Ism, Ism, Ism: Countercultures and Undergrounds

At BAMPFA from Home

Watch this program on your TV, computer, or mobile device through our streaming partner, Eventive, beginning September 8.

https://bampfa.org/event/countercultures-and-undergrounds

Technical issues? See the FAQ.

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Livestream Conversation
Jesse Lerner, Alfredo Gurrola, Rolando Peña
Wednesday, September 9, 7 PM PDT

Join us for a live conversation with Jesse Lerner, a documentary filmmaker, curator, and writer and the coeditor of Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, and filmmakers Alfredo Gurrola and Rolando Peña. Access is included with rental of the streaming film program; you will receive an access link via email prior to the event.

Some of the filmmakers on this program explicitly embrace counterculture movements’ radical political goals while others’ ideological concerns are implicit, but all of the films are unified by their allegiance to a range of underground, youth, or countercultural phenomena. Several of the films document performances, ephemeral actions, or interventions in public space. Narcisa Hirsch’s Marabunta involves the interaction of a film audience after seeing Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Enrique Pineda Barnet’s Juventud, rebeldía, revolución offers documentation of a performance by an international collective led by Cuba’s Grupo de Teatro Experimental. Manuel DeLanda’s Ismism captures the filmmaker’s interventions on Manhattan billboards. Sérgio Péo’s Esplendor do martírio visualizes a group of intellectuals occupying and disrupting urban space, later to be removed by the Brazilian military. Rolando Peña, an iconic figure of Venezuela’s avant-garde, produces an impossible dialogue in Cotorra 2, echoing the complex relationship between intellectual debates and the noise of “progress.” Alfredo Gurrola’s Super-8 trip, based on a poem by Tomás Segovia, points to preoccupations of a radical, alternative culture. —Los Angeles Filmforum

Tickets: Rental fee: $12; discounted fee for BAMPFA members: $8. You will need to log in or create an Eventive account. Members: to receive your discount, you must log in to Eventive with the same email address you use to receive BAMPFA member communications.

https://watch.eventive.org/bampfa/play/5f469824076611344bd64551

This online screening is part of Los Angeles Filmforum’s screening series Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Cine experimental en América Latina). Ism, Ism, Ism is an unprecedented film series—the first in the U.S.—that surveys Latin America’s vibrant experimental production from the 1930s through today. Revisiting classic titles and introducing recent works by key figures and emerging artists, Ism, Ism, Ism takes viewers on a journey through a wealth of materials culled from unexpected corners of Latin American film archives. Key historical and contemporary works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, México, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the United States will be featured. The online screenings in Fall 2020 will conclude the touring portion of Ism, Ism, Ism.  www.ismismism.org

Ism, Ism, Ism is accompanied by a bilingual publication, Ism, Ism, Ism / Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Jesse Lerner and Luciano Piazza, editors, University of California Press, 2017) placing Latino and Latin American experimental cinema within a broader dialogue that explores different periods, cultural contexts, image-making models, and considerations of these filmmakers within international cinema. Available worldwide, https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520296084.

Ism, Ism, Ism is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Explore more at www.ismismism.org, lafilmforum.org, and www.pacificstandardtime.org.

Lead support for Ism, Ism, Ism is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.

Significant additional support comes from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.

Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

Promotional Support for these online screenings from WNDX Festival of Experimental Film, Winnipeg; Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque; Lightbox Film Center, University of the Arts, Philadelphia.