Attention New Yorkers reading this right now. There's still time to make it to Light Industry by 7:30 p.m. for this amazing-sounding program--if you hustle.
light industry
220 36th street, 5th floor
brooklyn, ny
Filmmaker Sam Green [The Weather Underground] presents a live, work-in-progress screening of his new film project Utopia in Four Movements. Part lecture, part documentary, this piece explores the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the 21st century through several seemingly unrelated vignettes — including a history of Esperanto, a portrait of an exiled American radical, and a meditation on the world’s largest shopping mall. Green narrates Utopia in person and uses PowerPoint to cue images while San Francisco musician Dave Cerf performs a live soundtrack. Drawing on performative practices such as Benshi, the travelogue, and the public lecture, Utopia in Four Movements uses the collective experience of cinema as a starting point for a meditation on the value of the utopian and its problematic nature in an era without big ideas.
Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall was one of my favorite shorts at Full Frame this April. When I saw it I hd no idea the film was part of a larger project. Located in southern China--but not near an airport--the mall is easily twice the size of the Mall of America, but no matter how many colorful banners boast in broken English slogans like "Interpretation of Quality of Life," the one-stop consumption center is yawningly empty. The developer built, but they didn't come. So Green shoots an offmarket Teletubby-costumed worker wandering the empty halls. He speaks with men who clean sewage from the complex's canals daily because their boss won't divert a pipe. And he captures an earnest ceremony conducted by the plucky employees of this empty experiment in Chinese capitalism. It's incisive, cutting, and funny as hell, and it looks beautiful.
Utopia, Part 3 would be great on a bill with Fish Kill Flea and The World, or perhaps as prep for the recently opened 24 City [of which I saw only the Little Flower sequence at Full Frame]. If you miss tonight's program, Part 3 also plays as part of the Shorts 2 program on Sunday, June 28 at 3:15 p.m. at BAMcinemaFest.
