CROSSROADS 2017
presented May 19–21 by San Francisco Cinematheque and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
in association with the Canyon Cinema Foundation
curated by Steve Polta
all programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street (at Mission)
Phyllis Wattis Theater
Enter through the Joyce and Larry Stupski Entrance at Minna Street

Admission: $12 general/$10 Cinematheque and SFMOMA members with member code
Advance tickets available here.

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CROSSROADS 2017 program 1
Friday, May 19 at 7pm
sea to shining sea (we are stuck on this rock)
anticipated artist in person: Christopher Harris
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CROSSROADS festival opening program presents restless views of the new American century. Silenced voices of resistance speak across the rising tides and howling winds. Resilient speculative futures emerge from the dystopian present.

SCREENING: Birth of a Nation (2017) by Jem Cohen; Distant Shores (2016) by Christopher Harris; Colour My World (2017) by Mike Hoolboom; The Two Sights (2015) by Katherin McInnis; Playing Possum (2012) by Jamilah Sabur; H-E-L-L-O (2014) and Sine at the Canyon Sine at the Sea by Kelly Gabron (2016) by Cauleen Smith; Restless (2016) by Robert Todd.
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 2
Friday, May 19 at 9:15pm
Travis Wilkerson: Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
presented with live on-stage narration by director Travis Wilkerson in person
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…a harrowing, confrontational, deeply personal documentary, a Southern Gothic murder mystery directly addressing white racism in America, past and present. …a complex and confessional portrait of lingering family legacies of secrecy and shame, a powerful work not to be missed.

“...one of the most rigorous and intelligent American documentarians… (Amy Taubin, Artforum)
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 3
Saturday, May 20 at 1:45pm
a great unknown called trust
anticipated artists in person: Paul Clipson, Azin Seraj, Karly Stark
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Films presented in consideration of closeness and distances, spiritual grace, of intimacies expressed and longed for. Desires for connection are whispered, dreams lamented. Films as love letters sent across space and time. Considerations of the soul—whispered, howled, unspoken and sung.

SCREENING: Idyll (2014) by Mary Billyou; Feeler (2016) by Paul Clipson; 025 Sunset Red (2016) by Laida Lertxundi; See a Dog, Hear a Dog (2016) by Jesse McLean; Blue Movie (2015) by Michael A. Morris; Prima Materia (2015) by Azin Seraj; 2076 (Elegy) (2016) by Karly Stark.
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 4
Saturday, May 20 at 4:30pm
if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad
anticipated artists in person: Zachary Epcar, Erin Espelie, Brett Kashmere, Andrew Norman Wilson, Christina C. Nguyen, Vicky Smith
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Solids melt. Liquids become gas. Molten forms congeal. All becomes data, organized yet ephemeral. The entropic physical world succumbs the platonic grid and web. Alternately fascinated with and fearful of the fluidity of capital and the eternity of objects, the films on this program flirt—with highly ambivalent (yet unabashed) thrill—with the allure of the plastic, the eternity of youth, the electro-kick of glitch and game, and the eternal/infernal joy of the perfect pop tune.

SCREENING: Pattern Language (2016) by Peter Burr; Night Watch (2014) by Danaya Chulphuthiphong; Return to Forms (2016) by Zachary Epcar; 视网膜 (A Net To Catch the Light) (2016) by Erin Espelie; Formations (2016) by Brett Kashmere; You Don’t Own Me (2014) by Christina C. Nguyen; Primal (2016) by Vicky Smith; Ode to Seekers 2012 (2016) by Andrew Norman Wilson.
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 5
Saturday, May 20 at 8pm
Apparent Motion: Live Cinema works by Rose Kallal, Andrew Puls and Clipson/Churchill/Davis
Paul Clipson, John Davis, Joshua Churchill, Rose Kallal and Andrew Puls in person
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SPECIAL NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond our control, Britt Al-Busultan is unable to appear with us this evening. As a last-minute substitution, we will present the Bay Area “sneak-preview” premiere of Paul Clipson‘s 3-projector work Spectrum States, to be screened with live soundtrack by John Davis and Joshua Churchill.

