LÁZARO AT NIGHT, FLORA, and DEAR CHANTAL
We are pleased to welcome acclaimed filmmaker Nicolás Pereda to the Center for Ethnographic Media Arts as part of our Visiting Artist Series. Join us Friday, April 11th, for a screening of his films DEAR CHANTAL, FLORA, and LÁZARO AT NIGHT. Details below.
Nicolás Pereda has had over 35 retrospectives worldwide in places like TIFF Cinematheque, Anthology Film Archive, and Jeu de Paume. His films have been presented in most major international film festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, New York, and Toronto, as well as in galleries and museums like the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Guggenheim and MoMA in New York. In 2010 he was awarded the Premio Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival.
DEAR CHANTAL: A miniature homage to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of playfully impossible letters that respond to her inquiry about renting my sister’s home in Mexico City. FLORA: A reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal. LÁZARO AT NIGHT : Lázaro at Night follows three friends in their early forties as they audition for a coveted film role. Amid the process, one of them interviews a former literature teacher whose voice transports us to their past—a time when literature offered them an escape, allowing them to dream and hope in ways the dull, unforgiving real world never could. As they reminisce, their deep friendship becomes tangled in an uneasy love triangle, blurring the lines between memory, desire, and reality.
Nicolás Pereda in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.
Friday, April 11th, 2025
Doors at 6:30 PM, films begins at 7:00 PM. Runtime 90 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex, Room SCI 106
900 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Possibilities of Voice-Over – A Workshop with Nicolás Pereda
This workshop takes an experimental approach to exploring the possibilities of voice-over narration in film, examining its different forms and effects. We will discuss the distinctions between documentary and fiction voice-overs, as well as hybrid approaches that combine elements of both. Topics will include embodied vs. disembodied narration, how the use of different verb tenses affects audience engagement, and conceptual vs. material narration. Participants will do one short exercise. To take part, please bring a photograph of your choice.
Friday, April 11th, 2025, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
USC Dornsife Temporary Research Facility, TRF 120
3430 S Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90089
We have limited space available for this event. Please write to us as soon as possible to secure your spot. To RSVP, email cema@usc.edu.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
GOOD LUCK
We are pleased to welcome acclaimed filmmaker Ben Russell to the Center for Ethnographic Media Arts on March 27th and 28th, as part of our Visiting Artist Series.
GOOD LUCK
A film by Ben Russell
Filmed between a state-owned large-scale underground mine in the war-torn state of Serbia and an illegal mining collective in the tropical heat of Suriname, Good Luck is a visceral documentary portrait of hope and sacrifice in a time of global economic turmoil. Beginning with a 600 meter descent into the depths of the earth, Good Luck shines a flashlight onto the human face of labor in the time-warp’d working conditions of an underground state-owned mine in Serbia. The hiss of oxygen cuts through the diesel rumble, the walls of the office vibrate with explosions two levels below ; war-torn and half-forgotten, these miners’ physical struggle finds its mirror a continent away – in the tropical heat of an illegal Surinamese gold mine. The water pumps roar under the blinding sun ; silver liquid rolls across the hand of a Saramaccan Maroon as he adds mercury to dirt in a never-ending search for gold. Formed between dark and light, cold and heat, North and South, Good Luck immerses its viewer in the precarious natural and social environments of two distinct labor groups so as to better understand the bonds that men share. In a time of global economic turmoil, here is the human foundation of capital, revealed.
Ben Russell in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.
March 27th, 2025
Doors at 5:00 PM, films begins at 5:30 PM.
Runtime 143 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room SCI 106
900 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
ATTENTION!
ATTENTION! is a practical workshop exploring perceptual re-engagement, one that seeks to re-orient the audiovisual attentions of its participants towards the present. Participants will be led in a series of walking and recording exercises that explore the possibilities of objective and subjective observation under the loose frames of “documentary” and / or “psychedelic ethnography.” This workshop draws its inspiration from sources as diverse as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Maryanne Amacher’s third ear compositions, LSD test subjects, hydrophone coral reef recordings, Jean Rouch’s idea of trance-cinema and more – all in the name of recognizing one’s own intuitive, cognitive and perceptual processes within the construction of the Here and Now.
March 28th, 2025
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
SCA 214
900 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
We have limited space available for this event. Please write to us as soon as possible to secure your spot. To RSVP, email cema@usc.edu.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
JUST A SOUL RESPONDING
We are thrilled to welcome acclaimed filmmaker Sky Hopinka to the Center for Ethnographic Media Arts as part of our Visiting Artist Series.
