#32
Oleksiy Radynski,
Saodat Ismailova,
Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Sunday 10 November 2024, 3:30pm
Location: 97 Sclater St, London E1 6HR
Programme:
Where Russia Ends, Oleksiy Radynski, 2024 (25:11 mins)
The Haunted, Saodat Ismailova, 2017 (22:30 mins)
Земля (eng. The Earth), Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930 (78 mins)
Tickets
Mascara Film Club presents a group screening that focuses on the broad and enduring historical scope of Russian imperialism. Maintained through turbo-capitalist expansion, throughout its history the Russian state has maintained a colonial logic of violence – evident from the tsarist era, through the years of the Soviet Union and active up until today. The films included in this program engage with themes of annihilation and extraction, analysing Russia’s infrastructural control and erasure of indigenous, religious and cultural practices.
Oleksiy Radynskis’s Where Russia Ends (2024) presents a montage of archival footage originally shot by Ukrainian filmmakers in the late 1980s from a number of film expeditions to remote parts of Siberia. Discovered in the Kyiv Popular Science Film Studios (Kyivnaukfilm) in 2022, the work reconstructs an erased history of Russia’s imperialist wars waged against its subsequent colonies. The film essay focuses on settler-colonial practices of extraction of natural resources, environmental destruction and oppression of indigenous and racialised populations. The work addresses the need for a decolonial reading of Russian Soviet expansionism and its longstanding imperialist ambitions. Where Russia Ends concludes by listing the many native populations that were part of the Soviet Union – Altai, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Chechen-Ingushetia, Chuvashia, Kalmykia, Karelia, Komi, Mariy El, Northern Ossetia, Sakha-Yakutia, Tatarstan, Tuva, Udmurtia, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region – who declared their state sovereignty after the collapse of the Soviet Union only for it to be subsequently cancelled by the Russian Federation.
Saodat Ismailova’s The Haunted (2017) is a cinematographic and meditative work that looks at the extinction of the Turanian tiger that once inhabited Central Asia. Up to today, this animal has been worshipped and respected as sacred by local populations of the northwestern region of Uzbekistan. Within the film, Ismailova interweaves archival footage with landscape shots, contemplating the loss and annihilation of this spiritual creature, as well as its associated religious and cultural beliefs. As one voice states in the video, “They've been killing you for a long time, I'm sorry I didn't save you. They stole our Paradise, they burned our garden”. Narration and evocative use of sound enframe a mystical rumination that reinscribes the sacred tiger against practices of erasure that started during the tsarist era and continued throughout the Soviet period.
Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Земля (eng. The Earth) (1930)1, often regarded as the masterpiece of the Soviet avant-garde cinema, is praised for its form, visual style and editing. The film portrays the everyday life of Ukrainian peasants amidst the backdrop of land collectivisation, also known as dekulakization, pursued by the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1933. This policy aimed to transform individual land and labour into collective farms in support of the working class. Although Dvozenko portrays a revolt of poorer peasants against a wealthy landowner this fictionalised narrative has been interpreted as propaganda in support of Ukrainian independence, leading to the film being banned only nine days after its release. The forceful implementation of the policy directly contributed to the Holodomor – a man-made famine during the Stalinist rule – that led to starvation of up to five million Ukrainian peasants. This work captures the colonial understanding of Ukraine as the “breadbasket of Europe”, a nation whose territory contains a quarter of the world's most fertile soil chernozem [“black earth”]. Practices of land dispossession and extractivism reverberate throughout the film, a haunting premonition of Russia’s present-day shelling of Ukrainian farmable land.
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1Svitlana Matviyenko notes the historical problems with this direct translation: they suggest 'Land' as being perhaps more accurate, due to the Ukrainian Земля simultaneously encompassing both English understandings of the words 'Earth' and 'Land'.
