From March 29th through April 29th a film and video series will run at C/O Berlin on Oranienburgerstr 35/36, curated by the artist Aykan Safoğlu and myself. The series will accompany the final month of a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective on display, with the aim to critically interrogate the development of Robert Mapplethorpe’s legacy and the contexts in which it was shaped and exists today. Here is a brief overview of the selected works, you can download a pdf with the complete program here.
Looking For Langston Isaac Julien, 1989
Screening Thur 31.03.11, 8pm
Films by Isaac Julien and Marlon Riggs, along with short videos by Barbara Hammer, Marc Adelman (also a contributor to Catch Fire) and Rachel Rampleman, help to introduce questions about the functioning of structural inequalities related to gender, race, class, religion and/or sexuality in US society over the last century, and indirectly about Mapplethorpe’s involvement in reproducing or challenging them.
Community Action Center A.K. Burns & A.L. Steiner, 2010
I’ve finally found a good reason to mention Kenneth Anger on this page which is something I’ve had in mind for a longer time now. I’ve found this high resolution version of his beautiful short movie “Kustom Kar Kommandos” from 1965 on YouTube. The user who uploaded it is called bananimalistic (his account is worth a click) and he was kind enough to provide the viewer with some information about the history and the approach of the movie: “Kustom Kar Kommandos was originally to be an eight part, 30 minute film which Anger described as an erotic vision of a contemporary American (and specifically Californian) teenage phenomenon, the world of hot-rod and customized cars. Anger made the episode presently shown as Kustom Kar Kommandos to raise funds to finish the film, but was unable to do so and the project was abandoned.” More short films by Anger on YouTube (I especially like “Puce Moment“) and on this Facebook page (it’s where I found the film).
