Doors 7:30p
Program 8:00p

UnionDocs
352 Onderdonk Ave
Ridgewood, NY

We are delighted to invite you to an evening of cinema and conversation with the brilliant Zoe Beloff! 

We’ll screen two of Zoe’s films – Shadow Land or Light from the Other Side and Charming Augustine.

The title and the narrative of Shadow Land or Light from the Other Side are taken from the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth d’Espérance, a materializing medium who could produce full body apparitions. Charming Augustine presents an experimental narrative based on the case of a young patient,  Augustine who was documented in a series of photographs and texts on hysteria published in the 1880’s under the title of the Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière. Both films explore the origins of cinema from a feminist and psychological perspective.

The films are shot on 3D B/W 16mm film. We’ll be setting up a silver screen, 16mm projector and will provide 3D glasses to all,  come through to witness the unique and rare wonder of stereoscopic film!

This screening is presented in conjunction with Tara Aliya Kesavan and Indranil Choudhury’s exhibition FEEBLE TRANSMITTERS.

Come through!

Program

Shadow Land or Light from the other Side

32 minutes, 2000, 3D B/W 16mm

The title and the narrative are taken from the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth d’Espérance, a materializing medium who could produce full body apparitions.We discover a lonely little girl who can conjure imaginary friends that appear, to her, completely real. This remarkable ability causes her much suffering, for upon reaching adolescence, she is diagnosed as mad on account of seeing people who are not there. Only later does she find a way to cultivate her gifts within the spiritualist movement.

Charming Augustine

40 minutes, 2005, 3D B/W 16mm

The film is inspired by series of photographs and texts on hysteria published in the 1880’s under the title of the Iconographie photographique de la Salpetriere. It is an experimental narrative based on the case of a young patient, Augustine. At fifteen she was admitted to the hospital suffering from hysterical paralysis. The doctors were captivated by her frequent hysterical attacks. They appeared extraordinarily theatrical and photogenic. She became the star, the “Sarah Bernhardt” of the asylum. Yet at the same she was deeply disturbed. She had visions and heard voices. She hallucinated. The film explores connections between attempts to document her mental states and the prehistory of narrative film.

Program Duration: 72 mins

Bios

Zoe Beloff is an artist, filmmaker, writer and rootless cosmopolitan based in New York. She aims to make art that both entertains and provokes discussion. With a focus on social justice, she draws timelines between past and present to imagine a more egalitarian future. Her projects often involve a range of media including films, drawings and archival documents organized around a theme. They include proposals for new forms of community, projects that explore relationships between labor, technology and our inner lives. She created a trilogy of movies, based on ideas for films proposed by never realized by radical artists; Eisenstein’s scenario Glass House, Brecht’s A Model Family in a Model Home and James Agee’s The Tramp’s New World,.

She recently completed a documentary public art project, @ WORK in collaboration with her long-time cinematographer and all-round partner in crime, Eric Muzzy. Many of her works also go out into the world as books. Her most recent publication reproduces her panoramic painting Parade of the Old New , an allegory of America in dark times. She is currently working on a large-scale project, that involve two films Josephine the Singer or the Mouse People , based on the short story by Franz Kafka and Life Forgotten that conjures up the world of the working people of New York’s Lower East Side in the early years of the twentieth century.

Zoe’s work has been featured in international exhibitions and screenings; include the Whitney Museum Biennale, MoMA, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., the Pompidou Center in Paris, International Film Festival Rotterdam and FID Marseille. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. However, she particularly enjoys working in alternative venues that are free and open to the community for events and conversations. She is a professor at Queens College CUNY.