Walker Moving Image September–November

Omer Fast’s Continuity, 2016 Photo courtesy Filmgalerie 451

Filmmaker in Conversation: Omer Fast
$10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Walker Cinema
Omer Fast in person September 24

An Israeli video artist based in Berlin, Omer Fast has made work that is included in the permanent collections of numerous arts institutions around the world. In his films, he defines a new relationship between reality and fiction through his exploration of narratives told from different perspectives. Borrowing from traditions of documentary, drama, and fantasy, Fast’s features blur the boundaries of time, emotion, and memory as they delve into the psychologies of personal and political conflicts. His films are co-presented with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where an exhibition of new video work by Fast is on view.

Remainder (2015)
Omer Fast
Thursday, September 14, 7:30 pm
Free

“It’s all in the mind. As in Memento and Mulholland Drive before it, the function and operation of memory beguiles Remainder, an absorbing first feature from prolific Israeli video artist Omer Fast.” –Variety, 2015

An adaptation of Tom McCarthy’s 2005 novel of the same title, Remainder is Omer Fast’s first feature length film. A psychological thriller that goes beyond the genre’s typical mind-swirled action, Remainder is the story of a London man’s attempt to reconstruct his identity after he is hit by an unidentified object. As he struggles with amnesia will his obsession to stage elaborate re-enactments of fading events lead him to authenticity, or is he doomed to be lost forever? 2015, DCP, 103 minutes.

Introduction by Minneapolis Institute of Art Photography and New Media Curator, Yasufumi Nakamori and Walker Art Center Moving Image Senior Curator, Sheryl Mousley.

Trailer

Reviews
New York Times
Hollywood Reporter
Variety
The Guardian

Interviews
Film Comment
Art Net News

Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by

Continuity (2016)
Omer Fast
Sunday, September 24, 2 pm
Director in person

“Deeply sinister and beautifully crafted, Continuity is undoubtedly an interesting feat of visual storytelling.” -The Upcoming

What begins as one family’s reunion following a son’s term in Afghanistan becomes a shadowy series of encounters. A couple hires male escorts to play the role of their son, as the homecoming is re-enacted the nature of their grief becomes more ambiguous. 2016, DCP, in German with English subtitles, 85 minutes.

A conversation with Director Omer Fast follows the screening.

Trailer

Reviews
Musee d’art Contemporain de Montreal

Interview
Art 21

Cinema of Urgency returns with a new monthly series of documentaries exploring pressing and compelling issues through the storytelling power of cinema. Join us for films that highlight the many ways the media explores our reality. Each film is followed by an in-depth conversation.

Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by

A Gray State (2017)
Director Erik Nelson in Person
Thursday, September 21, 7 pm
Post-screening discussion with Erik Nelson and Tom Lyden of Fox News

“Nelson, who’s produced such Werner Herzog documentaries as Grizzly Man (Herzog returns the favor by serving as this film’s executive producer), clearly knows his way around obsessive personalities, and in Crowley he’s found a compelling textbook example of obsession descending into madness.” –Hollywood Reporter

Conspiracy theory spirals into deadly obsession in this documentary that trails Minnesotan veteran turned filmmaker, David Crowley. In January 2015, Crowley and his family were found dead in their Apple Valley home. Their deaths caused many conspiracy theorists to surmise that the government had intervened due to the content of his in-progress film Gray State, while investigators reported murder-suicide. After this pre-release screening, director Erik Nelson will join the post-screening discussion with a journalist who covered the story. 2017, DCP, 93 minutes.

Reviews
City Pages
Hollywood Reporter
The New Yorker

Risk (2016)
Laura Poitras
Producer Yoni Golijov in Person
Thursday, October 19, 7 pm

“Risk” is another fascinating piece of cinema-as-history that reminds us that Laura Poitras remains one of our most original, courageous and valuable filmmakers.” -Roger Ebert

Having cemented her reputation as a preeminent documentarian with Citizenfour, Laura Poitras now turns her camera to the elusive Julian Assange. Shot over the course of five years and with unprecedented access to the Wikileaks founder, Risk goes beyond chronicling controversy to reveal a powerful character study of Assange–his quest for the truth via the release of huge troves of classified documents and his subsequent entrapment and asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. 2016, DCP, 92 minutes.

Trailer

Reviews
New York Times
Roger Ebert
The Atlantic

Tania Libre (2017)
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Thursday, November 16, 7 pm

In 2014, Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera announced a public performance in which the people of Havana would be given a platform for one minute of free speech. She was arrested before the event even began. In this area premiere documentary, Bruguera talks about the impact of censorship and how it has shaped her work. Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson. 2017, DCP, 64 minutes.

Presented in conjunction with the Walker exhibition Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950.

