April
15,
2010, Thursday,
7:30pm
Deborah
Stratman (in person)
LOCATION:
Carpenter Center, RM B04, Harvard University
24
Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Tickets: suggested donation
$5
Deborah
Stratman (http://www.pythagorasfilm.com/)
is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker
interested in landscapes and systems. Her
films, rather than telling stories, pose
a series of problems - and through their
at times ambiguous nature, allow for a
complicated reading of the questions being
asked. Many of her films point to the relationships
between physical environments and the very
human struggles for power, ownership, mastery
and control that are played out on the
land. Most recently, they have questioned
elemental historical narratives about freedom,
expansion, security, and the regulation
of space. Stratman works in multiple mediums,
including photography, sound, drawing and
sculpture. She has exhibited internationally
at venues including the Whitney Biennial,
MoMA, the Pompidou, Hammer Museum and many
international film festivals including
Sundance, the Viennale, Ann Arbor and Rotterdam.
She is the recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim
fellowships and she currently teaches at
the University of Illinois at Chicago.

O'er The Land (52min, 16mm,
2009) is a meditation on the milieu
of elevated threat addressing national identity,
gun culture, wilderness, consumption, patriotism
and the possibility of personal transcendence.
Of particular interest are the ways Americans
have come to understand freedom and the increasingly
technological reiterations of manifest destiny.
While channeling our national psyche, the film is interrupted by the story of
Col. William Rankin who in 1959, was forced
to eject from his F8U fighter jet at 48,000
feet without a pressure suit, only to get trapped
for 45 minutes in the up and down drafts of
a massive thunderstorm. Remarkably, he survived.
Rankin's story represents a non-material, metaphysical
kind of freedom. He was vomited up by his own
jet, that American icon of progress and strength,
but violent purging does not necessarily lead
to reassessment or redirection.
This film is concerned with the sudden, simple,
thorough ways that events can separate us from
the system of things, and place us in a kind
of limbo. Like when we fall. Or cross a border.
Or get shot. Or saved. The film forces together
culturally acceptable icons of heroic national
tradition with the suggestion of unacceptable
historical consequences, so that seemingly
benign locations become zones of moral angst.
World Premiere: Sundance Film Festival,
2009
Awards:
LíAlternativa International Film Festival,
Barcelona: Best Documentary Feature; CPH:DOX
International Documentary Film Festival, Copenhagen:
New Vision Award; Cinema Eye Honors: Outstanding
Achievement in Cinematography Nominee; Ann
Arbor Film Festival: Ken Burns Award for Best
of Festival; Iowa City International Documentary
Film Festival: Best in Festival; Images Festival,
Toronto: Best International Film
Review from ArtForum: http://artforum.com/film/id=22063
"DEBORAH STRATMANíS FILMS feature multiple
explosions and a jarring mix of noises and
near-silent drones, so it is curious to also
discover that an endearing innocence often
prevails, a longing for some kind of miracleóa
flying saucer or a goblinójust
around the bend.
This
sense of wonder remains at the heart of Stratmanís Oíer
the Land (2009), featuring the true
story of a man who fell through the sky and
lived to tell about it. William H. Rankinís
1960 book The
Man Who Rode the Thunder chronicles
his survival following a harrowing plane crash,
when he tumbled through the frozen atmosphere
and a live thunderstorm before hitting the
ground, with only a tree to break his forty-minute
fall.
Near the start of Stratmanís film, a polite recorded phone message from Rankin
reflexively informs viewers that we will not be hearing directly from the lieutenant
colonel as he is ìeighty-seven years old and
no longer [does] interviews.î
Stratman
uses an actor to read Rankinís account midway
through the film, pairing it with dramatic
footage of stormy skies and a sound track fraught
with high-pitched whines and rumbling murmurs,
the aural dissonance emphasizing experiential
and emotional depth, if stepping on the voice-over
at times.
Bookending this unnerving scene are wavering
shots of Americana, veering near the beginning
toward clichÈ (in the form of marching bands,
football games, trailer parks, and firefighters).
These quietly unfold into another Americaóthe
border patrol scanning the desert, a theme
park for gun enthusiasts, an animal-testing
lab. A yellow sign reporting the current threat-level
propels us squarely into post-9/11 America,
the primary subject of Stratmanís wary gaze.
It is fitting in this context that, by the
close of the film, doubt has been cast on magic,
too, heralded by a bright yellow mockingbird
flitting wildly about in its laboratory cage,
dazed by recorded birdcalls." - Annie Buckley
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