Wednesday, December 5 8:00pm
Gatica / Gatica, El Mono
Leonardo Favio, Argentina, 1993, 135 min.

”Favio’s much-anticipated return to filmmaking was this free interpretation of the life of José María Gatica, an immensely popular Argentine boxer in the 1940s and 1950s nicknamed El Mono, "the monkey." The film focuses on a few key moments in Gatica’s rise and fall from grace, using the boxer as a potent guide to social and political turmoil of the period. As critics have noted, there’s an autobiographical resonance for Favio in the Gatica story. Like his protagonist he was born poor in the provinces, and came to Buenos Aires in the late 1940s along with thousands of others attracted by Peróns’ vision of a new society; the opening sequence, showing first impressions of the big city, is especially heartfelt. Favio’s visual gifts seem unaffected by his long absence from filmmaking, as he discovers a fresh approach to re-creating Gatica’s bouts in the ring.” - Synopsis taken from www.filmlinc.com

Wednesday, December 12, 8:00pm
Wish you were here:
Mexican Films by Gringos

Curated by Oona Mekas Goycoolea and Adrian Goycoolea
Presented in association with Ocularis, Cinema Williamsburg Style, www.billburg.com/ocularis
(Approximated running time 73 min.)


The US and Mexico, like many other bordering countries, have a long history of cultural cross-pollination. In the case of cinema, Mexico has served as a backdrop in countless Hollywood movies, a landscape where the movies stars have "exotic" adventures and Mexican characters are generally colorful sidekicks or embody other clichés. Over the years, experimental filmmakers have elevated this backdrop to a more prominent role by making it the subject of their films. From the abstract to the romantic to the comical, Wish You Were Here: Mexican Films by Gringos explores this subject by presenting works by experimental filmmakers that have taken on Mexican culture as the starting point of their work.

Valentín de las Sierras (Bruce Baillie, 1966)
In this film the Mexican landscape is depicted as a lush, luminous, romantic world of sensuous color and magical beauty.

Looking for Mushrooms (Bruce Conner, 1966)
Bruce Connor's work presents a hallucinatory view of Mexico as the filmmaker scours the terrain in search of magic mushrooms.

Guacamole (Chick Strand, 1976)

Lucha Libre (Moira Tierney, 1998)

Growth Opportunities (Andrew Lampert, 2001)
This video performance piece focuses on the Americanization of Mexican culture in the form of the American fast-food chain Del Taco.

Zócalo (Thomas Steiner, 1997)

Instant Vacation (Adrian Goycoolea, 2001)

Silver Play (Stom Sogo, 2001)
This video compares the relationship between Mexico and the United States to the relationship between Japan and Indonesia.

Leche (Naomi Uman, 1998)

Wednesday, December 19, 8:00pm
Sensorial Echoes
1989-1996 Argentinean Video Art

Curated by Viviana Bianchi
(Approximated running time: 54 min.)

Sensorial Echoes highlights works from 1989 to 1996 that contributed to the birth and continuation of video arte in this part of the globe through their innovative, risky, a avid search for a new form of artistic expression in a country were artists must work in very odd conditions, almost in isolation and without government or institutional support.

Hunt 30 / Caza 30 (Fabián Hofman, 1989)
Modernist in its conception, this piece evokes the forceful rhythm of a city and denotes a sense of hope in the promises of a resurging land.

Heliography / Heliography (Claudio Caldini, 1993)
A perceptive reflection on the act of seeing and being seen, where nature and the body are central.

Consequence / Consecuencia (Claudio Caldini, 1992)
A musical score of images. A counter proposal to Bazin´s concept of the cinema as a window to the world.

Funanbules (Rubén Guzmán, 1996)
Characters without an apparent destiny move through the screen in a sort of anti-Barthian essay. Is it possible to add pensiveness to images in movement?

Transatlantic / Transatlántico (Arturo Marinho, 1992)
The time of the absence of time fills the house as a corpse would. Je suis l´espace ou je suis.

Zenon's Arrow / La Flecha de Zenón (Jorge Macchi and David Oubiña, 1992)
A cinematically auto referential piece that ponders on the nature of the infinite (within cinema?)

Argument / Argumento (Carlos Trilnick, 1992)
A performance piece based on a text by Jorge Luis Borges and interpreted by La Organización Negra serves as the basis to this intriguing video art piece

Dinosaurs / Los Dinosaurios
(Mario Chierico, 1996, 7 min.)
A dark and brooding voyage into the horrid corridors of Argentina's recent past.

Nigredo (Jorge Castro, 1996)
A visually complex choreography of images.

Ours First / Primero lo Nuestro (Julio Real, 1994)
Using Electronic sound and digital manipulation the piece deconstructs official cultural representations of local natural environments as symbols of national identity

Verbal Secretions / Secreciones Verbales (Silvina Cafici, 1992)
Instrument of distortion and fantasy, verbal secretions of minds without bodies.