Apr
3
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Deborah
Stratman's Kings of the Sky
Deborah Stratman in person!
Filmforum welcomes back Deborah Stratman as she presents the Los Angeles
premiere of her latest work. An experimental documentary about resistance,
balance and fame, Kings of the Sky follows tightrope artist Adil
Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst
the Uyghurs, a turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy.
Kings of the Sky (2004, 68 min., color & b&w, stereo,
video)
“This project was shot over four months with Adil and his troupe
as we toured Chinese Turkestan, performing nightly in tiny oasis villages.
Adil descends from a long line of Dawaz (tightrope) performers, and is
now teaching his daughters the craft. Since he first broke the Guinness
World Record in 1997, Adil’s fame has eclipsed anything achieved
by his forbears. He has become an inadvertent national icon for his people’s
struggle, bearing uncanny resemblance to the Dawaz hero of an old Uyghur
myth who once freed his countrymen from an oppressive reign of invading
ghosts, an apt metaphor for the ongoing tension between the Uyghurs and
the Han Chinese.
Despite years of government repression, nationalist sentiment amongst
ethnic Uyghurs quietly boils under the surface. Recent separatist demonstrations
in the 1990s resulted in the government’s “Strike Hard”
policy to incarcerate, and in some cases execute, outspoken Uyghur nationalists
– a policy being exacted in increasingly harsh ways since September
11th. Throughout Xinjiang there is a heavy police and military presence.
News is controlled, travel and mosque attendance are restricted and public
meetings are forbidden. One can be jailed for years on mere suspicion
of subversion. In this environment, resistance tends to happen in smaller
ways." – Deborah Stratman
“Kings of the Sky” hovers between a traveler’s diary,
a visual poem of ethnographic imagery, and an advocacy video for preserving
a traditional art form. It’s as if Stratman ran off, joined the
circus and learned a balancing act of her own. - Bill Stamets, Chicago
Sun Times
Deborah Stratman, primarily a film/videomaker, works in other media including
photography, drawing, sound and architectural intervention. She is currently
soliciting public responses about fear (call 1-800-585-1078) and evacuation
routes for a calendar project in Texas. Her recently acclaimed film In
Order Not To Be Here examines anxiety, surveillance and suburban
environments. She spent last spring in Laos as a photographer and facilitator
for the Photo Archive Group’s Living Photographers of Laos project
and is presently working on some short films about falling. She teaches
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago
and is currently a visiting instructor at Cal Arts.
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