Sunday, 21 January 2018 - 3:00 pm
Billy Wilder Theater UCLA
10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024
Book launch: In person: Luis Ospina, Pablo Marín, Poli Marichal, Jesse Lerner and Luciano Piazza
Screening: Misreadings / Malas Lecturas
In the era of silent cinema, the interplay between text and image on the screen was a constant. A major figure in the Brazilian avant-garde, Humberto Mauro, believed that spoken dialogues and intertitles detracted from the moving image. Instead, he integrated text in the form of speech bubbles in his experimental cinematic melodrama, Ganga Bruta (1932). The use of text on the screen finds a master of ambiguity and irony in Cuba, with NIcolás Guillén Landrián. Following Santiago Alvarez' tradition, Guillén Landrián, nephew of the poet laureate Nicolás Guillén, playfully uses text in interaction with images on many different levels, generating a corrosive sense of irony and confusion rather than clarification in allegedly “didactic” educational documentaries. This program ranges from Guillen Landrián’s masterpiece Coffea Arábiga (1968), a parody of the utopian 1968 Green-belt agricultural project, to more contemporary exploration of the combination of typography and film syntax.
These screenings are 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, five-month 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, México, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the United States will be featured. Many of the works in the series are largely unknown in the United States and most screenings will include national and area premieres, with many including Q&A discussions with filmmakers and scholars following the screening. The film series will continue through January 2018 at multiple venues, organized by Filmforum. 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.
Ism, Ism, Ism is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Explore more at www.ismismism.org, lafilmforum.org, and www.pacificstandardtime.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.
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.