Precarity in Film: Experimental Ecologies - Trembling Landscapes

"Altiplano" by Malena Szlam

Precarity in Film: Experimental Ecologies

Experimental and Alternative Film from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain

Wednesday March 29, 2023,

At 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 W. Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057

Full info and RSVPs: Admission is free. Please check back to RSVP.

https://visionsandvoices.usc.edu/eventdetails/?event_id=42538396705187

In person:

Schedule:

Tuesday, March 28, at USC

2:30-4:30 p.m.: Experiment and Process, Taper Hall of Humanities (THH) 309K

7:30–9:30 p.m.: On Precarity, Ray Stark Family Theatre, SCA 108

Wednesday, March 29, at 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles

4:30–6:30 p.m.: The Vulnerable Gaze

8–10 p.m.: Trembling Landscapes

6:30-7:30pm - Public reception

Trembling Landscapes

8:00-10:00pm

Screening time: 75 min

Q&A with filmmakers

Masks are still required at Filmforum shows - N95 or KN95.

Precarity—a concept referring to dispossession, scarcity, displacement, and uncertainty—is increasingly common not only in social scientific literature on global conditions of exclusion, poverty, and ecological exploitation, but also in philosophical debates thanks to feminist thinkers like Judith Butler. For Butler, precarity indexes the material conditions of minoritized bodies and communities, as well as signaling the more universal condition of interdependence and vulnerability, the notion that our lives are “always in some sense in the hands of the other.” Whether it be due to limited access to specific technologies, a decision to inhabit a disappearing medium, or the intention to witness spaces of abjection where the eye does not want to look, precarity figures in the production, imagination, and (de)formations of much experimental work.

“Precarity in Film: Experimental Ecologies” features experimental, alternative, independent, and underground films from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain that engage with ecological, racial, and material precarity. The works selected depict and distort, exhibit and expose the extreme conditions facing communities and landscapes of their home territories, as well as the precarious quality of the production and preservation of experimental film.

Filmmakers and artists (some in person):

Valentina Alvarado (Spain/Venezuela)

Gabrielle Civil (United States)

Patricia Ferreira Pará Yxapy (Paraguay/Brazil)

Sofía Gallisá Muriente (Puerto Rico)

Narcisa Hirsch (Argentina)

Claudia Joskowicz (Bolivia/United States)

Azucena Losana (Mexico)

Rocío Mesa (Spain/United States)

Everlane Moraes (Brazil)

Tomas Rautenstrauch (Argentina)

Adriana Rondón Rivero (Venezuela/United States)

Malena Szlam (Chile/Canada)

This event is curated by Noraedén Mora Méndez, doctoral candidate in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, and Erin Graff Zivin, professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature, in collaboration with Los Angeles Filmforum.

Co-sponsored by the USC Experimental Humanities Lab, USC Del Amo Foundation, Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, USC Visions and Voices, Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, Visual Studies Research Institute, Doctoral Program in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, and the School of Cinematic Arts.