SILHOUETTE

SILHOUETTE, short films screening Thursday 02/20 starting at 6PM


Grand Central Art Center’s first series of 2020’s  Public Programming  titled,  documentation, will be hosting a showcase of contrasting films curated by collaborator  Saif Alsaegh.  Documentation  presents film as a medium to capture and present linear and nonlinear narratives and formats. Basing off film’s potential to transform and transmit our (body) sensibility onto a machine, we ask “how has film been used as a singular (self) and mass (culture) tool of documentation”? The films presented are manifestations of digital cartographies using the body as the main source of conversation. Under this exploration, documentation, examines ways film materializes, frames, and embodies the body as a singular, whole, spiritual, and idealized composition.


CURATOR’S STATEMENT
Each of these four films struggle with the restrictions society places on the body. Each filmmaker explores the sense of self and how it is affected by cultural and relationship constraints. Through diverse stylistic approaches, the four artists look at what defines us and reflect on the image of the self existing in a culture of shifting politics and norms.  


ABOUT THE GUEST CURATOR
Saif Alsaegh  is a United States-based filmmaker from Baghdad. Much of Saif’s work deals with the contrast between the landscape of his youth in Baghdad growing up as part of the Chaldean minority in the nineties and early 2000s, and the U.S. landscape where he currently lives.His films have screened in many festivals including Cinema du Reel, Kruzfilm Festival Hamburg, Kasseler Dokfest, Onion City Film Festival and in galleries and museums including the Wisconsin Triennial at MMoCA. He received his MFA in filmmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  


*Disclaimer:  Some content may contain explicit images, viewers discretion is advised.