As classical frame-by-frame filmmaking—the art of plastic images, mechanical media interface and live projected light—becomes increasingly anachronistic in mainstream festivals and movie halls, Performance Cinema, an ever-renewing, always present-tense live art practice born of the ashes of twentieth century industrial cinema, roars raging once again to center-stage! Apparent Motion, CROSSROADS’ centerpiece event since 2011, celebrates this international phenomenon of sight and sound with live, spatialized, multi-projector film/sound performances by Rose Kallal (New York NY), local master of live analog video abstraction, Andrew Puls and—JUST ADDED—Spectrum States by Paul Clipson, John Davis and Joshua Churchill.
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 6
Sunday, May 21 at 12pm
at the foot of a great monument (this ain’t no storybook)
anticipated artist in person: Rajee Samarasinghe
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Lush cinematic lyricism as expansive anti-ethnography; the world breathes in from outside the frame. Realist portraiture as poetry. Eight films on migration, diaspora, rootedness and ritual, cultural/familial bonding and estrangement. A view of a re-enacted exorcism, presented through a reclaimed colonialist lens. The heroic and traumatic legacies and histories of slavery and resistance in Jamaica and Brazil. An intimate look at life, labor, location and family in the American South; familial estrangement in Los Angeles. A moving portrait of Chemehuevi/Anishinaabe poet Diane Burns.

SCREENING: Kindah (2016) by Ephraim Asili; About something that concerns us all/Sobre aquilo que nos diz respeito (2016) by Cristiana Miranda; The Queen of Material (2014) and The Spectre Watches Over Her (2016) by Rajee Samarasinghe; Carrs Down South (2017) and R-15 (2017) by Kevin Jerome Everson; Droga! (2014) by Miko Revereza; I'll Remember You as You Were, Not as What You'll Become (2016) by Sky Hopinka.
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 7
Sunday, May 21, 2017 at 2:30pm
a thought comes into your head (like an object)
anticipated artist in person: Anton Ginzburg, J.M. Martínez
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Is it you? This program of works explores strange and liminal spaces, uncanny and unworldly. Fragments of surveilled narratives. Imaginary filmic outtakes. Cinematic renderings or ghosts, phantoms and spirits. Machine eye vision. Hesitating human forms in dematerialized spaces. Physical and narrative gestures lead to more questions as the tape continues to roll. Are our thoughts our own?

SCREENING: Orpheus (Outtakes) (2012), Palms (2015) and Delphi Falls (2016) by Mary Helena Clark; Displacements (2015) by Anton Ginzburg; Chipping Off, too (2015) by Karissa Hahn; A Rendering (2016) by LIMITS; Cyclical Refractions (2016) by J.M. Martínez; Traces (2014) by Erin Weisgerber.
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 8
Sunday, May 21 at 5:30pm
the photon doesn’t give a damn
anticipated artist in person: Anton Ginzburg
Advance tickets here.
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Ranging from subtle emulsive photochemical magic, found footage poetry, aggressively asserted diatribe and chillingly detached electronic landscape study, the films on this program envision mediated spaces beyond our grasp. Uncanny visioning systems, familiar yet alien. Cinema technologies past and future, for us, by us, with us and without us. Welcome to the machine.

SCREENING: Last Train (2016) by Dianna Barrie; Reworlding (Elizabeth) (2016) by Alison Bennett, Jeremy Martino, Greg Penn & Autumn Royal; Ultraviolet (2015) by Anton Ginzburg; Les larmes d'Éros (2014) by Andrée-Anne Roussel & Guillaume Vallée; Answer Print (2016) and Wedding Song (2016) by Mónica Savirón; Le bulbe tragique (2016) by Guillaume Vallée.
Full program details here.

CROSSROADS 2017 program 9
Sunday, May 21 at 8pm
a few (lost) reflections
anticipated artists in person: Brianna Nelson, Greta Snider, Natalie Tsui
Advance tickets here.
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From far beneath the ocean waves to the outer rings of Saturn, the films in this program present distant mental landscapes and consider isolation and human connection; resiliency; fantastical visions of withdrawal; escape and reconvergence; conditions of captivity and resistance. Waves roll, parallel to the zodiac, as senses reel and planets turn.

SCREENING: The Rules of the Game (2015) by Julia Dogra-Brazell; Skin in the Game (2016) by Ariana Gerstein; This Bogeyman (2016) by Pere Ginard; In Titan’s Goblet (1991) by Peter Hutton; Pulling a Gray Rearview Rapture (2016) by Brianna Nelson & Natalie Tsui; Les eaux dormantes/Sleeping Waters (2016) by Emmanuel Piton; Space (2015) by Emmanuel Piton & Emilie Morin; Moon Tendon (2015) by Jamilah Sabur; Rendition (2016) by Greta Snider.
Full program details here.

Pictured above: Last Train (2016) by Dianna Barrie

CROSSROADS 2017 is generously supported by: National Endowment for the Arts, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Foundation, George Lucas Family Foundation, Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Foundation and the Willow Foundation.