The dates are final but the programs are subject to change, please, get on our mailing list by sending an e-mail to balagan@rcn.com and you will be able to receive regular updates about our programming.

Spring 2005

February 17, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Art and Politics: Kings of the Sky by Deborah Stratman - Boston Premiere, Official Selection of the Rotterdam Film Festival
In the spirit of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and Balagan's "Expanded Genre of Documentary" and "Art and Politics" series, the 10th season starts with KINGS OF THE SKY by a Chicago-based filmmaker Deborah Stratman. This provocative film – a hybrid between experimental cinema and documentary genre, is about resistance, balance and fame. The follows tightrope artist Adil Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst the Uyghurs, a turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy.

March 1, 2005, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Recent works of Abigail Child (in person)
A celebration of the recent works by the renown local filmmaker Abigail Child. The program includes the Boston premiere of The Future is Behind You, the 2005 Jury Award winner of the Black Maria Film Festival.

March 22, 2005, Tuesday, 7:30PM
Big Balagan: Ricky Leacock (in person)
A rare occasion to meet and celebrate one of the most renown documentary filmmakers Richard Leacock .

March 24, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Filmmakers on tour: Jim Finn (in person) & Arthur Jones (Chicago)
Balagan hosts an evening of new works by two Chicago-based filmmakers Jim Finn and Arthur Jones. Jim Finn makes videos about small animals, love and communism. His work has screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His work has also appeared on the PBS and in Harper’s magazine. Arthur Jones, a graduate of RISD, is an animator and illustrator who animated shorts has shown in the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Worm Film Series (Rotterdam), Chicago International Children's Film Festival, LA Shorts, and Gavin Brown Passerby Gallery in New York.

April 7, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
You'll Pay for This! (Artists in person)
Balagan goes punk with premiere screenings of 2 local films about Boston's improtant contribution to the punk music scene in the 70's and 80's. Come see a slice of Boston's underground history and meet some punk rock legends in the flesh.

April 14, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
History of the American Avante-Garde: Ed Emschwiller
A unique opportunity to look into the legacy of one of the most interesting filmmakers of the American Avante-Garde cinema - Ed Emshwiller, whose experiments as well as collaborations with dancers, musicians, and visual artists truly expanded understanding and perception of film medium and at the same time, laid grounds for the contemporary video art.

April 21, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
The recent selection from the Black Maria Film Festival
Location:
Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston

Balagan and Museum of Fine Arts are hosting a touring program of the award-winning shorts from the Black Maria Film & Video Festival. Named after Thomas Edison’s Black Maria Film Studio – the world’s first purpose built motion picture studio – the festival’s mission is to support the vision of independent film and video makers, and to present a cross-section of fresh, explorational work which is inventive, diverse, insightful, assertive and adventuresome. This program is an eclectic mix that features works by Marie Losier, Peter Rose, Abigail Child, Jim Trainor, Mara Mattuschka (Austria), Dan Boord and Louis Valdovino, Janie Geiser, Chris Landreth (Canada).

April 23, Saturday, 12PM and April 24 Sunday 6:30PM
Chain directed by Jem Cohen in The Boston Independent Film Festival
Location: Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq. Somerville, MA
Balagan is proud to be co-sponsoring a screening with the Boston Independent Film Festival to present the New England premiere of Jem Cohen's new experimental documentary Chain. Cohen won the Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Award at this year's Independent Spirit Awards for the genre-blending Chain, which was also named one of the "10 most promising films of the year" by Variety. Tamiko (Miho Nikaido of Hal Hartley's FLIRT, BOOK OF LIFE, and HENRY FOOL) is a Japanese businesswoman hurtling toward the bright and shiny future of "entertainment real estate." Researching amusement parks and malls, she meets with nameless potential clients and rehearses her English in anonymous business hotels. Amanda (Mira Billotte, singer for the indie bands Quixotic and White Magic, in her film debut) is a runaway who squats in abandoned or unfinished houses, makes an unsteady living cleaning hotel rooms, and spends hours wandering through the mall, gazing at objects she can no longer afford to buy. On opposite ends of the financial spectrum, both women share a dreamy isolation as they drift through the vast American wasteland of chain retailers and philosophize about their relationship to work and consumer culture. Without ever losing its political vision, Cohen's camera captures an uncanny beauty in the familiar, interchangeable landscapes of today's corporate dystopia.-Kristina Aikens

April 30, 2005, Saturday, 11AM and 1:30PM
Choreographing Cinema I and II curated by Alla Kovgan for the Dance and Technology Conference of the Boston Cyberarts Festival
Location:
Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston
The two programs investigate a diverse spectrum of relationships between dance and film. These films are neither documentaries, nor documentations. All of them are rather creating/choreographing a dance, a movement or a dance-like feeling. This “hybrid film dance” – whether created by a dancer within the space of a film frame, whether choreographed through the movement of the camera and composition of the mis-en-scene, or constructed through the means of editing and such film techniques as painting on film – mesmerizes; reveals the hidden between the frames; inspires audiences to relate to cinema yet in another way, rejuvenates the eye, and offers new ways for humans to see the world. Program I features: Peter Greenaway and Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker (UK/Belgium), Daniel Shmid and Kazuo Ohno (Switzerland/Japan), Irina Evteeva and Slava Polunin (Russia), Lloyd Newson and DV8 (UK), and En-Knap (Slovenia). Program II features: Meredith Monk, D.A. Pennebaker, Stan Brakhage, Guy Maddin (Canada), Konstantin Bronzit (Russia). Artavazd Peleshian (Armenia).

May 5, 2005, Thursday, 7:30PM
Expanded Genre of Documentary: Leighton Pierce
Balagan is proud to present 3 films by Leighton Pierce. Named by Jon Jost as a Master Minituarist, Pierce brings invisible to life, making the audiences to re-discover the world around them in the new ways.

May 7, 2005, Saturday, 11:55PM
You'll Pay for This! (Artists in person)
The second chance to see two local films about Boston's improtant contribution to the punk music scene in the 70's and 80's. Come see a slice of Boston's underground history and meet some punk rock legends in the flesh! (Repeat of April 7th program)

May 19, 2005, Thursday, 6:30PM - as part of the 21st Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival
Experimental Feature in Focus: "The Time We Killed" by Jennifer Reeves
Location: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), 640 Huntington Ave., Boston

In her first feature, Jennifer Reeves creates a stirring visual poem on life in NYC post 9/11. She effortlessly combines elements of linear and non-linear narrative with documentary film to express the internal emotional life of bisexual Brooklyn writer Robyn Taylor (Lisa Jarnot), who becomes unable to finish her assignment due to feelings of paranoia, disorder, memories of past lovers, and fear of her country's current political agenda. As in her earlier shorts, Reeves challenges filmic conventions by creating a new language for herself that feels collectively old and new. Description adapted from the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Co-presented by Women in Film & Video/New England.