Films and videos to be screened include:

·    Q (2002, 15 min.) – A fantasy of globalization set in a multicultural consumer space that fulfills its shoppers’ and viewers’ every desire and need. Consumption of art, merchandise, and entertainment is flattened and one and the same–a fluid, seamless experiential encounter.

·    Squiggle (2005, 21 min.) – A personal exploration of a young man’s desire to understand himself as an artist as he returns to India, his homeland. While a group of Indian workers build a mud-architecture performance stage by hand, he muses on the art world and ideas of ritual, tradition, and place.

·    Swivel (2003-05, 15 min.) – An experimental work where the camera continuously swivels around to create a 360° panoramic portrait of new Shanghai, passing from the suburbs into the city and back.

·    Shrivel (2005, 8 min.) – A surrealist fantasy of a hyper- globalized Indonesian suburb where American consumer culture and lifestyle have taken over. Amidst tract homes, bad hair, and incessant cell phone calls, a hysteric, soap-operatic mystery unfolds.

·    Green Dolphin (2008, 9 min.) – Finding its narrative inspiration in the 1947 Lana Turner film Green Dolphin Street, this hybrid films follows a Filipino Canadian woman as she recounts her complicated romantic affairs (which may or may not be imagined), while a spatial continuum is opened between her suburban Canadian setting and the bustling streets of Jakarta.

·    Mount Shasta (2008, 8 min.) – A 16-mm film of a puppet play created by Husain and based on incidents during a road trip through Oregon. Music by Canadian independent recording artist Mantler (a.k.a. Chris A. Cummings).

Get tickets here.

Future fall screenings will feature the hilarious Alison Kobayashi (Canada), and Lee Wang (USA) and will include post-screening discussions with the filmmakers

Tia Lessin’s and Carl Deal’s Trouble the Water is currently playing at IFC Center. This doc has been getting fantastic reviews but in case you need further convincing let’s reel out Dargis again: “one of the best American documentaries in recent memory.”

And finally Patrick Creadon’s I.O.U.S.A. is playing at the Quad and Regal E-Walk Stadium 13. Debt ain’t just a theory to me so I’m interested to see this doc.

Still from Lee Isaac Chung’s Munyrangabo, playing at Rooftop Films this Saturday.

Still from Clayton’s footage of the 1988 Tompkins Square Riots.

The roof of the Open Road Rooftop has some amazing graffiti murals and sitting up there with Clayton in his signature embroidered cap, snapping photos of the audience (gentrifiers though we may be!), felt electric. A.R.E. Weapons provided much of the music for the film and they played a great set before it started, including my cheesy favorite Don’t Be Scared. If you live in NYC, or any city for that matter, and you care about what happens to communities and local histories you should see this film (and if you’re one of those people who keep moving into the horrible new chrome and glass buildings in my neighborhood you should definitely see this film!)

A.R.E. Weapons performing before the Rooftop Films screening of Captured with some of Clayton’s photographs projected behind them.

It’s going to be an amazing evening of panels, music and films -  tickets are only $6 online so please come out to play.

Meira Blaustein (representing screening co-presenter: Woodstock Film Festival), Executive Producer Daniel Wolff, Producer Peter Saraf, Director Jonathan Demme, the incredible Michèle Montas, and Danny Glover.

Albert Maysles’ Psychiatry in Russia and the little seen Showman are screening at the last of this season’s Stranger Than Fiction tomorrow night. Al will be there for the Q&A – should be a treat.

A strong outreach element includes the following events at the IFC Center:

Fri, May 23rd, 7 pm – Dialogue with Progresive Muslims Meet Up Group
Satur, May 24th – Human Rights Day
Tues, May 27th, 7 pm – Interfaith dialogue
Wednes, May 28th, 7 pm – Forum on HIV/AIDS and Islam
Thurs, May 29th, 7 pm – Forum on South Asian/Diaspora/Gender/Immigration issues

Here’s the trailer:

I have been getting rather obsessed with Michael Pollan’s writing because of King Corn and thinking about my food perhaps more than I’d like to! I just read Pollan’s excellent Power Steer article in The New Kings of Nonfiction (a fantastic book by the way, edited by This American Life’s Ira Glass).

Check out local listings for King Corn on the Independent Lens website. Dinner will never be the same again!

Unfortunately I’m going miss them all because (fortunately) I’ll be at True/False this weekend. Whoo  hoo! (I can’t believe WaMu co-opted that expression by the way. Bastards!)

Punishment Park, Dir Peter Watkins, 1971