About Unequal States Stories of the continued struggle against oppression through movements, resistance, and solidarity are often documented and presented in many forms as acts of resistance themselves. In these stories, the notion of “inequality” draws together different worlds, cultures, and dimensions/scales (micro/macro). From animations to documentaries, these films shed light on the pervasiveness of this inequality on all fronts by exploring social, scientific, and political perspectives in our fight against racism, injustice, and inequality.
“Trauma and horrific histories are held in landscapes in every corner of the globe. For the past twenty years photographer, filmmaker, and educator Lana Z Caplan has been documenting sites of public killings in her project, Postcards from the Hanging: Sites of Public Execution. She shares some stunning statistics in her statement, “The United States is one of only 20 countries in the world that continues to employ state sanctioned killing. In 2019 we ranked 6th in the world in the number of executions following (in order) China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt (execution totals not known for Vietnam, North Korea, and Syria).” Her thoughtful examination of why our country continues to allow the death penalty adds another layer to its history of pain and suffering.” Lenscratch.com
After the success of our recent collaboration with the Society of Scottish Artists at the Open SSA + VAS exhibition earlier this year, CutLog are delighted to offer our online audiences the opportunity to view a selection of these works through our upcoming online screening program.
“During covid19 crisis (and even after), some films from our distribution catalogue are available to watch in their entirety. Enjoy, and stay safe ! www.cjcinema.org”
Including links to full length versions of 2 films: ERRATA 20:40 min, 2017 (Meditative and Calming playlist)
Sound by Alan F. Jones and Lana Z Caplan
Rhythms of the mundane become a meditation on leisure, work, and time. As the visual cycle repeats – passengers load, unload, reload, boats arrive, depart, arrive – the reading of the Italian ferryboat schedule – town names, times, and departures – morphs from announcement to chant, boats transform, deconstruct, and twist into a mindscape, rendering the unseen, the errata, seen.
ROAR 3:30, 2007 (Animals playlist)
Footage from the 1933 film “The Big Cage” stripped of sound and re-edited onto clear leader followed by the removed optical soundtrack, also affixed to clear leader. Each strip of sound acts as a character, mimicking the actions in the film.
THE 39th ANNUAL BLACK MARIA FILM FESTIVAL GOES VIRTUAL
The Black Maria Virtual Film Festival in partnership with the Hoboken Historical Museum presents over 100 award-winning short films completely free of charge – no strings attached – for as long as the pandemic lasts.
Watch play and repeat (Director’s Choice Prize 2015 Festival) and many other films here
Experimental Response Cinema presents OVER AND OUT, its third celebration of resistance to the policies of United States president #45! Cathartic as well as a call to action, this screening of short films will address the current political landscape in ways both playful and incisive. With it, we affirm creativity as a vital and needed clapback to lies, greed, bigotry and ignorance.
Space Time is happy to present an evening of contemporary, experimental Science Fiction videos. Screening of works by James Fotopoulos, Lana Z Caplan, and Michael Trigilio
January 17th, 2020
at Bread & Salt 1955 Julian Ave., San Diego, CA 92113
Doors: 7:30pm, Screening: 8pm
Dignity, James Fotopoulos, (2012, 82 min.) Autopoiesis, Lana Z Caplan, (2019, 7:20 min.) Glimmer Exodus Overture, Michael Trigilio, (2019, 12:31 min.)
33. STUTTGARTER FILMWINTER – FESTIVAL FOR EXPANDED MEDIA
January 16-19, 2020
Including Lana Z Caplan’s Autopoiesis in the special program “Digital Detox”.
Friday 17th of January 2020 at 5:30 p.m.
“For over 30 years, the Festival has been devoted to crossing the border between cinema and media art with an adventurous international programme comprising films, workshops, Expanded Media exhibition and performances for people of all ages. The Festival’s core are the international competitions for short film, Media in Space and Network Culture – flanked by a comprehensive programme. This year’s thematic focus is “Absence”. The Festival edition is located at the interface between a media-dominated society in all its facets and all of the things falling through or getting blurred by the grid of such a society: what is not said or depicted, the things pushed aside or rejected. We are longing for absence and its traces. Like a test strip, our Festival delves into the big house of absence – placing it at the macro focus.” https://filmwinter.de/en
Society of Scottish Artists / CutLog Artists Moving Image Exhibition
December 22nd and February 5th 2020
Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh
Including Lana Z Caplan’s Maelstroms and Patches of Snow in July
OPEN SSA+VAS, is presented in partnership with Visual Arts Scotland and will be the largest exhibition of contemporary art and craft to be held in Scotland this year giving an audience of over 30,000 people the opportunity to discover and enjoy artworks across all mediums.
