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Fall 2002

September 12, Thursday, 8PM
Family Stories
Intimacy, kinship, gatherings, meals, marriage, holidays, childhood, grandma, divorce, abuse, dis-functionality, pain... Films of the "Family Stories" construct a collective PORTRAIT of the family of humans. All of us will be able to find some familiar lines in it.

September 26, Thursday, 8PM
Crime and Punishment
Continuing the theme of the last season's Victory Day show, the films in this program ruminate upon the human condition in the current world of wars and conflicts. Among the filmmakers featured: Robert Todd, and others.

October 10, Thursday, 8PM
Director's Eye: Jem Cohen (not confirmed but being hoped for)
Our guest from New York, Jem Cohen, has been working in 16mm, Super 8, and video for over 15 years. His work has been a mixture of documentary, narrative, and experimental genres, coalescing into a unique blend all his own ("Instrument", "Benjamin Smoke", and others). Aside from his own projects, Cohen has shot and directed five videos for R.E.M., as well as background films for two of their world tours. He has also made pieces for Jonathan Richman, Butthole Surfers, Flat Duo Jets, and Elliot Smith, Patti Smith among others. Jem has won dozens of awards including Rockefeller Grant and Guggenheim Fellowship.

October 24, Thursday, 8PM
Through Mystery and Magic
In the best traditions of the early avant-garde cinema (Georges Melies, Fritz Lang) and American Underground movement of the 60's (Stan VanDerBeek, Kenneth Anger), this collection of works glorifies theatricality, intensity of sets and decor, masks, make-up and costumes of the exalted characters, intricate illusionary experiments, magic and supernatural within the multi-layered experimental narratives.

November 7, Thursday, 8PM
Expanded Genre of Documentary
Following the steps of Robert Flaherty, Chris Marker, Joris Ivens and others, the filmmakers of this program step beyond the traditional conventions of the documentary genre and create poetic visual essays – turn the reality into poetry but at the same time preserve ingenuity of the subject of their explorations.

November 21, Thursday, 8PM
Arabian Nights
Balagan continues introducing Boston audience to the experimental films and videos from around the world. This program features experimental films and videos by the filmmakers from the Arabic countries.

November 22-23, Friday - Saturday
Technological Challenges: Video
Balagan is collaborating with Video Space to put together a program of the Technologically Challenging works on video by the local artists. The program will be playing on the monitor as a loop at the National Conference of the Association of Moving Image Archive. Location: The Boston Park Plaza Hotel

December 5,
Thursday, 8PM
TBA

December 18, Wednesday, 8PM
BIG BALAGAN: "Film As a Subversive Art"
In 1974, Amos Vogel, the founder of the Cinema 16 in New York, New York Film Festival and Lincoln Center Film Department, published a book "Film as a Subversive Art". Reviewing over 500 films (many of which are banned and rarely seen), Amos Vogel ruminates upon "how the aesthetic, sexual and ideological subversives use film medium to manipulate our conscious and unconscious, demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, undermine existing value systems and institutions."

For the BIG BALAGAN, we combined a program of rare films from France, Holland, Austria and the United States that are mentioned in Amos Vogel's book as well as works by contemporary "subversive" filmmakers. The panel discussion with guests and local film professors is to follow.