Just a Soul Responding
Short Films by Sky Hopinka
Visions of an Island, 2016
An Unangam Tunuu elder describes cliffs and summits, drifting birds, and deserted shore a group of students and teachers play and invent games revitalizing their language. A visitor wanders in a quixotic chronicling of earthly and supernal terrain. These visions offer glimpses of an island in the center of the Bering Sea.
Sunflower Siege Engine, 2022
Moments of resistance are collapsed and woven together; from documentation of the Indigenous led occupation of Alcatraz, to the reclamation of Cahokia and the repatriation of the ancestors, to one’s reflections on their body as they exist in the world today. These are gestures that meditate on the carcer inception and nature of the reservation system, and where sovereignty and belligerence intersect and diverge.
Kicking the Clouds, 2021
This film is a reflection on descendants and ancestors, guided by a 50 year old audio recording of grandmother learning the Pechanga language from her mother. After being given this tape by my mother, I interviewed her and asked about it, and recorded her ruminations on their lives and her own. The footage is of our chosen home in Whatcom County, Washington, where my family still lives, far from our homelands in Southern California, yet a home nonetheless.
Anti-Objects, or Space Without Path or Boundary, 2017
“The individual is not an autonomous, solitary object but a thing of uncertain extent, with ambiguous boundaries. So too is matter, which loses much of its allure the moment it is reduced to an object, shorn of its viscosity, pressure and density. Both subject and matter resist their reduction into objects. Everything is interconnected and intertwined.” —– Kengo Kuma
The title of this video, taken from the texts of the architect Kengo Kuma, suggests a way of looking at everything as “interconnected and intertwined”, as are the historical and the present, the tool and the artifact. Images and representations of two structures in the Portland Metropolitan Area that have direct and complicated connections to the Chinookan people who inhabit(ed) the land are woven with audio tapes of one of the last speakers of the Chinookan creole, chinuk wawa. These localities of matter resist their reduction into objects, and call anew for space and time given to wandering as a deliberate act and the empowerment of shared utility.
Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and non fiction forms of media.
His work has played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Courtisane Festival, Punto de Vista, and the New York Film Festival. His work was a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial and Prospect.5 in 2021. He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and participated in Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou. He has had a solo exhibition at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 2020 and in 2022 at LUMA in Arles, France. He is the recipient of the Infinity Award in A from the International Center and the Alpert Award for Film/Video and fellowships including The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Art Matters, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The Forge Project. In the fall of 2022, Hopinka received a MacArthur Fellowship for his work as a visual artist and filmmaker.
Sky Hopinka in-person with a Q&A to follow the films.
Thursday February 20th, 2025
Doors at 5:30 PM, films begins at 6:00 PM.
Runtime 75 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room SCI 106
900 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
A CONVERSATION WITH SKY HOPINKA
Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and non fiction forms of media.
His work has played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Courtisane Festival, Punto de Vista, and the New York Film Festival. His work was a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial and Prospect.5 in 2021. He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and participated in Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou. He has had a solo exhibition at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 2020 and in 2022 at LUMA in Arles, France. He is the recipient of the Infinity Award in A from the International Center and the Alpert Award for Film/Video and fellowships including The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Art Matters, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The Forge Project. In the fall of 2022, Hopinka received a MacArthur Fellowship for his work as a visual artist and filmmaker.
Friday February 21st, 2025
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room SCA 112
900 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
We have limited space available for this event. Please write to us as soon as possible to secure your spot. To RSVP, email cema@usc.edu.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
EVENTIDE
We are thrilled to welcome acclaimed filmmaker Sharon Lockhart to the Center for Ethnographic Media Arts as part of our Visiting Artist Series. Join us Friday, January 31st, for a screening and Q&A of her film EVENTIDE, followed by a workshop led by Sharon Lockhart. See details below.
EVENTIDE
A film by Sharon Lockhart
In what is both a culmination and a departure, Sharon Lockhart’s latest film, Eventide (2022), is a meditative, non-narrative long shot that uses choreography to explore landscape, communal relations, solitary searching, psychic endurance, and the play of light moving through darkness. Locating drama in the real-time shift of evening fading into night, this is perhaps Lockhart’s most optical and painterly moving image to date, composing figures, scenography, and soundscape into allegory and abstraction. The artist’s investment in forms of dance in previous works is felt here too as the initial appearance of an individual slowly builds into a culture and a gathering. An astounding number of stars emerge bright in the dusking sky, blazing as a distant corollary to the growing constellation of roving bodies scanning the rock- strewn beach by cell phone light for what we do not know. The streaking of shooting stars and gliding of satellites throws the otherwise measured pace into relief. Shot on the Swedish coast with a close-knit group of friends Lockhart has been involved with for years, Eventide is concerned with the future and what it might hold.