“NewMediaFest 2020 – an event structure to take place in an exchange between virtual and physical space – starting on 25 December 2019 in Ethiopia – running until 31 December 2020 – will honour and include all artists, curators and other cultural instances like festivals, museum , galleries etc which were collaborating with Agricola de Cologne during the past 20 years since 2000 – in the basic program online – there will be at least 12 physical venues- each month another one in another country presenting an individual Jubilee program – to be complemented by monthly features online in video, netart and soundart.” http://retro.newmediafest.org/
Lost and Found in Late Capitalism curated by Shahbaz Khayambashi, Co-Chair, Pleasure Dome
Fri., Dec. 6, 2019
at the Small World Music Centre
180 Shaw St, Toronto, ON
Lost and Found in Late Capitalism, Curatorial Statement:
In recent years, with the election of right-wing and fascist politicians around the world, the link between fascism and capitalism has become impossible to ignore. As profit overtakes happiness as the endeavour of humanity and austerity becomes the way of the land, the citizens of the modern nation have no choice but to go with the pack or get trampled in the process. Of course, since it was left to fester for so long, capitalism has reached its inevitable zenith, reaching that time that we have been warned about for decades, the age of late capitalism. Existing somewhere between apocalypse and parody, the age of late capitalism has brought about dystopian ideals presented to its subjects as standard societal practices. No longer will people fight for their own rights, because their rights have been established as unrealistic, their fighting as criminal. Late capitalism is the current state of affairs. It cannot be stopped, unless people wake up to it, become aware of it. Perhaps the response from the art world could help that occur.
That is the idealistic background for Pleasure Dome’s Lost and Found in Late Capitalism, a response to this stage of late capitalism by using its own products. While capitalism continues to destroy our environment, wage wars on our people, and destroy our social fabric, this program will attempt to speak truth to power by speaking power’s language. This program consists of a series of short videos constructed from found footage, coming from a variety of formats, sources and levels of legality. These videos use footage from Hollywood films, business promotional videos, public domain artefacts and military footage to tell stories of life under the thumb of capitalism. It is through this re-appropriation of the products of capitalism that today’s artists can attempt to come to terms with the struggle of living under an unquestionable dictatorial system.
Beyond Human, Pete Burkeet (Ohio, USA), 2018.
Mad as Hell, Emily Pelstring (Kingston, ON, CND) and Meg Remy (Toronto, ON, CND), 2017.
Gone Sale, Matt Meindl (USA), 2018.
Public Domain, Jason Britski (SK,CND), 2018.
A Feverish Fascination, Imogen Clendinning, (Windsor, ON, CND), 2018.
Music of Desire, Kristin Reeves (KY, USA), 2016.
Painting with the Man, Freya Björg Olafson (Toronto, ON, CND), 2017.
What is an Object, Stephanie Deumer (NY, USA) 2015. Maelstroms, Lana Z Caplan (CA, USA), 2015.
Flat Pyramid, Kevin Doherty (NY, USA), 2017.
MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY 1
curated by the magical Craig Baldwin
Other Cinema
@ ATA Gallery
992 Valencia St, San Francisco
November 2, 2019
MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY 1
SCOTT STARK + TOMMY BECKER + BILL BAIRD + LANA Z CAPLAN + A LiveA-V luv-fest fer sure, with distinctive, daring demonstrations of creative expression from four of Cali’s leading media-artists! Prodigal son Scott Stark proffers a para-cinema set featuring the premiere of CLYPPS and his in-house 35mm scope projector, while twinkling SLO satellite Lana Z Caplan orbits back with the NorCal launch of her35mm piece Apollonian Light and her Autopoiesis short. SF stalwart Tommy Becker sets up screen-left with the debut of his Side Two of Tape Number One–music and poetry exploring our entangled relations with auto-mobile machines. AND here’s the unveiling of The Cube by ex-Austinite Bill Baird–musical performance-art inside a projection-mapped tent! PLUS a sprinkling of cine/sonic tricks by Ryan Worsley, Bruce Haack, Brett Ingram, et al. Dizzying documentation of Brown/Gruffat’sUnsettling Texas film–performance follows Russ Forster‘s theremin busking.
“Other Cinema is a long-standing bastion of experimental film, video, and performance in San Francisco’s Mission District. We are inspired and sustained by the ongoing practice of fine-art filmmaking, as well as engaged essay and documentary forms. But OC also embraces marginalized genres like “orphan” industrial films, home movies, ethnography, and exploitation, as media-archeological core-samples, and blows against consensus reality and the sterility of museum culture.” http://www.othercinema.com/
A Salon with Lana Z Caplan Friday, November 1st, 2019 // 7:30 PM (doors 7:00 PM)
We are delighted to welcome multimedia artist Lana Z Caplan to present a Canyon Cinema Salon screening at 16 Sherman Street in San Francisco. Caplan has curated a program that elegantly weaves films from Canyon’s deep catalog along with her poignant and visually rich work.
“Chosen from subconscious memories and deep influences, the films in this program relate to the ideas and approaches that I have been wrestling with in my own work: harmony and disharmony with the rhythms and gifts of earth — persuasive and abusive use of media — ritual, ceremony, mysticism — and the fleeting preciousness of it all. ” – Lana Z Caplan
As always, this event is free and open to the public, with refreshments served beginning at 7:00 and the doors closed for the start of the show at 7:30. An informal conversation with the filmmaker will follow the screening.
