We are delighted to host artist-scholar Jessica Bardsley for a super special birthday screening! ROCKS, STARS, AND OTHER FEELINGS traces her poetic pathways of thought and practice through five of her films made between 2007 – 2021. From Bardsley’s lyrical use of appropriated imagery to her quiet, lingering documentation of interior spaces and natural environments, we’ll explore the dynamic range of audio-visual approaches she’s devised to explore disturbing uncertainties and reach beyond familiar psychological spaces to the distant or unknown. This is a mini-retrospective you don’t want to miss! Filmmaker / Programmer Samara Chadwick will be in conversation with Jessica following the program.
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Nov 7, 2021 at 7:30 pm
Rocks, Stars, & Other Feelings
With Jessica Bardsley & Samara Chadwick
Program
Untitled
13 min, fine cut/2022, Video, Color and Black & White
This film is set within the outer space of consciousness, where the surfaces of far out planetary bodies form the terrain for an exploration of the gradual disappearance of darkness, 24/7 capitalism, and insomnia.
Goodbye Thelma
13 min, 2019, Video, Sound, Color and Black & White
Goodbye Thelma synthesizes footage from the 1991 film Thelma & Louise and footage of the author’s own making to create a mysterious, and at times disturbing, exploration of the uncertainties of traveling as a woman alone.
The Making and Unmaking of the Earth
16 min, 2018, Found footage & 16mm on Video, Sound, Color and Black & White
The Making and Unmaking of the Earth turns to geology as both a metaphor for and a psychic container of women’s emotional states and embodied experiences of physical pain. Combining archival footage of earth processes with interviews describing mysterious physical experiences and emotional attachments, this film explores how everything we bury deep inside eventually speaks through the geology of the body.
The Blazing World
19 min, 2013, Video , B&W, Sound
Consisting entirely of clips stolen from existing films, The Blazing World explores connections between depression and kleptomania by charting a convergence between Winona Ryder’s character in the film Girl, Interrupted, the genuine depression experienced by the actress, her arrest for shoplifting after the film’s release, and my family’s own history of mental illness and theft.
Oceanography
6 min, 2007, Video, Color, Sound
Oceanography uses science TV footage and scientific data to document one woman’s love relationship.
67 min
Jessica Bardsley is an artist-scholar working across film, writing, and studio art. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Practice and Theory at Colgate University and a Visiting Fellow in the department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University. Her films have screened within the U.S. and internationally at festivals like CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, EMAF, Flaherty NYC, RIDM, True/False, and many more. She is the recipient of various awards, including a Princess Grace Award, Grand Prize at 25FPS, the Eileen Maitland Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Best Short Film at Punto de Vista, and numerous Film Study Center fellowships. Her research and writing have been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies. She received a Ph.D. in Film and Visual Studies from Harvard University and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Samara is a filmmaker, scholar, programmer, and the Executive Director of The Flaherty. Since 1954, the Flaherty Seminar has been committed to showcasing non-commercial non-fiction works alongside expansive conversations, breaking down the barriers between creators, scholars, critics, and the general public. Prior to joining The Flaherty, Samara was Senior Programmer at the Points North Institute and CIFF (2017-2020), programmed for the Goethe Institut (2018-2020), HotDocs (2011-2012), RIDM in Montréal (2015-16), and organized conferences for Visions du réel (2019), re:publica Berlin (2018), MUTEK – Montreal (2018), and the Berlin Biennale (2012). Her dreamscape debut feature, 1999, premiered in 2018 at Visions du réel, and has since played worldwide, including at HotDocs, DokuFest Kosovo, BAFICI, MoMI, and UnionDocs.
