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.

What exactly is satire? An attitude? An impulse? Why is it so often the tool of political or social critique, and what about it incites such passionate response? Panelists from many different media will discuss the techniques they use to bring the world down to size, and their reasons for choosing this particular form of attack.

Each of these panelists works in some way to hold a mirror up to power, but the range of satirical forms presented here is striking. The Halliburton heiresses and corporate lobbyists of Billionaires for Bush will talk about how they brought the RNC into perspective; Peter Morris, a playwright whose musical about a fictional prime minister, A Million Hearts for Mosley, created an uproar in London, will moderate the panel; and David Rees will talk about graphic novels and the striking success of Get Your War On. Then again, who knows what (or whom) they’ll talk about…

The Take, by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, documents an extraordinary instance of local workers constructing real alternatives to corporate capitalism in Argentina.

Director/producer Avi Lewis (CounterSpin) and writer/producer and renowned author Naomi Klein (No Logo) take viewers inside the lives of ordinary visionaries, as they reclaim their work, their dignity and their democracy.

The Take
Directors: Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein
Country: Canada
Genre: Documentary
2004, 87 min

For the past five years Michael Heflin has been the Director of OUTfront, Amnesty International USA’s Program on LGBT human rights. Prior to taking on this role, for four years Michael was the Deputy Director of the Midwest Region Office of Amnesty International in Chicago. Michael has a law degree with a focus on international human rights law from the University of Cincinnati where he had a fellowship with the Urban Morgan Human Rights Institute and was an editor for the Human Rights Quarterly. Michael has been an activist in the field of human rights for more than fifteen years.

When focused on political, economic, and socio-cultural situations, theater becomes a very malleable and rich research context; it can serve as a laboratory or an observatory. The theatrical form can humanize and dramatize the effects of certain economic and political conditions, allowing both audience and the artist to inhabit situations of the “everyday reality” where these policies are felt. Concrete facts can be experienced and magnified through the use of their personal, sensitive and poetic aspects, which might be “off limits” in a more academic or political context.

Dario Tangelson of International WOW and the Museo del Barrio will teach “neutral mask” and story-telling techniques. Participants in this workshop will be presented with opportunity to deconstruct their socially-conditioned responses and to re-structure their ideas, concerns and opinions into a conscious theatrical form.

In the first part of the workshop, participants will learn how to use their own faces as masks by focusing on the way our expressions are reflected through our faces. Through exercises that are aimed at achieving “neutrality” of expression, participants will be challenged to discover the automatic expressive responses that are part of our social response mechanism. Using the neutral mask as the only form of expression, participants will be able to experience a truly alternative way of approaching their own learnt forms of expression and behavior.

The second part of the workshop will work on the “expressive” mask that will encourage participants to use their own range of facial expressions as their theatrical material. After neutrality has been established, this second phase emphasizes on the value of facial expression as a tool to communicate to others the core of a character. The characters created through the use of the expressive mask will then be given a voice, so they can tell their stories.

This year, engagé is all the rage. There was Artforum magazine—which devoted an entire issue to examining new trends in political art. There was the Whitney Museum’s film screening series, “War! Protest in America.” And then there were galleries galore that collected group shows of activist art during the Republican National Convention.

But many artists worry about whether lily-white galleries and museums can ever connect to the real world in the street and on the ground. Are there compelling reasons to make work for galleries where it will only be experienced by a small, self-selected, probably already sympathetic audience? How can artists navigate the gallery system while still creating meaningful work for diverse audiences? What about gallery-based curatorial projects—how can you create curatorial projects that defy expectations? If you can’t make people protest, can you at least make them think?

In this panel, curator and filmmaker Lea Rekow will discuss her experiences as director of Gigantic ArtSpace, a progressive Tribeca gallery. Curator and visual artist Marc Lepson will talk about his work with such loose collectives as Artists Network of Refuse and Resist! on public projects as well as his own experiences navigating the gallery scene. Dread Scott will his diverse practices as a multidisciplinary artist whose work for museums and galleries draws media attention and incites public discussion.

The Amnesty International Firefly Project team invites you to a town hall discussion to share ideas and consider post-conference next steps.

This forum is open to all conference participants. We want to hear what you want to talk about! Please e-mail discussion points to firefly@aifirefly.org.

This feature documentary tells the story of Spain's largest monument, El Valle de los Caidos, built by political prisoners under Franco. Presented by the filmmaker, Katie Halper.

La Memoria es Vaga
Director: Katie Halper
Country: USA
Genre: Documentary
(2004) 58min

Challenging Seattle's vagrancy laws, which target homeless youth by making it illegal to sit or stand still on the street, artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry filmed 26 homeless young people standing for an hour each on the same square of sidewalk in performances dedicated to individual victims of gun violence.

"Endurance" was commissioned by the ArtsUp program of the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and was created in conjunction with Peace on the Streets by Kids on the Streets (PSKS), a Seattle-based homeless youth advocacy organization. It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The "Endurance" project also includes life-size photographs of the youth featured in the video. For more information, please visit: www.conjunctionarts.org/endurance.

Grappling with the presidential election outcome of 2004, January's Follies turns to the Platonic adage that necessity is the mother of invention. How must the current state of affairs encourage creative efforts towards peace?

THAW's monthly pro-peace performance forum features material from Nevada Shakespeare Company, artivist Laura Schliefer, performer Laurie Schoeman, text from playwright Caridad Svich, songs from Ned Massey, Jamie Smith and Alec Duffy, readings by Hannah Weinstock, Paul Pierog, Nadege Revange, Brian Pickett and others!

Beginning in July of 2003, THAW's crew of volunteer artists has curated monthly extravaganzas of pro-peace texts illuminating a timely theme-of-the-month.  Since then, hundreds of diverse artists and concerned citizens the world over (including Reverend Billy, veteran actress Dale Soules, Bread and Puppet Theater, DadaNYC and others) have joined their voices in powerful dissent. 

Directions to Union Pool
Take the L train to the Lorimer stop. When you exit the subway, walk one block towards the BQE (raised highway). Union Pool will be on your right, on the corner just before you go under the BQE.