October 23, 6-9pm
Reeves Theater
University of Tampa
At the intersection of art and technology the artists selected for CONNECT 2019 are experimenting with space, time, form and sound while re-examining the way we communicate ideas and tell stories.
The eighteen artists represent thirteen countries and a variety of styles and processes. The results range from sensual abstraction to the strange visual effects of computer coding.
The work addresses personal, social and political issues relevant to our times.
Our common thread is an interest in expanding the concepts of art/film/technology and exploring the medium itself. We initially connected via Internet – Facebook / YouTube / Vimeo.
Most of us have never met in person but we have established a strong camaraderie through shared screenings around the world and/or our common love of the moving image.
Anthology Film Archives
2nd and 2nd, NYC
July 17, 2019. 6:00 PM
with works by Lana Z Caplan, Evelin Stermitz, Giselle Chien, Meredith Moore, Sarah Harbridge, Caryn Cline & Linda Fenstermaker, Morrison Gong, Lisa Danker, Karissa Hahn, Maureen Zent
including Autopoiesis (still above) – US Premiere!
Consciousness of Changing Climate
Environmental Film Screening
Tuesday, July 16th at Böttgerstraße 13, Berlin
Artists Without a Cause invites you to join us for our film screening “Consciousness of Changing Climate”! Featured films surround the topic of climate change and human relationships with this issue. This screening aims to explore, familiarize, and bring awareness to the environments around us. Along with this, AWAC and featured artists hope to show both abstract and direct examples of how climate change is effecting humans and other ecological functions.
– “Oro Blanco” by Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez
– “Questions for a Dinosaur” by Rachel Garber Cole
– “Panorama Panik Botanik” by Vera Sebert
– “Techno Inferno” by Farhanaz Rupaidha
– “Patches of Snow in July” by Lana Z Caplan
– “Totem” by Alex MacKenzie
Curated by Carlos Castro Arias & Sarah Trujillo-Porter, Deviate / Landscape revolves around contemporary approaches to artmaking that deal with the idea of landscape as a constructed and deconstructed space. The selected artists use painting, video, installation, photography and other mediums to explore landscape. The selected works use landscape as a metaphor for time and transformation but also highlight contemporary political and environmental issues.
Exhibiting Artists
Miguel Arzabe, Lana Z Caplan, Carolina Caycedo ,Remi Dalton, Ashley Fenderson, Jessica Ling Findley, Eleanor Greer, Richard Keeley, Adam Manley, Carolina Montejo, Hillary Mushkin, Arzu Ozkal, Scott Polach, Rachelle Reichert, Jon Rodley, Daniel Ruanova, Ali Silverstein, Eva Struble, Bradley Tucker, Cesar Vasquez, Jevi Joe Vitug
Image: Daniel Ruanova, History of Manimals III, 2017. Photocourtesy of the artist and Parque Galería CDMX
Lumen, Richard Ashrowan, 16mm, 2018
Girl Becomes Snow, Ryan Betschart, SD, 2017
The Future, Pamela Breda, HD, 2017
The Symphony of Names: No Man is and Island, Elizabeth Withstandley, 16mm, 2018
Re-entry , Pierre Yves Clouin, HD, 2017
Boral Pather Panchali, Alex Cunningham, HD, 2018
Gibraltar Point (transformed), Penny McCann, 16mm, 2018
Anxiety, Muge Yildiz, Super8/16mm, 2016
Gede Vizyon, Marcos Serafim, Jefferson Kielwagen and Steevens Simeon, HD, 2018
Winter’s First Moons, Kathleen Rugh, 16mm, 2018
In front of the Sea, Yaniv Touati, SD, 2017
Farewell Transmission, Mike Rollo, 16mm, 2017
Maelstroms, Lana Z Caplan, HD, 2017
PSYCHO-GEO3: MARGINS OF THE MAP
Presented by Other Cinema
October 20: 8:30pm: GRETA SNIDER’s 3-D + L.CAPLAN + A.COPPOLA +
“The second half of our Focus on Locus double-header features two world premieres—exquisite expanded cinema/retinal rivalry pieces by the Mission’s own Greta Snider, plus a timely revival of her epochal 16mm diary Portland, train-hopping with Ivy McClelland and Iggy Scam!
Lana Caplan breaks away from her SLO college gig to unspool a NorCal debut, Patches of Snow in July (Hawaii volcano), as well as her earlier Maelstroms (Mexico border).
In his farewell appearance, long-lost ally Alex Coppola flies in from Philly to not only open the show, but close it as well, with his world-class World Music vinyl selections, set to an absolutely sublime sampler of mid-20C personal travelogues—Glimpses of the Global South, glorious Kodachrome shot in four sites, moving east around the planet—Hong Kong, Tahiti, the Andes, and the Amazon.
As to marginal spaces in the US interior: Brea Weinreb debuts Framing History, a collective S8 remediation of home movies from Japanese internees in the Amache, Colorado camp.
PLUS: Matt McCormick’s cautionary America Nutria, on a Southern mammal now munching on Coast rhizomes!” … othercinema.com
