Projections film series
Fall 2014
RISD Museum
224 Benefit Street
Providence, RI 02903
T +1 401 454 6500
www.risdmuseum.org
The RISD Museum’s new program, Projections, screens films and videos by contemporary artists working between the gallery space and the cinema. Projections screenings include feature-length films and shorter works by multiple artists that develop meaningful narratives, document and investigate the fabric of the changing world in which we live, and make pointed political statements. Each screening features an introduction by the artist, a guest lecturer, or a member of the RISD Museum curatorial staff. An opportunity for discussion follows each screening.
Co-sponsored by Rhode Island School of Design’s Film, Animation, and Video Department and Brown University’s Department of Modern Culture and Media.
Free with RISD Museum admission. Registration requested. Visit www.risdmuseum.org for details.
Following the October 23 presentation of David Hartt’s The Republic and Stray Light, the RISD Museum announces the following film screenings for late fall 2014.
Derek Jarman: Blue
Thursday, November 13, 6:30pm
Introduction by Richard Brown Baker Curator Dominic Molon, post-screening response by Jacques Khalip, associate professor of English and of modern culture and media, Brown University.
Blue is the 12th and final feature film by British artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942–1994). Released in 1993, four months before the filmmaker’s death from AIDS-related complications, it comprises a single shot of saturated blue color that fills the screen, functioning as a backdrop to narration by Jarman and actors closely associated with him, such as Tilda Swinton and Nigel Terry. The intense glow of the single color suggests the artist’s fading eyesight, while the soundtrack indelibly evokes the mental, physical, and emotional strain caused by his terminal illness.
Jarman, internationally renowned for his independent classics such as Jubilee (1977), Caravaggio (1986), and The Last of England (1988), has increasingly been embraced within a fine-arts context both for the profound influence of his cinematic vision and for his distinctive work in painting.
The screening of Blue, part of a yearlong investigation of color by artists, scholars, and scientists at RISD and Brown, will feature a response by Jacques Khalip, author of “‘The Archaeology of Sound’: Derek Jarman’s Blue and Queer Audiovisuality in the Time of AIDS” (Differences, 2010).
Šejla Kamerić, 1395 Days Without Red
Thursday, December 11, 6:30pm
Introduction by A. Will Brown, curatorial assistant of contemporary art, post-screening response by Keith Brown, professor of international studies and director of the Brown International Advanced Research Institute, Brown University.
1395 Days Without Red (2011) began as a collaboration between Bosnian artistŠejla Kamerić and fellow artists Anri Sala and Ari Benjamin Meyers, and delves into the lingering effect of the 1992–94 siege of Sarajevo. In spite of the violence, the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra continued to play, and the film follows a female protagonist as she makes her way through an eerie cityscape and walks through the orchestra’s rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6 (“Pathétique”), which becomes the soundtrack for the film. As she darts through intersections and alleys, the film cuts between the rehearsal and her journey, and the two drive one another with a tense, seemingly choreographed anxiety.
Šejla Kamerić (b. 1976, Bosnian) currently lives and works in Sarajevo and Berlin. In 1999 she completed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo in graphic design. 1395 Days Without Red has been shown at international venues including the 17th Sarajevo Film Festival, Sarajevo, Bosnia; Manchester International Festival MFI, Manchester, England; Zagreb Film Festival MSU Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia; MACBA, Barcelona, Spain; and the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