Past
#31
Emilija Škarnulytė, Lesia Vasylchenko, David Wojnarowicz and Marion Scemama
Thursday 3 October 2024, 7pm
Location: 72 Stamford Hill, London N16 6XS
Programme:
BURIAL, Emilija Škarnulytė, 2022 (60 mins)
Tachyoness, Lesia Vasylchenko, 2022 (8 mins)
When I Put My Hands on Your Body, David Wojnarowicz and Marion Scemama, 1989 (4:29 min)
Tickets
Mascara Film Club presents a group screening exploring the fraught politics of time across fragile worlds, including films by Emilija Škarnulytė, Lesia Vasylchenko, David Wojnarowicz and Marion Scemama.
From the disposal of nuclear toxic waste, through machine learning, to the AIDS pandemic, these films each offer meditations on the (un)making of the present and/or the future within contexts in which the possibility of life is either incomprehensible, uncertain or denied. Shifting between global, personal and geological time frames, the films explore manufacturing of various temporalities and its direct consequences on material realities of those ecosystems.
Emilija Škarnulytė’s BURIAL (2022) opens with shots of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) in Lithuania, which is currently undergoing a decommissioning process. The film is a cinematographic journey through various locations, cultural practices and political agents grappling with understanding of human and non-human temporalities. The meditative explorations of those timelines is underscored by the decomposition of uranium as a nuclear waste. Questions around who, what and if at all anyone will remain to witness its decay reverberate.
Lesia Vasylchenko’s Tachyoness (2022) features more than a thousand photographs of sunrises over Ukraine constructed into a seamless video sequence using AI technology. The images, collected from archives, advertisements, social media, and home VHS videos, span a historically significant period from the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s to 2022.
David Wojnarowicz and Marion Scemama’s When I Put My Hands on Your Body (1989) is a raw and tender portrayal of lovers nearing death. Released only three years before Wojnarowicz's premature death, the work foregrounds bodily expressions of lust and desire, boldly refusing the organised abandonment practised by governments during the height of the AIDS pandemic.
Film stills from When I Put My Hands on Your Body: David Wojnarowicz & Marion Scemama, When I Put My Hands on Your Body, 1989, Film still from Super 8 color on digital video, Copyright Estate of David Wojnarowicz and Marion Scemama, Courtesy of Marion Scemama; Estate of David Wojnarowicz; and P·P·O·W, New York
#30
Ed Webb-Ingall, Frank Sweeney
Sunday 2 June 2024, 6pm
Location: Atlas Cinema, Junction, 5 Gastineau Yard, Loughborough SW9 7FA
Programme:
Few Can See, Frank Sweeney, 2024 (42 mins)
We Have Rather Been Invaded, Ed Webb-Ingall, 2017 (40 mins)
Tickets
Mascara Film Club presents a double-bill of films by artists Ed Webb-Ingall and Frank Sweeney, both investigating the televisual politics of the 1970/80s and the struggles of community activists within Ireland and Great Britain.
Frank Sweeney’s Few Can See (2024) examines the legacy of broadcast censorship of the conflict in the north of Ireland and political movements during this era. The project attempts to recreate material absent from state archives due to censorship, based on contemporary oral history interviews.
Ed Webb-Ingall’s We Have Rather Been Invaded (2017) explores the legacy of Section 28, a series of laws introduced by Margaret Thatcher that banned the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities in the UK. Composed of archival material and roundtable interviews with those affected by the homophobic legislation, this video takes a key moment of protest as its focus – the invasion of a broadcast of the BBC Six O’Clock News by four lesbian protestors on May 23rd 1988, the night before Section 28 became law.
