Projections Program 2: Beyond Landscapes Q&A | NYFF54

Artists Helena Girón, Samuel Delgado, Tomonari Nishikawa, Sky Hopinka, and Brigid McCaffrey discuss their short experimental films after their screening in Projections Program 2: Beyond Landscapes at the 54th New York Film Festival.

Burning Mountains That Spew Flame / Montañas Ardientes Que Vomitan Fuego
Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado, Spain, 2016, DCP, 14m
U.S. Premiere
Scientific claims made by 17th-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher and political ones made by the Invisible Committee are examined in this journey into the volcanoes of Lanzarote.

Bending to Earth
Rosa Barba, USA/Germany, 2015, 35mm, 15m
Helicopter shots circle variously colored shapes carved into desert landscapes. We discover these manmade inscriptions are storage cells for radioactive material designed to eventually return to the soil.

Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon
Tomonari Nishikawa, Japan, 2016, 16mm, 10m
U.S. Premiere
Delivering exactly what his title promises—but not necessarily in the order you’d expect— Nishikawa presents 20 sequences shot along Japan’s Yahagi River; images tautly suspended between stillness and movement, darkness and light.

Canadian Pacific I
David Rimmer, Canada, 1974, 16mm, 9m
Scenes taken from a single, second-floor view of Vancouver Harbor, recorded over three winter months, pieced together with subtle dissolves so as to resemble one ten-minute shot. “Its formalism is very unimposing,” wrote Jonas Mekas, “like in a Hudson School painting.”

Jáaji Approx.
Sky Hopinka, USA, 2015, digital projection, 8m
Hopkina’s video address to his father is made of landscape images saturated with dark shadow and dreamy light, and features his father’s own words taken from recordings of Hočak language songs and chants.

Bad mama, who cares
Brigid McCaffrey, USA, 2016, 35mm, 12m
World Premiere
A portrait of geologist Ren Lallatin, who inhabits the blazing heat of the Mojave desert, this structural-lyrical landscape film is shot on richly tinted film.

Ears, Nose and Throat
Kevin Jerome Everson, USA, 2016, DCP, 10m
Everson returns to his hometown of Mansfield, Ohio, in this unblinking look at the simultaneity of the tragic and the mundane in black American life. The subject is the 2010 murder of 25-year-old DeCarrio Couley, who appeared in a number of Everson’s earlier films.

--

The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The five-person selection committee is chaired by New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones and includes esteemed critics, curators, and programmers.

Since 1963, the New York Film Festival has brought new and important cinematic works from around the world to Lincoln Center. In addition to the Main Slate official selections, the festival includes newly restored classics, special events, filmmaker talks, panel discussions, an Avant-Garde showcase, and much more.

--

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema. The only branch of the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center to shine a light on the everlasting yet evolving importance of the moving image, this nonprofit organization was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international film. Via year-round programming and discussions; its annual New York Film Festival; and its publications, including Film Comment, the U.S.’s premier magazine about films and film culture, the Film Society endeavors to make the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broader audience, as well as to ensure that it will remain an essential art form for years to come.