened with extinction.
The eight films in this program represent a small sampling of recent works by members of Boston’s local community. While each is quite different in approach – whether utilizing a homemade optical printer, direct-animation and photogram techniques, chemical manipulation of the emulsion, or in-camera editing – together they exemplify the enthusiastic resilience and high-degree of talent visible in Boston today.
With films by Kim Arnias, Brittany Gravely, Saul Levine, Xander Marro, Matt McWilliams, Robert Todd and Doug Urbank.