Still from El Sicaro, Room 164

Digimovies February Programming
February 1, 22 and 29, 2012

NEW YORK- Exit Art’s Digimovies is pleased to announce its February schedule, a selection of exciting new digital cinema by veteran and emerging international filmmakers. The schedule features two of last year’s most formally daring documentaries -- El Sicario, Room 164 and Tape -- and the full program of shorts commissioned by the Jeonju International Film Festival’s Jeonju Digital Project 2011, which includes new works by European luminaries Claire Denis, José Luis Guerín and Jean-Marie Straub. Taken together, the selection observes how global auteurs are using digital filmmaking technology to push the language of cinema and further enrich their respective explorations.

El Sicario, Room 164
Wednesday, February 1 at 7:30PM
dir. Gianfranco Rosi, 85 min, 2010, U.S. and France, In Spanish w/ English subtitles

“El Sicario, Room 164, one of the most revealing and shocking documentaries ever made about the drug trade, is mostly a series of fixed shots of a masked man talking to a camera. The sicario's story is a familiar, eerily three-act rise-and-fall crime saga: A young poor child is seduced by a Mexican's cartel's vast power and gradually evolves from performing petty errands and crimes to kidnapping and torturing people for maddeningly vague reasons. Eventually tiring of the lifestyle's accompanying drug abuse and alcoholism, the assassin becomes a pariah in danger of winding up on the wrong end of a gun himself. There are haunting, inventive touches that quietly speak to the matter-of-factness of his dehumanization: The former killer sketches accompanying images on a pad while talking, and he occasionally rises from his chair to pantomime some of his more outrageous acts. These simple gestures, which speak of the effectiveness of elegantly pared filmmaking, suggest a truth, and a disturbing empathy, that more enraged, self-righteous documentaries rarely manage: the terrifyingly casual roots of evil." —Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine

Winner, FIPRESCI Prize and Orizzonti Documentary Award, Venice International Film Festival

Winner, Best Documentary, City of Lisbon Award, DocLisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

"A minimalist study in maximum violence, Gianfranco Rosi's El Sicario, Room 164 offers viewers the rare chance to meet a Mexican narco hitman and to live to tell the tale." —Jordan Mintzer, Variety

“Instead of a psychological profile of a killer, Rosi instead offers us the paradox of a truth-teller whose insights into the savage capitalism of the cartels is conveyed entirely through performance.” —Richard Porton, Cineaste

Tape
Wednesday, February 22 at 7:30PM
dir. Li Ning, 168 min, 2010, China, In Mandarin w/ English subtitles

Performance artist Li Ning turns his life into art in this epic work of experimental documentary. For five grueling years, Li documents his struggle to achieve success as an avant-garde artist while contending with the pressures of modern life in China. He is caught between two families: his wife, son and mother, whom he can barely support; and his enthusiastic but disorganized guerilla dance troupe. Li’s chaotic life becomes inseparable from the act of taping it, as if his experiences can only make sense on screen. Tape shatters documentary conventions, utilizing a variety of approaches, including guerilla documentary, experimental street video, even CGI. The film captures a decade’s worth of artistic aspirations and failures, while breaking new ground in individual expression in China. Synopsis courtesy of dGenerate Films.

Official Selection, International Film Festival Rotterdam

Official Selection, Beijing Independent Documentary Film Festival

Official Selection, MoMA Documentary Fortnight

“A riveting portrait of an artist’s attempts at expression and conflicts with societal norms.” – Museum of Modern Art

JEONJU DIGITAL PROJECT 2011
Wednesday, February 29 at 7:30PM

Since its launch in 2000, the Jeonju Internaional Film Festival in South Korea has furnished its reputation as one of the world’s most forward-thinking film festivals, not just by programming vital new international cinema but commissioning it as well.  Each year, the festival’s Jeonju Digital Project produces and distributes three short digital films from some of the world’s most exciting, uncompromising filmmakers.  Initially focused on supporting works by emerging talent around Asia, the festival expanded the Project in 2007 to include directors from Europe, Africa and the U.S.  Past participants in the Project have included such key directors as Jia Zhangke, James Benning, Hong Sang-soo, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Pedro Costa, Harun Farocki, Naomi Kawase, Lav Diaz and many more.  The Project’s most recent program includes works by three fascinating European directors: adventurous French maverick Claire Denis (Beau Travail (1999), White Mater ial (2009), 35 Shots of Rum (2008)), radical literary-materialist Jean-Marie Straub (Moses und Aron (1975), Sicilia! (1999)) and the endlessly curious José Luis Guerín (In the City of Sylvia (2007)). 