Sharon Lockhart in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.
SOUND AND PERFORMANCE
A Workshop with Sharon Lockhart
Experience the intersection of sound and movement in an exploration of the soundscape that surrounds us daily. Before the workshop, participants will record three to five distinct sounds from their daily lives and bring these recordings to class. Students will then collaborate to create a cohesive digital soundscape that reflects their collective auditory discoveries. Finally, we’ll bring our composition to life through physical performance, bridging the gap between sound and the body. Whether you’re an experienced sound artist or a curious newcomer, this workshop invites you to listen deeply and engage creatively with the world around you.
We have limited space available for this workshop. Please write to us as soon as possible to secure your spot. To RSVP, email cema@usc.edu. Participants are asked to submit their sound recordings to CEMA@usc.edu by 5:00 pm on Wednesday, January 29th.
January 31st, 2025
Doors at 10:30 AM, film begins at 11:00 AM.
Runtime 34 min.
Workshop:
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Norris Cinema Theater
3507 Trousdale Pkwy Los Angeles, CA 90007
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
BLACK GLASS
We are thrilled to welcome filmmaker Adam Piron, November 7-8, to the Center for Ethnographic Media Arts as part of our Visiting Artist Series.
Yaangna Plays Itself (2022)
An ode to the memories of El Aliso, the sycamore tree that once stood at the center of Yaangna, the Indigenous Gabrieleno village that Los Angeles grew out from. All elements sourced in the film are from the original site and the nearby Los Angeles River.
Dau:añcut // Moving Along Image (2023)
The likeness of a relative of the filmmaker surfaces as a tattoo on the arm of a Ukrainian soldier. A U.S. Army post in Oklahoma, built to fight Kiowa and Apache, is rededicated to aid in the fight against Putin’s own Western expansion. In Dau:añcut (Moving Along Image), Adam Piron explores the contradictions of colonialism and anti-settler solidarity across time and geography and in the muddled spaces of TikTok, where representations of Indigenous peoples are caught up in the ongoing and increasingly rapid circulation of images.
Black Glass (2024)
Before his legendary proto-cinematic studies in motion, photographer Eadweard Muybridge was commissioned to document the United States Army’s war against the Modoc tribe in Northern California in a series of stereographs, many of them staged. Alternately unnerving, meditative, and explosive, Adam Piron’s Black Glass examines the entangled histories of visual technology and the genocide and expropriation of Indigenous populations by white settlers through a violent collision of image and sound.
Adam Piron in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.
November 7th, 2024
Doors at 6:30pm, films begins at 7:00pm
Runtime 31 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCI 106
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
To secure a spot, please RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
WORKS-IN-PROGRESS
A Discussion with Adam Piron
In this workshop, Adam Piron will screen and discuss current works-in-progress including:
ndn time – A work-in-progress screening of fragments of Adam Piron’s feature film looking at a material history of cinema in California and its connections to campaigns of settler colonial genocide against Native American communities, while weaving in contemporary perspectives by Indigenous artists from those communities reflecting on what it means to engage in filmic practices. This will focus on the opening vignette that looks at a history of Eadweard Muybridge’s involvement in the US Army’s campaign against the Modoc Tribe of Northern California and the history of the Cerro Gordo Mine in the Owens Valley as it relates to a history of resource extraction to manufacture early film stock. (40 mins.)
The Power & the Freedom – Former San Francisco police officer John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) has developed acrophobia and must follow a woman (Kim Novak) who may be possessed by a ghost from the past in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Widely considered his crowning achievement, the film has long been canonized as cinema’s essential image of San Francisco. In its sundry dissections, much of the focus centers on its portrayal of obsession while few have dug deep into its foregrounding of California’s dark legacy of the Mission Era. Based on Adam Piron’s live reading and visual essay, this work-in-progress offers a reading of Vertigo from a uniquely Indigenous vantage point and interprets Hitchcock’s masterpiece as a statement on the ongoing costs of a colonialism, specific to California, and the psychological violence that continues to ripple from its blast point. (60 mins.)
