Join the Counter Cinema/Counter Media Project at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality for a special screening of "Lives:Visible" followed by a discussion with filmmaker Michelle Citron.
ABOUT THE FILM
Lesbians in a box. Thatâs how I think of the trove of over 2000 snapshots that are the heart of my film, Lives: Visible. The photos were taken by Norma and Virginia who lived together as a lesbian couple in Chicagoâs East Rogers Park neighborhood for almost 50 years. They died in their 80s leaving behind snapshots of themselves and their friends spanning over four decades, 1936 -1975.
Lives:Visible is the second and final film Iâm creating using Norma and Virginiaâs photos. The first film, Leftovers, focused exclusively on Norma and Virginia during the last decade of their life when they were cut off from family and friends. Lives:Visible expands the story to explore the cultural and historical context of the photographs. Lives:Visible uses two cultures â Chicagoâs vibrant pre-Stonewall lesbian community and the Kodak snapshot â to explore the ephemeral nature of all cultures, even life itself.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Michelle Citron is an award-winning digital and film artist whose work includes the interactive narratives Cocktails & Appetizers, Mixed Greens, and As American As Apple Pie (collected at queerfeast.com) and the films Daughter Rite, Parthenogenesis, What You Take For Grantedâ¦, Leftovers, and Lives:Visible. She is the author of the award-winning book, Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions.
Her media art explores the lives of women â mothers and daughters, women in the workplace, the trauma of incest, lesbian culture â as well as ethnic identity. These works blend experimental styles with melodrama and an exploration of the border between documentary and fiction. An additional theme that flows through all Citronâs work is an examination of the autobiographical impulse, particularly as it is expressed through home movies, snapshots, and memoir.
Citronâs work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art/Chicago, as well as the New Directors, Berlin, London, Edinburgh, Oberhausen, NYMIX, and SeNef film and New Media festivals, among others. Her films and interactive narratives are distributed worldwide and are in the permanent collections of over two hundred universities and museums. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts Filmmaking Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Humanities Media Grant, and three Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowships - for digital arts, filmmaking, and screenwriting. Sheâs holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Wisconsin.
This event is free and open to the public.
Date: February 15, 2017
Time: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
See:http://www.livesvisible.com/
Date: February 15, 2017
Time: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
See:http://www.livesvisible.com/