To the Devil – NYC Premiere!
dir. Claire Denis, 45 min, 2011, South Korea, In English and French w/ English subtitles

“Denis’ latest work is a digital short that combines documentary, autobiography and essay film. As research for an upcoming feature, Denis travels to French Guiana to meet Jean Bena, a notorious figure celebrated by some and demonized by others. She brings with her the young actor who will play the Bena character in her film. In the process, she weaves in the history of the nearby Aluku, an isolated tribe descended from African slaves who fled into the jungle rather than be pressed into work in the gold mines.” Synopsis courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive.

Memories of a Morning – NYC Premiere!
dir. José Luis Guerín, 45 min, 2011, South Korea, In Catalan and Spanish w/ English subtitles

“The most successful of the 2011 project is by the least well-known of the three directors. Jose Luis Guerin produced a very personal film about a tragic suicide in his own neighborhood that also works beautifully as a portrait of these people. The result is a moving work, both in its sadness and also in the joy found in the lives of the local residents. What emerges is a portrait of a cold neighborhood where no one says hello to each other that is, Guerin discovers, full of warm relationships and people. Nevertheless, they couldn’t alleviate the loneliness that drove the man to take his life, and in fact may be part of the alienated modern world that caused the man’s death, since we learn there have been many other suicides in recent years. The only small weakness is that Guerin seems to have too many endings, unable to choose one effective note to conclude and instead throwing everything in. But this film certainly makes me curious to see more of his films.” —Marc Raymond , The One One Four

An Heir
dir. Jean-Marie Straub, 22 min, 2011, South Korea, In French w/ English subtitles

“Un Héritier (An Heir) compresses Barrès’s 1905 novel In Germany’s Service to profoundly moving effect. An account of an Alsatian’s life under German occupation, it begins with two men walking through a wood. The older (played by Straub), from Lorraine, asks the younger why he remains in Alsace, where he suffers. “I am an heir,” Monsieur Ehrmann replies, recounting his familial and professional ties in long monologues (eloquently delivered by actor Joseph Rottner). He is a doctor devoted to the people, even to the husband who assaulted him when he tried to save the man’s wife. He recalls the humiliations and punishments to which French-speaking Alsatian schoolchildren were subject. Straub moves from a tracking shot in the first section to long shots and close-ups; finally, he alternates between black leader and Rottner’s readings—a catalogue of film syntax as minimal as it is replete. By the end, the weight of history lived through the individual is more c omplete than in any imaginable reconstruction of the novel. Ehrmann’s remark that he is “assaulted by speeches that arise out of the earth” could easily describe Straub’s incomparable aesthetic and consummately beautiful images, in which sunlit faces, rocks, and trees are at one with the colors and music of the words spoken in their presence.” —Tony Pipolo, ArtForum

 Tickets
Tickets are $10 general admission. Tickets are available for purchase at the box office 30 minutes before each screening or anytime on Exit Art’s website HERE.

ABOUT DIGIMOVIES
Digimovies is Exit Art's ongoing, curated showcase of international digital cinema presented in our new movie theater. Programming covers various cinematic genres (drama/fiction, documentary, non-narrative/experimental) and emphasizes the work of emerging directors who are challenging cinematic conventions in provocative and exciting ways. Screenings regularly include in-person and virtual discussions with directors and other guests. In addition to screenings and Q&As, Digimovies presents video production workshops with accomplished directors and video artists.  

ABOUT EXIT ART
Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture that is prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We present experimental, historical and unique programming of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. Founded in 1982 by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and artist Papo Colo, Exit Art has grown from a pioneering alternative art space into an innovative cultural center that is committed to supporting artists whose work reflects on the socio-political transformations of our time. Exit Art is internationally recognized for its unmatched spirit of inventiveness, curatorial innovation and depth of programming in diverse media. Exit Art is always changing.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT
Digimovies is made possible by a major grant from the Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund with additional support provided by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
General exhibition support provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Bloomberg LP ; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; The Greenwall Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation; Lily Auchinclose Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Exit Art, 475 Tenth Ave @ 36th Street, 212.966.775, www.exitart.org