Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA presents
Babette Mangolte: The Sky on Location
Thursday, March 14, 2019, 7:00pm
At MOCA Grand Avenue, Ahmanson Theater, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles CA 90012
Babette Mangolte in person!
Artist Babette Mangolte joins us for a screening of her film The Sky on Location, a meditation on the American landscape. “The idea for the film came while I was traveling in 1975 on buses roaming the West. Spending often a night in the bus I was leaving a sunset in Arizona and waking up by sunrise in Wyoming. I noticed that the color of the sky changed from North to South and that color shift was what I tried to capture.” Mangolte constructs a geography through color while exploring ideas of wilderness unknown to her in her native France.
The film traverses the landscape between New Mexico and Washington, across seasons, by an indirect route. In a narrative composed of three voices, Mangolte and her ostensible travelling companions consider the American west as it is depicted in painting, photography, film, and philosophy, and as it may have been seen in the past, while looking at the specific conditions of the landscape in the film’s frame: location, elevation, season, weather, light, color, time of day. “While shooting I wanted to establish the mood of the landscape as in a Turner painting. And as viewers of the film we discover how much what we see is conditioned by what we already know.”
Curated by Kate Brown
Tickets: $15 general; $10 for seniors; $8 for students with ID; free for Filmforum and MOCA members. Available in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4091224 or at the door.
For more information www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238, https://www.moca.org/programs/2019/3 213/621-1745 or education@moca.org
Screening:
The Sky on Location by Babette Mangolte
1982, 16mm, color, sound, 78 minutes
Script, Direction, Cinematography, and Editing by Babette Mangolte, Camera assistance by Ralph Cheney, Mark Daniels, Neil Harvey, Location sound by Ralph Cheney, Assistant editing by Maureen Judge, Music by Ann Hankinson, Johannes Brahms (Requiem) and Richard Strauss (Last Song).
Biography:
Babette Mangolte (American, born in France) is an internationally known experimental filmmaker and photographer who has lived in New York City since 1970. Among her recent films, Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramović premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. Two films on the choreographies of Yvonne Rainer, AG Indexical, 2007, and RoS Indexical, were completed in 2008. Mangolte’s film of Trisha Brown’s choreography Roof Piece, performed on the Highline in 2011, was completed in 2012. In the same year, she finished a film of Patricia Patterson Paintings using material shot in 1988 and 1991. Edward Krasiński’s Studio premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2013. In 2014, Mangolte made the short films Steve Paxton at DIA:BEACON and Je, Nous, I or Eye, Us. She is currently editing a new feature shot in Brussels in April 2015.
Recent installations include Presence (Berlin Biennale, 2008), Rushes (Cologne, 2009) and How to look… 2010 (Whitney Biennial, 2010). In 2013 she exhibited: Éloge du Vert, an installation about the color green at VOX in Montreal, TOUCHING III, an installation on photography and the viewer, at Inhotim in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and finally, an installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for Rituals of Rented Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and the New Psychodrama–Manhattan, 1970-1980, a performance show curated by Jay Sanders.
Mangolte is interested in creating architectural spaces which propose various modes of interactivity for the spectators with the photographs, films and texts shown in her installations. She is also known for her photographic archive, which documents the experimental theater, dance, and performance scene of the 1970s and 1980s. Mangolte has published essays theorizing her practice as a filmmaker and as a photographer and she has written about technological transformations in film with the advent of digital.
In addition to her own films, installations, photography, and writing, Mangolte is lauded for her work as cinematographer on films by artists, including Chantal Akerman (The Room, 1972, Hotel Monterey, 1972, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080, Bruxelles, 1975, News From Home, 1977, Un Jour Pina a demandé, 1984), Yvonne Rainer (Lives of Performers, 1971, Film About a Woman Who, 1973), Jean-Pierre Gorin (Routine Pleasures, 1986, My Crazy Life, 1991, and Michael Snow (Rameau’s Nephew, 1973), among others.
http://babettemangolte.org/
https://inhotim.org.br/inhotim/arte-contemporanea/obras/babette-mangolte/
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3995-babette-mangolte-s-time-with-chantal-akerman
https://www.artforum.com/print/201601/babette-mangolte-56695
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Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA furthers MOCA’s mission to question and adapt to the changing definitions of art and to care for the urgency of contemporary expression with bimonthly screenings of film and video organized and co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum—the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, video, documentary, and animation.
Education Programs at MOCA, including Contemporary Art Start and Sunday Studio, and the MOCA Teen Program, are generously supported by The Hearst Foundations, Banc of California, MOCA Projects Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, Edison International, Joseph Drown Foundation, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, Satterberg Foundation, Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, Michael Asher Foundation, The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, The Rhonda S. Zinner Foundation, The Winnick Family Foundation, and Pazia Bermudez-Silverman.
For more on Los Angeles Filmforum, visit lafilmforum.org, or email lafilmforum@yahoo.com.
For more information on The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, visit moca.org.
Filmforum Memberships available, $70 single, $115 dual, or $50 single student
Contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com.
Find us online at http://lafilmforum.org.
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Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation. 2018 is our 43rd year.
Memberships available, $70 single, $115 dual, or $50 single student
Contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com.
Find us online at http://lafilmforum.org.
Become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LosAngFilmforum!
