Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, July 12 for a screening of Jorge Jácome’s Past Perfect (2019) and Flores (2017) introduced by the artist via pre-recorded video; on Thursday, July 14 for a screening of Pedro Neves Marques’s Meat is Not Murder (2021), The Bite (2019), and The Ovary (2021) followed by a conversation with the artist; and on Tuesday, July 19 for “How can an artwork (or its author) be one and many at the same time?,” an artist talk by Ahmet Öğüt.
In addition to the three Screening Room presentations, Bar Laika will screen The Dreams of the Centenarians by Robertas Verba (1969) on Wednesday, July 13.
Scroll below for more information and links. We also look forward to seeing you at the Screening Room on Thursday, July 7 for Two Films by Izza Génini, presented by Shasha Movies’ Róisín Tapponi.
e-flux Screening Room wishes all a lovely summer!
Tuesday, July 12, 7pm
Jorge Jácome: Past Perfect and Flores
Screening introduced by the artist via video
Admission starts at 5 USD. Get tickets
Past Perfect (2019, 23 minutes): “Many cities or countries have a distinct malaise. They are places that could be Portugal, so sunk in a painful longing of the past, and where each tension of the present is only the tip of an iceberg that is explained in successive retreats that can go straight until origin of the species, at least. This feeling common to many latitudes is often presented as a diagnosis, a denial of a painful present as opposed to the desire to return to a glorious past.” —Pedro Penim
Flores (2017, 26 minutes): In this anthropocenic plot twist merging documentary and science-fiction, the entire population of Azores is forced to evacuate to the mainland when an uncontrollable infestation of hydrangeas—already abundant due to the terrain’s volcanic soil—overruns the islands. Two young soldiers, bound to their homeland by the beauty of the landscape, guide the viewer through the stories and sorrows of those forced to leave, and the soldiers’ own desire to resist by choosing to remain on the islands. The filmic wandering becomes a nostalgic and political reflection on territorial belonging and identity in the wake of ecological disaster.
Wednesday, July 13 at 9pm
Robertas Verba: The Dreams of the Centenarians
Bar Laika, 224 Greene Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
Join us at Bar Laika on Wednesday, July 13 at 9pm for a screening of Robertas Verba’s The Dreams of the Centenarians (1969, 19 minutes). The majority of the characters in Verba’s creative documentary were born during the 1860s and 1870s. They share memories of their childhood, romantic partners, and hardships they have endured in front of the camera. Despite the weight of a particular historical period that the film’s characters experienced, The Dreams of the Centenarians has universal appeal due a brilliant balance between the turbulence of the twentieth century and a well-aging humorous self-reflection. Despite the fact that the Soviet authorities commissioned the film to honor the centennial of Vladimir Lenin’s birth, the film was criticized and censored by its own financiers right after the premiere. Do not miss one of Jonas Mekas’s favorite Lithuanian films of all time!
The screening is organized in partnership with Meno Avilys in Vilnius. For more information contact laika [at] e-flux.com.
Thursday, July 14, 7pm
Three films by Pedro Neves Marques
Screening and conversation
Admission starts at 5 USD. Get tickets
In these three films, technology and intimacy, fantasy and reality, health and threat, the natural and the unnatural, the stable and the mutable, are constantly in and out of balance. While The Bite’s pulpy environment and feeling of imminent (I’d say almost immanent) danger came as an answer to a moment of hopelessness and collapse, where retreat into one’s body seemed like the only refuge, the serene melancholia of Meat is Not Murder (a Voltaire-like anecdote) and The Ovary (a music video of sorts) make whatever science-fiction there is in them almost mundane. I see them as very meaty films, palpable and organic, not only thematically but also musically and visually. And while they are all films imbued with critiques, I hope they are also pierced by the possibility of better realms.
—Pedro Neves Marques
Meat is Not Murder (with HAUT, 2021, 5 minutes): Meat is Not Murder is a short film narrating the dilemma faced by a vegan animal rights advocate when confronted with the possibility of eating lab-made meat. Both funny and gruesome, the film is imbued with an intimate and sensorial relation to images and music, creating an emotional narrative about the making of bodies, whether human or not, in science and preconceptions surrounding what is deemed natural and unnatural.
The Bite (2019, 28 minutes): Between a house in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and a genetically-modified mosquito factory near São Paulo, a polyamorous relationship struggles to survive a mosquito-borne epidemic spreading across Brazil. While in the factory millions of genetically-modified mosquitos are born daily inside test tubes in order to fight the virus, the power dynamics between the three lovers only intensifies. Drawing lines between psychological and bodily horrors, political and medical crises, the sterile heteronormativity of the laboratory and non-normative images of reproduction, The Bite is a film found somewhere between horror, science-fiction, and a queer drama.
The Ovary (with HAUT, 2021, 5 minutes): The Ovary narrates the attempts of a gay couple to experience gestation through an ovarian implant in a cis man. Accompanied by a cover of Lana Del Rey’s pop song “Let Me Love You Like A Woman,” The Ovary is a raw and haunting approach to the online fan fiction genre Mpreg (male pregnancy) and its tense, but also visionary, relation with gender, class, surrogacy, and homonormativity.
Tuesday, July 19 at 7pm
Ahmet Öğüt: How can an artwork (or its author) be one and many at the same time?
Artist talk; free admission
Öğüt will discuss recent and early works of his that incorporate artworks by other artists, employing, in his terms, a “modular approach to authorship.” Drawing from his latest work Jump Up! (which includes three works by David Hockney, Anna-Eva Bergman, and Victor Vasarely selected from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje), as well as his recent series of essay documentaries Artists Making Music and Artworks Made at Home (which include footage from works by Art and Language, Kim Gordon, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Nástio Mosquito, Pipilotti Rist, Ulay, Harun Farocki, Martha Rosler, Agnieszka Polska, Kuang-Yu Tsui, Rebecca Horn, Hiwa K, Hussein Chalayan, Ana Husman, Ziad Antar, Alban Muja, and many others), Öğüt will demonstrate how this practice activates a collective trust among intergenerational artists, and necessitates the revision of institutional collections in a simultaneously friendly and antagonistic way.
Stay tuned to upcoming programs on our website, or subscribe to our Screening Room mailing list here. For more information contact program [at] e-flux.com.
