Projecting Pasolini:
Pasolini’s Last Words Documentary by Cathy Lee Crane
Witness: Palestine Live Cinema Performance with Barbara Hammer
Co-presented with Houston Cinema Arts Festival
Friday, November 8, 7PM
HCAS and Aurora Members $10, Non-members $15
For tickets, visit www.cinemartsociety.org
Houston Cinema Arts Festival and Aurora Picture Show partner to present a night of film and live cinema performance inspired by renowned Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Featuring works by two accomplished filmmakers, Cathy Lee Crane and Barbara Hammer, both in attendance, the program will take place on Friday, November 8th at 7PM. The Projecting Pasolini program starts off with Cathy Lee Crane's documentary Pasolini's Last Words. Following the documentary, renowned avant-garde filmmaker and pioneer of queer cinema Barbara Hammer presents a live cinema performance, in Witness : Palestine. Taking place at Aurora Picture Show (2442 Bartlett Street), this Houston Cinema Arts Festival program is part of its off-site Cinema on the Verge series.
Known as one of Italy's most important filmmakers, Pier Paolo Pasolini was also a poet and a writer. Pasolini was a highly controversial figure but in the years since his death has come to be valued by many as a visionary thinker and a major figure in Italian literature and art. Aurora Picture Show and Houston Cinema Arts Society bring together two modern female filmmakers who both explore his legacy in their works.
Cathy Lee Crane's sixty minute documentary, Pasolini's Last Words, begins the evening. Combining staged and archival material, this elegiac essay considers Pasolini's brutal murder in 1975 alongside the texts he published or left unfinished during his last year.
In Witness : Palestine Hammer layers film practice, politics and performance. Moved by the stories of men and women she met while on the first LGBTQ Solidarity Tour of Palestine in January 2012, Hammer sought to find a way to share their voices in a manner that would underline the humanity and vulnerability of her subjects. Upon seeing Intellettuale, 1975, by Fabio Mauri who projected the Pasolini film (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 1964) on Pasolini himself, she found the answer. In this performance, Hammer assembles a group of twelve volunteers from the audience, each of whom dons a large white T-shirt. Thus attired, these participants become the three-dimensional screens onto which Hammer projects films of Palestinians telling their stories: a man tells of losing his village when he was six, a sister speaks about her brother killed by a rubber bullet, a farmer says he cannot travel to his land to plant - the stories of suffering, hardship and loss are spoken one by one.
Cathy Lee Crane has been making narrative/documentary hybrid films on 16mm since 1994. She received the 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Film for her lyrical re-combinations of archival and staged material. The completion of her first feature Pasolini's Last Words (2012) was supported by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts in 2010 and enjoyed its World premiere at the Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema as a "gem of world cinema" in the Panorama International section.
Barbara Hammer (1939) is a pivotal figure in American experimental film. An acclaimed pioneer of queer cinema, her prolific output includes the earliest avant-garde films that remain of fundamental importance for a new generation of artists. Most recently, she was honored with retrospectives at MoMA (New York, 2010) and Tate Modern (London, 2012). Her retrospective at Jeu de Paume (Paris) took place in summer 2012. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013 for her forthcoming project on Elizabeth Bishop.
Houston Cinema Arts Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting innovative films, media installations, and performances that celebrate the artistic process and enrich Houston’s culture and urban vitality. Their annual festival, Houston Cinema Arts Festival, will take place from November 6-10, 2013. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.cinemartsociety.org.
Pre-Screening Reception with Barbara Hammer
Friday, November 8, 6:00PM
Free for HCAS and Aurora Members with RSVP
Before Witness Palestine, Houston Cinema Arts Festival and Aurora Picture Show members are invited to a pre-screening reception with light bites and cocktails, plus an opportunity to chat with filmmaker Barbara Hammer.