Curated by Thomas Beard and Nick Hallett
Thomas Beard in Attendance

Friday, May 4, 8pm
Saturday, May 5, 8pm

Inspired by a Brooklyn film artist’s recent discovery that his 16mm
collection contained multiple copies of the celebrated 1974 film (for
television) Marlo Thomas’s Free To Be...You and Me, Ocularis devised a
scheme to put his reels to good use. More than twenty film and video
artist were invited to rework, restage, respond to, satirize,
criticize, or in their own way create short works inspired by the
original’s all-too-memorable segments, including “It’s All Right to
Cry,” “William Wants a Doll,” “Ladies First,” and “Parents Are People.”

Recognized as an important cultural document of the shift in values our
country experienced during the 1970s, Free To Be...You and Me
(originally a book and concept album) stirred conversation among people
of all ages on hitherto unspoken issues like divorce, media awareness,
and, perhaps most cohesively, the identity politics of gender and race.
In light of how such conversations have evolved into the 21st century,
including more sophisticated global perspectives, issues of sexuality,
and how the rhetoric of “freedom” has taken on new resonance within our
current state of affairs, Ocularis is excited to present the results of
its challenge.

Thomas Beard is a writer and curator of film and electronic art. From
2005-2006 he was Program Director of Ocularis, a non-profit media arts
organization based in Brooklyn. Prior to that he served as a programmer
at Cinematexas, and has organized screenings and exhibitions at such
venues as Aurora Picture Show, Chicago Filmmakers, MassArt Film Society, Pacific
Film Archive, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.