"Ruins" & "Magnavoz" - a 16mm screening with Jesse Lerner

"Voyage to the Land of Speaking Blood" - part two

Thursday, May 17, 2018 - 8:00pm

 

Ruins & Magnavoz - a 16mm screening with Jesse Lerner

Tickets: $15 General Admission / $13 VPES Members

Doors 7:30 P.M. / Screening begins 8:00 P.M.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Films will be projected by Filmmaker, Archivist & Projectionist John Cannizzaro of Smokehouse Films, a collection of 16mm & 8mm films.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Voyage to the Land of Speaking Blood

A three-part series at the Velaslavasay Panorama exploring themes of tourism, documentary, surrealism & archaeology in Mexican cinema.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ruins
By Jesse Lerner
1999, 16mm,  b/w, 78 minutes

Surveying representative moments from the history of Mesoamerican antiquarianism, this experimental documentary suggests how diplomacy and Pan-Americanism framed the recontextualization of archeological objects as art. Part faked newsreel, part diffusionist rant, “Ruins” uses appropriated sounds and images to contemplate a history of appropriated objects. The film visits with Brigido Lara, master forger, and suggests parallels between the documentary film and the fake.

With Sylvanus Morley, Maria Elena Pat, Filiberto Sanchez Varela, Brigido Lara and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Magnavoz

By Jesse Lerner
2006, 16 mm b/w, 25 min. 33 sec.

Magnavoz is an experimental adaptation of Xavier Icaza’s speculative rant on the future of post-revolutionary Mexico.  Bringing together noisy broadcasts from atop the volcanoes, raucous bacchanalia at popular watering holes and a series of apocalyptic, hypernationalistic pronouncements, the meditation is timely and prescient, though it was written more than eighty years ago.

Magnavoz es una adaptación experimental de una diatriba que especula sobre lo que fue el futuro del México de la posrevolución.  Reúne transmisiones ruidosas desde las cumbres de los volcanes; bacanales caóticas en salones populares, y una serie de pronunciamientos apocalípticos e híper nacionalistas. Una reflexión que sigue siendo relevante y que prefigura lo que se dio más de ochenta años después.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jesse Lerner

 

Jesse Lerner is a documentary filmmaker, curator, and writer based in Los Angeles.  His short films Natives (1991, with Scott Sterling), Magnavoz (2006), and T.S.H. (2004), and the feature-length experimental documentaries Frontierland(1995, with Rubén Ortiz-Torres), Ruins (1999), The American Egypt (2001), Atomic Sublime (2010), and The Absent Stone (2013, with Sandra Rozental) have won numerous prizes at film festivals in the United States, Latin America, and Japan, and have has screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, and the Sundance, Rotterdam, and Los Angeles Film Festivals. His books include The Maya of Modernism, F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing (with Alex Juhasz), Ism Ism Ism (with Luciano Piazza), The Catherwood Project (with Leandro Katz), and The Shock of Modernity. 

Jesse Lerner es cineasta, escritor, y curador.   Sus cortometrajes Magnavoz (2006), T.S.H. (2004) y Nativos (1991, con Scott Sterling) y sus largometrajes La Piedra Ausente (2013, con Sandra Rozental), Atomic Sublime (2010), El Egipto americano (2001), Ruinas (1999), y Fronterilandia (1995, con Rubén Ortiz-Torres)  han ganado premios es festivales en los Estados Unidos, América Latina y Japón, y se han presentado en el Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York, la Bienal de Sydney, y los festivales de cine de Sundance, Rotterdam y Los Angeles, entre otros.  La Cineteca Nacional de México y Anthology Film Archives de Nueva York han presentado muestras retrospectivas de sus documentales.  Como curador ha organizado exposiciones para el Robert Flaherty Seminar, el Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo de Oaxaca, el Museo de Arte Latinoamericano en California, el Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes de México y los Museos Guggenheim de Nueva York y Bilbao.  Ha publicado diversos artículos sobre cine, foto y arte y libros como El impacto de la modernidad, The Maya of Modernism, The Catherwood Project y F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing.  Actualmente da clases en el programa de Intercollegiate Media Studies de los Colegios de Claremont en California.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Images from the event!

Photography by Forest Casey

 

The "Voyage to the Land of Speaking Blood" series is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs, by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.