CINEMATIC CORRESPONDENCES: THERESA HAK KYUNG CHA AND HER FILMIC INFLUENCES
This special screening is presented in conjunction with "Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings", a retrospective on view at Artists Space through November 21. The program features cinematic works by artists and filmmakers represented in "Apparatus, Cinematographic Apparatus: Selected Writing", a seminal volume edited by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-82) and published in the 1980s by Tanam Press, an independent, artist-led publishing entity. Alongside these films will be a few examples of Cha's work from the mid-1970s, including her notable structuralist piece PERMUTATIONS, a 1976 work composed of six shots filmed at one-second intervals that examines what the artist calls, "Film Time and Film Space." The artist's sister appears in a frame that echoes the format of a passport photo; Cha herself appears once. Through the repetition and permutation of these images, the sequence creates a rhythmic flicker, generating an optical sense of movement. Cha was deeply influenced by both canonical and contemporary films from around the world, and by cinema theory, and actively explored the distinctions between the film, its author, and the spectator. Among the filmmakers whose work illuminates these concerns is Dziga Vertov, whose 1929 film MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA offers a radical exploration of cinematic perception and the possibilities of the medium, using dynamic editing, multiple exposures, split screens, and self-reflexive images of the camera and filmmaking process. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's 1977 film EVERY REVOLUTION IS A THROW OF THE DICE brings together Stéphane Mallarmé's poem "A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance" with a collective recitation staged at Père-Lachaise Cemetery, beside the wall where the last defenders of the Paris Commune were executed in 1871. The film's interweaving of literary text, historical memory, and the material conditions of its own performance resonates with Cha's sustained interest in the relationship between language, image, and the conditions of viewing. Taken together, the program brings into view the formal, literary, and cinematic correspondences that run through Cha's work. Co-presented by Anthology Film Archives and Artists Space, with an introduction by a special guest. For more info about the Artists Space exhibition visit: https://artistsspace.org/exhibitions/theresa-hak-kyung-cha-multiple-offerings Dziga Vertov MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA / CHELOVEK S KINO-APPARATOM 1929, 90 min, 35mm, silent. With no intertitles. Preceded by: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha PERMUTATIONS (1976, 10 min, 16mm) Theresa Hak Kyung Cha TRANSLATIONS FROM A WILLOW TREE (1976, 4 min, Super-8mm-to-DCP) Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet EVERY REVOLUTION IS A THROW OF THE DICE / TOUTE RÉVOLUTION EST UN COUP DE DÉS (1977, 11 min, 35mm)