July 26, 2021
Join us on e-flux Video & Film on Monday, July 26 for the repeat screenings and wrap of Planet C, a six-part program of films and essays put together by filmmaker and writer Charles Mudede as the seventh edition of the online series Artist Cinemas.
Planet C has featured films by Alex Rivera, Stephanie Syjuco, Adam Sekuler and Karn Junkinsmith, Charles Mudede and Roxanne Emadi, Saki Mafundikwa, and Zia Mohajerjasbi; and essays by Charles Mudede written in conversation with the filmmakers.
The films will stream through Monday, May July 26, 11:59pm EST. Watch them here.
Artist Cinemas presents Planet C
Convened by Charles Mudede
Alex Rivera, Sleep Dealer, 2008
90 minutes
Accompanied by the essay “Imagining the Past and Remembering the Future in Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer”
Stephanie Syjuco, Body Double (Platoon), 2006
120 minutes
Accompanied by the essay “The Cinema of the Block Universe in Stephanie Syjuco’s Body Double (Platoon)”
Adam Sekuler and Karn Junkinsmith, Interpretive Site: Hanford Reach, 2009
8 minutes
Accompanied by the essay “Disaster Eden Cinema: : Adam Sekuler and Karn Junkinsmith’s Interpretive Site: Hanford Reach”
Charles Mudede and Roxanne Emadi, Twilight of the Goodtimes, 2010
11 minutes
Accompanied by the essay “The Spirit of the Good Times”
Saki Mafundikwa, Shungu: The Resilience of a People, 2009
54 minutes
Accompanied by the essay “The Colliding Worlds of Shungu”
Zia Moharjerjashi, The Charcoal Sky: Chapter 5, 2017
9:36 minutes
Accompanied by the essay “Seattle’s Charcoal Sky”
About the program
“In 1987, I walked into the Rainbow, a cinema house in Harare, Zimbabwe, sat in a half-filled theater, and watched what was to become, for me, the greatest visualization of a spacecraft (a US military dropship) descending on an alien planet. The movie: James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). The sequence: stars above, ambient planet below, the sound of army snare drums, the abrupt release from the mothership, the violent shaking of the soldiers and civilians, the breaking from the alien clouds, the stabilization of the spacecraft, the images of the planet’s surface on a monitor, the smooth landing and deployment of the tank.
Because this sequence is baked into my being, I decided to call my contribution to the Artist Cinemas series Planet C. It too involves the descent to a cinematic world that is certainly alien to you but happens to be of my own making. This world, Planet C, has a history. It began taking shape in 1977, when I watched my first movie in a theater (Star Wars at the Guild 45th Theatre in Seattle, Washington). It matured during the ’80s, hardened during the ’90s, and, since the 2000s, is the home of everything that relates to films (making them, watching them, writing about them).
The Galactic Empire is here on Planet C, and so is the vividly virid vegetation of postcolonial war cinema. There’s a wasteland of dead nuclear reactors, and lasers that can detect the collision of black holes. And we have cities in the dust. Cities with the rubble of buildings that were once part of a short-lived experiment with public housing. Planet C (Claire? Charles? Cinema?) has its fair share of disaster Edens.” (Read the full text here.)
Planet C is a program convened by Charles Mudede as part of the series Artist Cinemas. It ran for six weeks from April 9 through July 26, 2021, screening a new film each week accompanied by an essay by Mudede written in conversation with the filmmaker(s).
Planet C wraps on Monday, July 26 with a repeat screening of all six films presented in the program, streaming until 11:59pm EST. Watch the films here.
About Artist Cinemas
Artist Cinemas is a new e-flux platform focusing on exploring the moving image as understood by people who make film. It is informed by the vulnerability and enchantment of the artistic process—producing non-linear forms of knowledge and expertise that exist outside of academic or institutional frameworks. It will also acknowledge the circles of friendship and mutual inspiration that bind the artistic community. Over time this platform will trace new contours and produce different understandings of the moving image.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
