Tuesday November 10th at 7:30PM

LOCATION: Carpenter Center, Harvard University.
24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Tickets: Suggested donation $5



Balagan Film Series Presents:
DISORDERED & REFIGURED
Balagan is excited to present a program of innovative works that explore the delicate and complex nature of the human body, mind and spirit. Films in this program probe issues of illness in our society, using provocative formal strategies that strive towards making sense of the trials and tribulations of these remarkable individuals.

Program: (subject to change)
still from update on my life
Fwd: Update on My Life
Directed by Nicky Tavares
(2009, 30 minutes, Video)

A hybrid live-action and animated documentary, FWD: Update on My Life follows Dr. Deanie French, a professor and pioneer of internet-based learning and web accessibility, who decides one day to take a holiday from her heavy dosage of mood stabilizers and go on the Atkins diet.  With newfound energy, she promptly leaves her husband and sets out starting up multiple businesses, making 10 new “special friends," and directing a documentary about her life.

still2 from update on my lifeIn this experimental biography, director and “special friend” Nicky Tavares pieces together the humorous and tragic life story of Dr. Deanie French through a collection of interviews, personal emails, electronic greeting cards, and machinima footage, exploring Dr. French’s complex psychological and professional relationship with the internet and technology.  Alternating and probing notions of the “the virtual” and “the real”, FWD: Update on My Life reflects upon our idea of reality as it nimbly navigates Dr. French’s fluctuating perceptions of the universe.

Artist Biography

Nicky Tavares is a multimedia artist whose work explores digital culture and the presentation of the self.   She received a B.A. in photocommunications from Saint Edward’s University and an MFA in Film and Video from Massachusetts College of Art.  She currently teaches in the Computer Animation program at Mount Ida College.


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Estranhos Poemas: Escritos de Claudina Pereira
Strange Poems: Writings of Claudina Pereira

Directed by Jessica Gidal (2009, 9 minutes, Video)


Estranhos Poemas: Escritos de Claudina Pereira (Strange Poems: Writings of Claudina Pereira) is an experimental documentary short about the life and poetry of Claudina, a psychiatric patient is southern Brazil.

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Claudina's writings mingle with the decaying environment of Hospital São Pedro, reflecting not only that her words are shaped by nearly 30 years in the hospital, but that the hospital itself is transformed by her presence.




Artist Biography:

Jessica Meistrich Gidal is a filmmaker, curator and editor based in Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently editing the Screening Room with Robert Gardner DVD series, and has recently worked on television and web-based productions for WGBH, Frontline and the Discovery Channel. In addition to working on her own personal films and non-profit videos, she has curated three presentations of animated documentary films at Balagan Film Series, the Brattle Theatre and the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver. Prior to filmmaking, she worked for community development organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and in India.

strange poems still1Itna Mujhe Pata Hai (This Much I Know)
Directed by: Bridget Hanna

(2008, 24 mins, HD Video)

This Much I Know is the story of a teenage girl, struggling to define her life and her illness in a marginal, environmentally devastated neighborhood in Northern India. Inflected by her love of Bollywood music, and driven by frustration over the quality of health care available to her, this project investigates the relationships between environment and medicine, and between the subject and the filmmaker, as it attempts to understand one young woman's experience.

Artist Biography:
Bridget Hanna is filmmaker and doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology at Harvard. Previous to entering graduate school, she taught video production and worked on various human rights and media projects such as The Milosevic Trial Archive and the Bhopal Media Project. Her current research and video work is in India, exploring a phenomenology of pollution and toxics related illness experience. Her short film This Much I Know (sonumsong.blogspot.com), about a young girl struggling to live, and celebrate, her life in a slum polluted by medical waste, is showing in film festivals. Her current project, The Colony of Lords looks at the daily life and experiences of the children and grandchildren of Bhopal gas disaster survivors, many of whom are subject to various sensory disabilities.