#29
Clémence Lollia Hilaire, John Smith, Ghita Skali, Daisy Smith, Bayley Sweitzer, Adam Khalil & Oba
Sunday 5th May 2024, 7.30pm
Location: Marais Moeras, Av. Van Volxem 380, 1190 Forest, Brussels
Programme:
Nosferasta: First Bite, Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer & Oba, 2021 (30 minutes)
The Eiffel Towers, Ghita Skali, 2013 (12 mins)
The Black Tower, John Smith, 1985-7 (24 mins)
Lily at Home, Daisy Smith, 2023 (4 mins)
Harvest, Clémence Lollia Hilaire, 2023 (15 mins)
Mascara 29 presents five films that have at their core themes of ownership and control, with portraits of people stuck in the fever dream worlds that result from colonial and capitalist invasions. Screened here amidst the marshland nearby, and with the redevelopment of the building looming, we will sit with vampires, property managers, zombies and city planning officers. Revenge fantasies and cautionary tales abound.
#28
Emily Wardill, Ellie Bird & Harriet Rickard
Saturday 20 April 2024, 6pm
Location: Close-Up Film Centre, 97 Sclater Street,
London E1 6HR
Book tickets here
Programme:
Fine I Shall Tell You a Story, Ellie Bird, 2023 (6 mins)
siblings, Harriet Rickard, 2021 (2 mins)
When You Fall into a Trance, Emily Wardill, 2014 (72 mins)
For the 28th iteration of Mascara Film Club we will focus on imperfect narrators, child's play and the dead-ends of language. When You Fall into a Trance, a feature by Emily Wardill, will be screened alongside Fine I Shall Tell You a Story by Ellie Bird and siblings by Harriet Rickard.
#27
Dina Mimi, Kamal Aljafari
(Palestine Fundraiser Screening)
Saturday 6 April 2024, 7.30pm
Location: Black Tower Projects, Abbey Trading Estate
Bell Green Lane, London SE26 5TW
Book tickets here
Programme:
The Melancholy of this Useless Afternoon Chapter 1, Dina Mimi, 2023 (12 mins)
The Melancholy of this Useless Afternoon Chatper 2, Dina Mimi, 2023 (11 mins)
Recollection, Kamal Aljafari, 2015 (1hr 10 mins)
Two films by Dina Mimi The Melancholy of this Useless Afternoon Chapters 1 and 2 pair revolutionary songs from Oman, Yemen and Palestine with a tired speaker at the end of the phone, her fragmented conversation describing a loss, fugitive movement and thoughts on revolution. Kamal Aljafari’s Recollection is a contemplative unravelling of a violent archive. The Israeli and American features shot in the town of Jaffa from the 60s to the 90s are the basis for the history of a dream. All protagonists are removed from the original footage, leaving an empty setting formed by the town. Examinations of erasure and exposure are recurrent in this fundraiser screening.
Tickets are £5 and we will be accepting donations on the night. Proceeds from ticket sales will go towards this fundraiser. Please consider donating to provide vital support to Lina’s family during an ongoing genocide and violent occupation.
#26:Hannan Jones, Dina Mimi, Onyeka Igwe, Jacob Dwyer, Gabriel Abrantes
Thursday 6th April 2023 7.30pmHannan Jones, Dina Mimi, Onyeka Igwe, Jacob Dwyer, Gabriel Abrantes
Location: P/////AKT, Amsterdam
Programme:
Working Knowledge of Ritual, Hannan Jones, 2023 (4 mins)
The eyes that never see, Dina Mimi, 2021, (12 mins)
We Need New Names, Onyeka Igwe, 2015 (14 mins)
Donovan Garcia, Jacob Dwyer, 2017 (7 mins)
A Brief History of Princess X, Gabriel Abrantes, 2016 (7 mins)
Working Knowledge of Ritual, Hannan Jones, 2023 (4 mins)
The eyes that never see, Dina Mimi, 2021, (12 mins)
We Need New Names, Onyeka Igwe, 2015 (14 mins)
Donovan Garcia, Jacob Dwyer, 2017 (7 mins)
A Brief History of Princess X, Gabriel Abrantes, 2016 (7 mins)
Mascara film club presents a programme that looks at portraits of people that cannot be filmed, whether this be through impossibility or concealment. Fact, fiction and construction play out across five films that propose alternative depictions or awkward documents.
