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Event
Lordville, a film by Rea Tajiri
Sunday August 10, 2014, 7:30 pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Lordville, a film by Rea Tajiri
At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028
Rea Tajiri in person!
Considering ghosts, the act of walking and demarcations of ownership, LORDVILLE asks "What does it mean to own the land?" Environmental scientist Tom Wessels reads timelines through physical landscape. Native American genealogist Sheila Spencer Stover gives an account of her relative, Betia Van Dunk, a Minisink woman who married a founder of Lordville but was unable to inherit their property. LORDVILLE examines a once-prosperous town defined by its remote geography and problematic exchanges between Native American and settler communities. The film approaches a historiography based on the reading of environment and its interconnectedness to culture.
For more event information: www.lafilmforum.org, or 323-377-7238
Tickets: $10 general, $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members. Available by credit card in advance from Brown Paper Tickets or at the door.
Screening:
Lordville (2014, HD, 67 minutes)
Director's Statement - Rea Tajiri:
"As a Japanese-American woman whose parents were incarcerated during WWII, owning property has been both a dream and an ambivalence. My family's house was 'stolen' during World War II when their block was condemned by the government under eminent domain. They never saw the house, or its contents, again. My film HISTORY & MEMORY explored this story and the ramifications of internment for my family. LORDVILLE introduces historical ghosts that wander the underwater world of the Delaware River in upstate New York, and characters from the past and present. Rivers move. People disappear. In the process we are reminded how complicated ownership is, how slender the threads of known history can be and how ephemeral is the land.
"Coming to terms with 'stolen land' is part of the theme in my film. I attempted many times to stake out my property in Lordville in an attempt to understand ownership as a physical sensation and a mental construct. To address this elusive concept. I evoke a heightened sense of a significant landscape both visible and invisible. I see the land as an entity that has stood witness over the years to many events both violent and peaceful. The chronology of the area reveals many land swindles, including the defrauding of the Lenape Indians in the infamous Walking Purchase Treaty. Over time, many land boundaries and land maps were blurred, determining and following the tribal lines as tribes joined into and blended with one another.
"In the end what I have concluded is the essential impossibility of owning the land. My intention is that the viewer connect to environment through a film experience, and in so doing, sense history extending into the past, beyond conventional recording."
For more, visit lordville.tumblr.com
"....Positions Tajiri at the forefront of current conversations about hybrid documentary form... A landscape film, an experimental documentary, an ethnography of place, a personal meditation.... ...About history as a ghost a spectral presence that surrounds and lingers and defines a place.
"An inquiry into questions of law, land and citizenship and how these, in the context of American history, are complicated by notions of nation and race.....as visually and narratively pleasurable as it is intellectually stimulating." -- Chi-hui Yang, Independent Film Curator, Flaherty Seminar
"...An unsettling portrait of settling in America." -- Cathy Crane, Ithaca College
"...An experiential tour-de-force, a camera roaming through the forest, water bubbling loudly on a soundtrack. Memories, geological studies, landscapes, and objects of the past are overlap in a way that probes our curiosity and emphasizes the strangeness that is our relationship to the places in which we live. And it started with a house." -- Brian Hu, Artistic Director, Pacific Arts Movement
Rea Tajiri is a filmmaker and visual artist who earned her BFA and MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts in Post-Studio Art. Tajiri's work examines the psycho-spiritual repercussions of political histories in families. The characters in her films unravel their submerged past through memory, ritual and their relationship to land to provoke audiences to question the conventions of historiography.
Tajiri's earlier works have been included in several Whitney Biennials. Her groundbreaking and award-winning 1991 personal essay film History and Memory, premiered at the Biennial and won several awards including the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association, and a Special Jury Award; New Genres from the San Francisco International Film Festival. Tajiri and civil-rights organizer Pat Saunders co-produced a film on the life of Harlem based human-rights activist Yuri Kochiyama entitled Passion for Justice. Strawberry Fields, Tajiri's debut dramatic feature film, received funding from ITVS and had its European premier at the 54th La Biennale de Venezia (The Venice Film Festival). It won the Grand Prix at the Fukuoka Asian International Film Festival the following year and had its theatrical release through Phaedra Cinema and Vanguard Releasing.
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This program is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Additional support generously provided by American Cinematheque. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization screening experimental and avant-garde film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation. 2014 is our 39th year.
Coming Soon to Los Angeles Filmforum:
July 27 Free, Twee, Mean, and Evergreen: EFFPortland's Pacific Northwest Showcase, with curator Hannah Piper Burns
Aug 3 Centro Histórico
Aug 10 Rea Tajiri - Lordville
Memberships available, $70 single, $115 dual, or $50 single student
Contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com.
Find us online at http://lafilmforum.org.
Become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LosAngFilmforum!
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LocationSpielberg Theatre at the Egyptian (View)
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: Yes! |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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