UnionDocs celebrates the weekend's events with a special incarnation of the OpenDocs series. A screening of the groundbreaking documentary Resisting Paradise will be followed by an open discussion with Barbara Hammer that will be recorded for radio broadcast. The film asks the tough questions: What are our responsibilites during political crises? How can art exist in a time of war?

Members of the collaborative will present four short documentary pieces before the film.

After all the action, stick around for relaxed assembly-ending drinks in the gallery.

6PM- UnionDocs presentations
7PM- Screening
At 322 Union Ave (L to Lorimer--directions below)
$5 suggested donation.

More about Resisting Paradise:
Resisting Paradise, the most recent film by prolific avant-garde filmmaker and documentarian Barbara Hammer, emerged from her experiences while an artist-in-residence at the Camargo Foundation in the small fishing village of Cassis in southern France. Following in the footsteps of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, Hammer, herself a former painter, was seeking to capture the splendor of the Mediterranean landscape. During her residency, however, the war in Kosovo erupted, and Hammer found it "impossible to continue [her] modernist pursuit of beauty without ideology or critical observation."

Recasting her original idea for the project, the filmmaker immersed her poetic investigations within a political context, posing the question: "Can art exist during a time of political crisis and war?" The result is a 90-minute experimental documentary that juxtaposes the lives of painters Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard during World War II with those of several French Resistance fighters who were still alive. Hammer's film uses multiple formats, including digital video, 8mm, 9mm, and 16mm, glass negatives, found photographs, reverse painting, and archival footage. Much of the film was created using an optical printer. By manipulating the speed, color, and nap of the imagery frame by frame, Hammer presents history as an endless process of discovery and revision. Her insistence on avoiding a "hegemonic approach to film aesthetics" encourages spectators to act as their own archeologists, identifying and creating meaning out of the slivers of images and stories offered.

Directions to 322 Union
L train to Lorimer stop
Exit subway and walk south on Union Ave (away from the BQE)
322 Union will be on the east side of Union Ave after you cross Maujer St.