Experimentations 3: Between Land and Sky, Accounting for the In-Between

Brilliant Noise, by Semiconductor

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Experimentations: Imag(In)ing Knowledge in Film, Program 3

Between Land and Sky, Accounting for the In-Between:

Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán

Thursday September 19, 2024, 7:30 pm

At Eagle Theatre at Vidiots, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90041

Tickets: $13 general, $11.50 military/students/seniors, free for Filmforum members

At https://vidiotsfoundation.org/movies/nostalgia-for-the-light/

NOTE THE CHANGE IN DAY AND LOCATION!

This program takes Césaire and Wynter’s call for a science of the word as a point of reference. Chile’s Atacama Desert is a natural environment where the heat of the sun keeps human remains intact (such as those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, "disappeared" by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973). Astronomers also flock to the food of the mountains to study space while the surviving relatives of the disappeared search for their bodies nearby. Guzman, a stalwart and champion of third cinema, the anti-capitalist, socialist cinema movement of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, uses the Atacama Desert as a stand-in for the expanse of the human condition, undergirded by the scientific wonder that the desert propagates. His feature film Nostalgia for the Light will be preceded by Solar Eclipse, the first known moving image captured of space as a way to orient the audience towards the wonders of our solar system before challenging the way it is romanticized in popular media and Brilliant Noise, a granular and intimate look at the Sun.

Curated by Jane de Almeida and Jheanelle Brown.

Experimentations: Imag(In)ing Knowledge in Film is Filmforum’s expansive film series and upcoming publication that investigates the ways that experimental and scientific films produce and question the visualization of the world. Combining artist films utilizing scientific imagery, science and natural history films, and films of indigenous and traditional knowledge, the series examines how science, nature, and technology films shape our understanding of humans, nature, gender, knowledge, and progress. The multi-venue public screening series presents analog and digital time-based media incorporating diverse scientific and experimental film traditions from across the globe. The series will include eighteen screenings between September 2024 and February 2025, with films and digital works from 1874 to today from around the world, multiple guests, panels and wonderful collaborations that will reveal the possibilities and circumstances of cinema in this realm.

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit: pst.art.

Major support for Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film is provided by the Getty Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional Support from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

Solar Eclipse

By Nevil Maskelyne

1900, digital version, b&w, silent, 1 min.

‘Nevil Maskelyne, celebrated magician, proprietor of the Egyptian Hall and astronomy

enthusiast, filmed this solar eclipse in North Carolina on May 28, 1900. Recently discovered in the collection of the Royal Astronomical Society, the film is believed to be the first surviving astronomical film in the world. It is a fragment showing the corona around totality and the 'diamond ring' effect.’ – British Film Institute

Brilliant Noise

By Semiconductor

2006, digital, b&w, sound, 5:47

Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun's finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This black and white grainy quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, usually hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected by satellites orbiting the Earth as single frames, or files of information, that are then reorganised into spectral sequences. The soundtrack brings to light the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating the intensity of the brightness into audio manipulation.

Nostalgia for the Light

By Patricio Guzmán

2010, digital, color, sound, 90 min.

Master director Patricio Guzmán, famed for his political documentaries capturing the history and politics of Chile (The Battle of Chile, Salvador Allende, The Pinochet Case), traveled 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth. Atop the mountains of the Atacama Desert, astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky is so translucent that it allows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe.

So while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families‘ histories.

Melding the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the Chilean women, Nostalgia for the Light is a gorgeous, moving, and deeply personal odyssey.