presented by San Francisco Cinematheque and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

anticipated artists in person: Jon Behrens, Lachlan Turczan and representatives of Colectivo Los ingrávidos
pictured above: The Making and Unmaking of the Earth (2017) by Jessica Bardsley

Admission: $12 general/$10 Cinematheque and SFMOMA members with member code
Advance tickets available here.
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CROSSROADS 2018 opens with a program of solar visions and earthbound meditations on the long and short of infinity. Atomic waste storage and personalized experience of trauma are realized in manmade and natural geological structures. The vertiginous scope of planetary time clashes with the urgencies of the here and now. Eternity of the flicker of a frame. Program includes part 1 of Colectivo Los ingrávidos’ Sun Quartet (which concludes in CROSSROADS program 9).

SCREENING:

Cymatic Sun (2014) by Lachlan Turczan (USA); projection performance, color, sound, 11 minutes bay area premiere
Cymatic Sun is a projected artwork that translates sound into a visual experience using the kinetic properties of water. A large parabolic mirror, acting as both vessel and optic, is filled with water and vibrated with a transducer that plays both audible and subsonic frequencies. These sound waves propagate through the water to form cymatic patterns that when illuminated, refract light to create real-time projections. Distinct Faraday waves are visible when playing particular harmonies while dissonance turn the image into a blur of motion and scattered light. (Lachlan Turczan)

The Sun Quartet, part 1: Sun Stone/Piedra de Sol (2017) by Colectivo Los ingrávidos (Mexico); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes, exhibition file from the makers world premiere
Colectivo Los ingrávidos (2011) emerges from the necessity to dismantle the audiovisual grammar that the aesthetic of the television and cinematic corporatism used effectively to ensure the dissemination of audiovisual ideology through which it achieves social and perceptual control over the population.
The Sun Quartet is a solar composition in four movements, political composition in four natural elements, kinematic composition in four body mutations: a sun stone where youth blooms in protest, a river overflowing the streets, the burning plain rising in the city. And finally the clamor of the people who after the night of September 26, 2014 shook to Mexico. The massive disappearance of 43 students of Ayotzinapa opened a breach in the Mexican political body. The Sun Quartet is a cinematographic composition of this event. A perceptive experience of the current Mexican war.
Sun Stone: The Stone of the Five Eras sculptured in the film. Youth blooms in protest after the night of September 26, 2014 when Mexico experienced the massive disappearance of 43 students of Ayotzinapa. (Colectivo Los ingrávidos)

Xun (2017) by Lichun Tseng (Taiwan/Netherlands); 16mm, b&w, silent, 1 minute, print from the maker U.S. premiere
A journey of search; a search of a journey. (Lichun Tseng)

Lang (2017) by Lichun Tseng (Taiwan/Netherlands); double projection 16mm, b&w/color, silent, 3 minutes, prints from the maker U.S. premiere
Different moments disappear and reappear, different moments come together to form a new moment. It is a decomposing and recomposing landscape inspired by the cycle of construction and deconstruction in nature. (Lichun Tseng)

a Film Containing Trees (2017) by Jon Behrens (USA); 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker bay area premiere
This film was the first film I shot on my newly acquired Arriflex-S camera. I shot a full 100ft roll of 7207 from start to finish without stopping. I fixed my camera onto the trees around my lower Queen Anne area home in Seattle from my deck. I then backed up the film to beginning and re-exposed the film from another angle. I passed my hand in front of the lens during the second exposure to blend the two images together. The sound for this film was created from industrial sounds I recorded also in the same area and manipulated with effects. (Jon Behrens)

The Making and Unmaking of the Earth (2017) by Jessica Bardsley (USA); digital video, color, sound, 17 minutes, exhibition file from the maker U.S. premiere
Combining archival footage of earth processes with interviews describing mysterious physical experiences and emotional attachments, this film turns to the earth to explore how everything we bury deep inside eventually speaks through the geology of the body. (Jessica Bardsley)

Bending to Earth (2015) by Rosa Barba (Germany/Italy); 35mm, color, sound, 15 minutes, print from Studio Rosa Barba bay area premiere
Rosa Barba’s Bending to Earth is a further investigation into inscriptions and transformation of society, manifested in the landscape. Several radioactive fields are circled by a hand camera from a helicopter while a recorded voice-over which appears through several—often distorted—world radio stations is describing the materials of those constructions and offers a mediation of order systems and landscape archives. (Rosa Barba)

Ramona (2016) by Susan DeLeo (USA); digital video, color, silent, 4 minutes, exhibition file from the maker U.S. premiere
A homage to the filmmaker's late mother, a journey through 8mm home movies obsessively watched as a child and now reimagined. It is a calling on the light of memory and love. (Susan DeLeo)

House and Universe (2015) by Antoinette Zwirchmayr (Austria); 16mm, color, silent, 4 minutes, print from Light Cone bay area premiere
The contemplative serenity Antoinette Zwirchmayr creates in House and Universe is offset by notions of restlessness and unease that the images of a dormant, naked young woman—alternatingly shown in a sparse, bright motel room and the blooming desert landscape outside—provide. Shown only in fragments, the sleeper seems blissfully unconnected to her surroundings. Tinged in warm sunlight yet subtly charged with associations of isolation and vulnerability, the film presents a dreamlike, almost hallucinogenic portrayal of a person in a state of transcendence. (Light Cone)

 

CROSSROADS 2018 is generously supported by: the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund/Grants for the Arts, the Willow Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Cinematheque’s Members and Donors.