#25:
Uriel Orlow, Lenka Vráblíková and Elspeth Mitchell, Rehana Zaman
Lenka Vráblíková and Elspeth Mitchell, Rehana Zaman
Wednesday 9 November 2022, 7.30pm
Location: MayDay Rooms
︎︎︎TICKETS
Programme:
The Crown Against Mafavuke, Uriel Orlow, 2016 (18 mins)
Out of Office: Mycorrhizal encounters and the art of feminist un/learning, Lenka Vráblíková and Elspeth Mitchell, 2021 (21 minutes)
Alternative Economies, Rehana Zaman, 2021 (28 minutes)
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The Crown Against Mafavuke, Uriel Orlow, 2016 (18 mins)
Out of Office: Mycorrhizal encounters and the art of feminist un/learning, Lenka Vráblíková and Elspeth Mitchell, 2021 (21 minutes)
Alternative Economies, Rehana Zaman, 2021 (28 minutes)
Mascara Film Club presents a group screening of three films by Uriel Orlow, Lenka Vráblíková and Elspeth Mitchell, and Rehana Zaman. Exploring entanglements between knowledge, nature and truth production, these films focus on different and often devalued modes of understanding presented through mediations between plants, fungi and people. Working at the junctures between epistemes, here plants and mushrooms offer opportunities for learning and un/learning across ideologies and cultures.
Tickets can be booked via Eventbrite for free. However, we kindly ask attendees to donate £5 if they can, which goes directly towards paying artist's screening fees. Donations can be made on the door. Mascara Film Club is a volunteer-run artist collective.
#25:
Avril Corroon
Avril Corroon
29 October – 23 November 2022
Online
Mascara Film Club presents an online screening of Avril Corroon’s film Spoiled Spores (2019), free to watch on our website.
Responding to neglected housing conditions in rental property in Ireland and London, Spoiled Spores is a film showcasing cheeses made with a culture of household mould (black mould) sampled from rental accommodation in Dublin and London. Participants were found through Avril's extended network of peers and call outs online - each cheese is named after the individual participant. Adopting aesthetics of commercial food photography, the cheese in Spoiled Spores is stylised with menus outlining its provenance, ingredients, rental fees and mould type.
#24:
Project Artworks
7 – 27 October 2022
Online
Mascara Film Club presents an online screening of two films by Project Artworks, No Church in the Wild (2015) and Meet me at the Station (2016).
No Church in the Wild is edited from recordings made while in the company of four young men with autism as they travel through the Sussex countryside. The protagonists finally arrive at Ivy Church in Romney, a building which dates back to the 14th century and is one of the last operational churches in England without electricity. The film explores the concepts of congregation and sanctuary through the sensitive and diverse investigations of the open countryside and the church by the four young men. While it reveals the often unconventional and intimate interactions between the participants as they negotiate their journey, the film questions more widely what it means to be a group and to feel safe.
In 2016 Project Art Works conducted several innovative and investigative projects that focused on how people with complex support needs experience built space and other environments. Each survey resulted in beautifully constructed sound and film documents of the experience. This practice aligns with the psychogeographic practice of investigation, the dérive or drift, and refers to unplanned journeys through urban landscapes and the way in which the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travellers. Meet me at the Station was one of these surveys. This was a Super 8 film transferred to digital film with sound.
About Project Art Works
Project Art Works collaborates with people with complex support needs, families and circles of support. Our practice intersects art and care, responding to neurodivergence, its gifts and impacts. Challenging paradigms of inclusion, it spans direct practical and holistic support, film, events, projects and exhibitions.
Our studios provide the conditions for a broad range of autonomous and collaborative practices with neurodivergent artists, who take part on their own terms. Alongside the studios, the Support Collective brings together people who care for people with complex support needs where we share our experience and protect our rights through training, resources and advocacy.
