September 23, Thursday, 7:30PM, 2004
Echoes from the Flaherty Seminar

This year, Flaherty Seminar (http://www.flahertyseminar.org) – a one-week film viewing retreat spiced with impassionate discussions among filmmakers, critics, scholars, curators, librarians and students, celebrated its 50th anniversary. This program is an eclectic selection of shots presented at Flaherty by this year's curator Susan Oxtoby. Margarita DeLaVega, executive director of the Flaherty Seminar, will be in person to present the program.

Standard Gauge 35min, 16mm, 1984
Director: Morgan Fisher

"A frame of frames, a piece of pieces, a length of lengths. Standard gauge on substandard; narrower, yes, but longer. An ECU that's an ELS. Disjecta membra; Hollywood anthologised. A kind of autobiography of its maker, a kind of history of the institution from whose shards it is composed, the commercial motion picture industry. A mutual interrogation between 35 mm and 16 mm, the gauge of Hollywood, and the gauge of the amateur and independent." - Morgan Fisher

"Standard Gauge is composed of strips and frames a corpus delecti , a reliquary of abandoned footage defunct television episodes, "China girls" glorious frames that resemble El Litsky and Rothko paintings illustrating the filmically inscribed runic codes of off screen technologies and procedures. Physical fragments and narrated references including Godard, Corman, Ulmer and Leonard Kastle illustrate a mortal and metaphorical biography of the history of film and the partial autobiography of Morgan Fisher himself." -Rotterdam Film Festival

Morgan Fisher is based in Los Angeles and has been making films since the late 1960s. His films include Production Stills 1970, The Wilkinson Household Fire Alarm 1973, Cue Rolls 1974, Projection Instructions 1976, and Standard Gauge 1984. His latests film ( ) has been screened at the Whitney Biennial 2004, Galerie Daniel Buchholz 2004, the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2004, the 3rd Berlin Biennale 2004, the 41st New York Film Festival 2003.

Bocas de Ceniza (Mouths of Ash) 18min, video, 2004
Director: Juan Manuel Echavarria (Colombia)

"Juan Manuel Echavarría’s Mouths of Ash is a sequence of seven songs, each written and sung by an individual who has experienced violence and destruction in their native Colombia. This direct and deeply affecting work puts a personal face on politically motivated violence."
- Susan Oxtoby

Born in Medellin, Colombia, in 1947, Juan Manuel Echavarría, a writer, photographer and video artist, attended college in the United States, then returned to Colombia to write. He worked as co-editor of the El Zumbambico newspaper in Medellin and published two novels in 1981 and 1991. He now divides his time between Bogotá and New York.His works include Bandeja de Bolivar (99), Guerra y Pa (02) and Mouths of Ash (03/04).

Journeys 40min, 35min on video, 2003
Director: Vinayan Kodoth (India)

"In the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay), the long trips commuting from home to work and back again is gradually taking on unbearable proportions. The trains are so overcrowded that people can only board, using their elbows. At first, the scenes of people frenetically trying to secure a seat are almost funny: it seems like a game of musical chairs. At the same time, it’s clear that the lack of capacity is leading to perilous situations. People ride with their bodies sticking outside the train, they sit on the roof and hang off the sides. They often jump on while it is still moving. The rush and stress causes people to be very careless and agressive. A newspaper headline ‘14 dead in 24 hours’ speaks volumes. From a distance, the throng of people is the streets is a column of ants. A general view shows how choked up the arterial roadways really are. There is contrast between the slum-swellers scratching out a living in the small spaces between the roads and the tracks and a glittering Bombay city soaring above them. Roads are lined with billboards advertising luxury items. Thus, the film raises questions about progress and urbanisation and the price that is paid." - International Documentary Film Festival (Amsterdam)

Vinayan Kodoth was born in 1963, in Kerala, India. He completed a post-graduate degree in literature in 1986. In 1989 he joined the film direction program at the Film and Television Institue of India in Pune. Between 1992 and 1996, he worked in television in Mumbai (Bombay). Since 1996, he has taught film and video at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.