presented by San Francisco Cinematheque and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
anticipated artists in person: Ephraim Asili, Dianna Barrie, Susan MacWilliam, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Paige Taul and Richard Tuohy
pictured above: Junkanoo Talk (2017) by Rhea Storr
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ADMISSION DETAILS
Single Screening Admission: $12 general/$10 Cinematheque and SFMOMA members with member code. Single Screening advance tickets available here.
CROSSROADS festival day pass (Saturday & Sunday only): $25
CROSSROADS festival day pass provides admission to all daily CROSSROADS screenings and general admission access to SFMOMA galleries (including CROSSROADS screenings in SFMOMA’s Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box Gallery). Saturday, June 9 CROSSROADS festival day pass available here.
NOTE: Admission to the special exhibition René Magritte: The Fifth Season is not included with the festival day pass but can be purchased here.
Films on diaspora, migration, exodus and resistance, the flows of traffic, bodies, air, water and culture. The self-organizing motor traffic of the streets of Jakarta teems. Bahamian Junkanoo costumes and rhythms rake ‘n’ scrape. The spirit of a dreaming Diana Ross enacts visions of Mahogany while Sly the Family Stone hit the tarmac.
SCREENING:
Fluid Frontiers (2017) by Ephraim Asili (USA); digital video, color, sound, 23 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
Fluid Frontiers is the fifth and final film in the series entitled The Diaspora Suite exploring Asili’s personal relationship to the African Diaspora. Shot along the Detroit River, Fluid Frontiers explores the relationship between concepts of resistance and liberation, exemplified by the Underground Railroad, Broadside Press and artworks of local Detroit Artists. All of the poems are read from original copies of Broadside Press publications by natives of the Detroit Windsor region and were shot without rehearsal. (Ephraim Asili)
Pancoran (2017) by Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy (Australia); 16mm, b&w, sound, 9 minutes, print from the maker bay area premiere
Jakarta traffic moves with the harmonious chaos of complex self organising entities everywhere. Through contact printer matting techniques this mass transport becomes denser and denser until only the fluid futility of motion/motionlessness remains. Jakarta traffic stands as proof of the paradox of motion. (Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy)
Pull Down (2016) by Susan MacWilliam (Ireland); digital video, b&w, silent, 3 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
Conjuring up the dark spaces of the séance room, Pull Down intimately observes the repeated collapsing and slumping of a girl through the viewing lens of a camera. Continuing the artist’s explorations of the phenomena of spiritualism, Pull Down draws attention to the role of the camera as observer of the medium within historic psychical research studies. (Susan MacWilliam)
Olly Olly Oxen Free (2017) by Julia Dogra-Brazell (UK); digital video, b&w, sound, 3 minutes, exhibition file from the maker U.S. premiere
The title refers to a phrase once popular in children’s games such as hide and seek. It signals either that players may come out into the open with impunity without losing the game or there is a change of sides or that the game is over. (Julia Dogra-Brazell)
Junkanoo Talk (2017) by Rhea Storr (UK); digital video, color, sound, 12 minutes, exhibition file from the maker
Who has the right to speak about a given culture? An examination of the colourful world of Junkanoo, a carnival of the Bahamas where abstraction is used to explore cultural identity.
Junkanoo Talk investigates the language of celebration through carnival. It employs the techniques of costume crafting particular to Junkanoo, a carnival of the Bahamas. The sound is produced on the body and takes the rhythms of Rake ‘n’ Scrape music, also particular to the Bahamas. James Baldwin is quoted, speaking of the complexities of being an African American living in France, along with the Bahamian Tourism Minister who speaks of appropriation and the body as a voice. Colour is coded in a way which suggests an internal logic, the layering on of a costume comparative to the layering on of a language. The film seeks a near forensic way of looking, yet the viewer is systematically denied the full picture. What is concealed or revealed is carefully orchestrated in order to facilitate a questioning of carnival. The body is considered a highly abstracted mediator to confront an identity politics which is in between. Authored by an artist of mixed race, Junkanoo Talk questions the slippages which occur when a language performs across cultures, asking what can be translated and where resistances occur. (Rhea Storr)
Mahogany Too (2018) by Akosua Adoma Owusu (USA/Ghana); digital video, color, sound, 4 minutes, exhibition file from the maker
Mahogany Too takes the 1975 cult classic Mahogany—a fashion-infused romantic drama—as its base. The film examines and revives Diana Ross’ iconic portrayal of Tracy Chambers. Analogue film provides vintage tones which emphasize the essence of the character, re-creating Tracy’s qualities through fashion, modeling and styling. (Akosua Adoma Owusu)
Transit (2017) by Paige Taul (USA); 16mm, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker bay area premiere
A conversation with University of Virginia alumni about the Transition Program during Black Alumni weekend. (Paige Taul)
*Transition Program: A summer program in which select students take classes before their first semester to ensure they are academically and can adjust to University life.
How Can I Ever Be Late (2017) by Kevin Jerome Everson & Claudrena N. Harold (USA); digital video, b&w, sound, 5 minutes, exhibition file from Picture Palace Pictures bay area premiere
How Can I Ever Be Late takes a Sly and the Family Stone tarmac arrival as a point of departure. (Kevin Jerome Everson & Claudrena N. Harold)
Crow Requiem (2015) by Cauleen Smith (USA); digital video, color, sound, 11 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
A Speculation: Humans are estranged from our origins. We left the commonwealth of Animals and declared ourselves the custodians of that dominion. And now We are Man; and all else is Other. Our knowledge of ourselves is a fog that consumes us. We cannot see past it, because we do not want to look into it. There are more than two points of view, but the fog makes it difficult to see. This is a sad song, a blues song, an elegy for the past sphere of consciousness we abandoned in favor of eating our own young. (Cauleen Smith)
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.