Human connection and what it reveals about identity and how we view each other are explored within our work. Our practice continues to respond to the functional and ethical structures of diligence and care, respecting self-determination and privacy whilst working towards greater visibility and understanding of neurodiversity in culture.
Project Art Works is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Alongside neurodiverse artists and makers, the collective includes paid and unpaid caregivers who help each other to navigate through the complexities of health and social care systems.
#24:Harilay Rabenjamina, George McGoldrick, George Kuchar, Stephen Sutcliffe, Sam Marshall Lockyer
Harilay Rabenjamina, George McGoldrick, George Kuchar, Stephen Sutcliffe, Sam Marshall Lockyer
Sunday 23rd October 2022 8pm
Location: P/////AKT, Amsterdam
Programme:
Le Nez De Ma Mère Sous Titré/My Mothers’ Nose, Harilay Rabenjamina, 2021 (12 mins)
Paul the Octopus, George McGoldrick, 2018, (1 min)
Creeping Crimson, George Kuchar, 1987 (16 mins)
City of Dreadful Something, Stephen Sutcliffe, 2019 (4 mins)
Scene 4, Take 9, Street Named Psycho politics, Ep1, Se1, Sam Marshall Lockyer, 2022 (17 mins)
Le Nez De Ma Mère Sous Titré/My Mothers’ Nose, Harilay Rabenjamina, 2021 (12 mins)
Paul the Octopus, George McGoldrick, 2018, (1 min)
Creeping Crimson, George Kuchar, 1987 (16 mins)
City of Dreadful Something, Stephen Sutcliffe, 2019 (4 mins)
Scene 4, Take 9, Street Named Psycho politics, Ep1, Se1, Sam Marshall Lockyer, 2022 (17 mins)
Mascara Film Club is very excited for our first screening in Amsterdam, hosted by P/////AKT. Mascara Film Club #24 presents a group screening of films where family, friends, hometowns and pets become material to be both worked from as well as through. Anchored in autobiography, these videos present complicated political contexts through the lens of intimacy, reminiscence and family tensions. Including a bread delivery route, a dressed-up dog, a reality TV-star and a hospital visit on halloween.
#23:
belit sağ
8 September – 6 October 2022
Online
Mascara Film Club is pleased to present an online screening of Cut Out (2018) by belit sağ.
The video brings together police file photos of the Nationalist Socialist Underground’s victims in Germany. Between 2000-2007 this far-right terrorist organisation killed 10 people, 9 of them with a migrant background, mostly Turkish and Kurdish. German government persistently ignored the racist nature of crimes and treated them as isolated assaults. sağ combines portraits of the victims with a voiceover speculating on material details and conditions of the photographs taken.
belit sağ is a videomaker and visual artist living in Amsterdam. She studied mathematics in Ankara and audiovisual arts in Amsterdam. Her video background is rooted in video-activist groups in Ankara and Istanbul, where she co-initiated projects such as karahaber.org (2000-2007) and bak.ma (a growing online audiovisual archive of social movements in Turkey). Her recent video work focuses on ‘the violence of representation’ and ‘representation of violence’. She attended residencies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2014-2015, and the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, in 2016. She has presented her work at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide, including MOCA, Taipei; Tütün Deposu, Istanbul; Tabakalera Film Seminar, San Sebastian; Toronto/Rotterdam/San Francisco/New York International Film Fest/International Documentary Film Fest. Amsterdam (IDFA); EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam; Documenta14, Kassel; Marabouparken, Stockholm.
#21:
Chris E. Vargas & Eric. A Stanley
Thursday 01 September 2022
Location: Mascara Bar
Programme:
Criminal Queers, Chris E. Vargas & Eric A. Stanley, 2015 (63 mins)
︎︎︎ Tickets: sliding scale: £3–£10
Mascara Film Club is pleased to present a screening of Criminal Queers (2015) by Chris E. Vargas & Eric A. Stanley.
Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements. Criminal Queers grows our collective liberation by working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.