Trailer

Reviews
Art News
The Art Newspaper

Mizna’s 12^th Twin Cities Arab Film Festival Opening Night
Tramontane (2016)
Vatche Boulghourjian
Wednesday, September 27, 7 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Walker Cinema

Mizna’s twelfth Twin Cities Arab Film Festival opens with Vatche Boulghourjian’s engaging drama Tramontane (Lebanon, 2016). The film depicts the story of Rabih, a young blind musician, who lives in a Lebanese village, where he sings in a choir and edits Braille documents. His quiet life, however, quickly unravels when he applies for a passport and discovers that his identification card is a forgery. Looking for answers, he travels across Lebanon and searches for a record of his birth, but rather than answers, he finds only a complex narrative tied to Lebanon’s past and his own origins, a story that leads him to question both history and the nature of identity. Realizing that it might be impossible to reconcile his legal self with his family roots, Rabih finds solace in music. (2016, DCP, in Arabic with English subtitles, 105 minutes)

Watch the trailer

Variety review

After the film, Mizna welcomes guests to an after-party, where Hello Psychaleppo, a local Syrian electronic musician, will debut his concept album Toyour with a multimedia performance. The show will take place on the Walker’s Garden Terrace.

The Twin Cities Arab Film Festival runs from September 27 to October 1, 2017, and showcases films made by Arab filmmakers from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Tunisia, and more. Opening Night is co-presented by Mizna’s Twin Cities Arab Film Festival and the Walker Art Center, and all other films will be presented on Screen 3 at St. Anthony Main Theatre in partnership with the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul. For a full schedule and ticket information, please visit www.mizna.org.

Mizna’s Twin Cities Arab Film Festival is supported by premier sponsors the Left Tilt Fund and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council . Additional support is provided by the Knight Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, and the and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

House in the Fields (2017)
Director Tala Hadid in person
Tuesday, October 24, 7:30 pm
$10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Walker Cinema
Area Premiere

“Beautifully intimate and charged with the sense of inevitable change to come, this prescient production, embellished with minimal sound and a fantastic spectacle of celebration for an ending, makes House in the Fields well worth the journey.” -Berlin Film Journal

Marrakesh-based Tala Hadid (The Narrow Frame of Midnight) returns to the Walker with her newest film, a documentary about an Amazighen village in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco in which the upheaval and change of modern life parallels two women’s coming-of-age stories. Quiet and poetic, this is an intimate look into a culture that remained constant for generation.  2016, DCP, in Amazigh and Arabic with English subtitles, 86 minutes.

Trailer

Reviews
Berlin Film Journal

Interview
Women and Hollywood

Ex Libris: New York Public Library (2017)
Frederick Wiseman
October 13-15
Friday 7pm
Saturday-Sunday 2pm
$10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Walker Cinema
Area Premiere

Frederick Wiseman has spent his career has documented the vast and textured experiences of social institutions and the lives that occupy them. Uncovering the survival of a traditional institution and its evolution in the digital age, Wiseman’s latest work focuses on the New York Public Library–though it could as easily be about New York itself. 2017, DCP, 197 minutes.

Reviews
Indiewire

Interview
Interview Magazine

HIJACK MAKING DANCES, Part 3: The Last One – Cling or Detach
Thursday, September 28, 7 pm, Bentson Mediatheque, Free

Energetic performance duo HIJACK (Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder) return for their last installment of HIJACK Making Dances in the Bentson Mediatheque. Since January 2017 the duo have created new dance in response to films from the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. Specializing in the unconventional, HIJACK play with audience expectations through new interpretations of the self-select cinema.

Major support is generously provided by the Bentson Foundation.

Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by

Mediatheque Premier
Deer of North America
Filmmakers Jason Coyle and Laska Jimsen in Person
Saturday, October 14, 7 pm, Bentson Mediatheque, Free

This first collaborative feature by two Minnesota-based filmmakers documents spaces in which lines have been blurred between artificial and natural, domesticated and wild. Take a tour through habitats, built environments, and everyday wilderness with a focus on seeing and being seen by animals. Join the filmmakers after the screening for a Q&A.

Major support is generously provided by the Bentson Foundation.

This is an Island: 3 video essays by Domietta Torlasco
Domietta Torlasco
Thursday, October 26, 7 pm, Bentson Mediatheque, Free
In partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Cultural Studies Department
Filmmaker in Person

Chicago based filmmaker and critical theorist Domietta Torlasco captures what life looks like in unseen places. In her three video essays, Sunken Gardens (2016), House Arrest (2015), and Philosophy in the Kitchen (2014), she layers personal interviews, archival footage, and silent portraits to document experiences of entrapment and endurance. Join the filmmaker after the screening for a Q&A.

Major support is generously provided by the Bentson Foundation.

Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by

Declarations

“Fact creates norms, and truth illumination” -Werner Herzog’s “Minnesota Manifesto”

In 1999 Werner Herzog visited the Walker Art Center and presented his “Minnesota Declaration” on truth and fact in cinema, to which he recently added a six-point addendum. Diving deeper into history for the 100^th anniversary of the Soviet Revolution, the Walker presents the early Russian classic October and a theatrical screening of Manifesto, Julian Rosefeldt’s tribute to more than a century of artists manifestos, including Herzog’s declaration.

Manifesto (2017)
Directed by Julian Rosefeldt
Friday, October 20, 7:30 pm

Originally exhibited as a large-scale multiscreen installation later adapted for cinematic screening, Manifesto demands a larger-than-life screening experience. Cate Blanchet gives an intimidating yet humorous performance as 13 different characters who recite manifestos that have shaped the world of cinema. 2017, DCP, 95 minutes.

Trailer

Reviews
New York Times
Variety

October (1928)
Directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei M. Eisenstein
Saturday, October 21, 7:30 pm

Commissioned by the Soviet government in honor of the 10^th anniversary of the Soviet Revolution, this work is considered a propaganda film for its meticulous re-enactment of the 1920 mass spectacle The Storming of the Winter Palace. Edited in Eisenstein’s “intellectual montage” style, October is an unemotional but intellectually engaging depiction of the Bolshevik’s overthrow of Tsarist autocracy. 1928, DCP, restoration of original version in Russian with English subtitles and music, 142 minutes.

Trailer

Dialogue and Retrospective
Lucy Walker: Life Like Reality

“I love using documentary films to take the viewer on a journey to a world they’re not physically in. Film is the most impactful way I can give audiences that lifelike experience…” -Lucy Walker (via Indiewire)

Celebrate the career of award winning film and VR director Lucy Walker this November. The retrospective will showcase Walkers’ directorial achievements, including Waste Land (2010), The Crash Reel (2013), Countdown to Zero (2010), and an evening of her short documentary films. A master of her craft, Walker captures sublime turning points in people’s lives when they must push past impossibility and “dare to be honest,” conjuring that most human need to connect. As a documentary filmmaker, Walker’s distinctive character-focused narratives and embrace of virtual reality technology to transport audiences has bolstered her status as a visionary within the field of non-fiction filmmaking.

Lucy Walker has received awards for her work at Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Telluride Mountainfilm Festival, Sao Paulo International Film Festival, and Stockholm Film Festival, among others. Her films have been nominated for two Oscars, seven Emmys, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature, and a Gotham Award for Best Documentary.

All films are screened in the Walker Cinema and unless otherwise noted are $10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors).

This Dialogue and Retrospective program is made possible by generous support from Anita Kunin and the Kunin family.

Dialogue with Lucy Walker and Scott Foundas
Wednesday, November 8, 7:30 PM
$15 ($12 Walker members, students, and seniors)

Lucy Walker joins Scott Foundas for a conversation about her fascinating career and the art of documentary filmmaking. Foundas, former chief critic for Variety, is now a film acquisitions and development executive at Amazon Studios.

Dialogue tickets: Limited quantities. All sales begin at 11am. Walker Film Club presale available for purchase at box office or at 612.375.7655. Member presale available at box office or online at walkerart.org/cinema. Ticket on-sale dates:

Walker Film Club: September 12
Walker members: September 19
General public: September 22

The Crash Reel (2013)
Friday, October 27, 7:30 pm

“With the adrenalin pump of a top-of-the line sports special latched onto the poignant story of a loving family in trouble and trauma, The Crash Reel is also the tale of a modern-day Icarus.” -Roger Ebert

A world is turned upside down after a near fatal snowboarding accident during training for the Olympics. The film forefronts the dangers often ignored for the spectacle of extreme sport as it follows his slow recovery from traumatic brain injury and the realization that his life must now take another path. 2010, DCP, 108 minutes.

Trailer

Reviews
Roger Ebert
NPR

Waste Land (2010)
Saturday, October 28, 2 pm

Lucy Walker follows artist Vik Muniz into Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world, where catadores (literally, tasters) survive by picking the garbage for recyclables. Enter Muniz, who offers to recreate their portraits using refuse, sell the artwork at London’s most prestigious auction house, and deliver the profits back to the catadores to help their community. 2010, DCP, in English and Portuguese with English subtitles, 99 minutes.

Trailer

Reviews
New York Times
Hollywood Reporter

Countdown to Zero (2010)
Wednesday, November 1, 7:30 pm

This a nail-biting and intimate glimpse at nuclear detonation scenarios underlines the precariousness of our political present. Featuring interviews with Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara, Pervez Musharraf, and Valerie Plame, Countdown to Zero is a cry against oblivion. 2010, DCP, 90 minutes.

Trailer

Reviews
Hollywood Reporter
The Telegraph

World Views: An Evening of Short Films
Thursday, November 2, 7:30 pm

A selection of bold short documentary films about survival and resilience including The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, David Hockney in the Now, and more. 2011-2016, 88 minutes.