November 8th, 2024
1:00pm – 4:00pm
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCA 110
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
We have limited space available for this workshop. Please write to us as soon as possible to secure your spot. To RSVP, email cema@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation.
UNION
A film by Brett Story and Stephen Maing
Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten, New York.
Brett Story in-person, followed by a Q&A moderated by Dr. Clare O’Connor of USC Annenberg.
October 24th, 2024
Doors at 5:30pm, film begins at 6:00pm
Runtime 100 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCI 106
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
To secure a spot, please RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts, USC Annenberg, and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
GEOGRAPHY AS CINEMATIC METHOD
Discussing her practice across multiple long form works, Brett Story will explore how geography operates as a method in her non-fiction filmmaking. Using examples from select projects, she will discuss how the production of space and the problem of seeing animate the formal and political choices she makes in the construction of her films. We will together investigate form as politics, and cinema as space.
October 25th, 2024
10:00am – 12:00pm
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCB 104
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
We have limited space available for this workshop. Please write to us as soon as possible to secure your spot. To RSVP, email cema@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts, USC Annenberg, and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Group Critique
In this Center for Ethnographic Media Arts Visiting Artist session, a small group of participants will share sequences from works-in-progress with Brett Story for critique. We will prioritize CEMA Fellows and USC graduate students working as small crews (1-3 persons) to produce original nonfiction work. Interested participants should send a short description of their project and a sentence or two about why you would wish to participate. All participants will be asked to submit an up to 15 minute sequence and/or other materials on October 23rd for critique and eventual submission into the online CEMA Critical Digital Archive.
October 25th, 2024
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCB 104
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Please email cema@usc.edu to apply to reserve your spot. Deadline for applications is Monday, Oct. 21st at 12:00PM.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts, USC Annenberg, and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Youth (Spring)
Youth (Spring) A film by Wang Bing
Youth (Spring) is set in Zhili, 120 miles from Shanghai. In this city dedicated to textile manufacturing, young workers come from rural regions crossed by the Yangtze River. They are in their early twenties, sharing dormitories and snacking in the corridors. They work tirelessly to be able to one day raise a child, buy a house, or set up their own workshop. Friendships and romantic affairs are made and unmade according to the seasons, financial difficulties, and family pressures.
Wang Bing in-person, followed by a with a Q&A moderated by Dr. Jenny Chio, USC Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Anthropology.
October 3rd, 2024
Doors at 5:00pm, film begins at 5:30pm
Runtime 215 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCI 106
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
To secure a spot, please RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts, Media Arts + Practice, and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
A Discussion-Based Masterclass with Wang Bing
Wang Bing will discuss how his approach to filmmaking has developed over the course of the last two decades. Sharing clips from across his oeuvre, Wang will discuss how he works with individuals and communities to produce his profound and insightful portraits of contemporary life in mainland China. This is a rare opportunity to engage in conversation with a leading figure in global nonfiction cinema.
October 4th, 2024
2:30pm – 4:30pm
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCB 104
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
We have limited space available for this workshop. Please write to us as soon as possible to secure your spot. To RSVP, email cema@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Works-In-Progress Critique with Visiting Artist Wang Bing
In this Center for Ethnographic Media Arts Visiting Artist session, a small group of participants will share sequences from works-in-progress with Wang Bing for critique. We will prioritize CEMA Fellows and USC graduate students working as small crews (1-3 persons) to produce original nonfiction work. Interested participants should send a short description of their project and a sentence or two about why you would wish to participate. All participants will be asked to submit a 3-5 minute sequence and/or other materials on October 3 for critique and eventual submission into the online CEMA Critical Digital Archive.
October 4th, 2024
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCB 104
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Please email cema@usc.edu to apply to reserve your spot. Deadline for applications is Wednesday, Oct. 2nd.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts, Media Arts + Practice, and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Dos Estaciones
Dos Estaciones by Juan Pablo Gonzalez
Juan Pablo Gonzalez in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.
April 12, 2024
Doors at 9:15am, film begins at 9:30am
Runtime 120 min.
The Michelle and Kevin Douglas IMAX Theatre
The Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
3131 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
(Entrance on 32nd Street)
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
PERCEPTIONS OF THE REAL
A Workshop with Juan Pablo Gonzalez
A short workshop about the intersection between nonfiction and fiction film practices. Together we will discuss some of the ways in which we think about the real and the constructed in moving image work. We will also explore the relationship between our experience of the world and cinema’s potential to represent, or not, that experience.
April 12, 2024
1:00-4:00pm
To secure your spot in this workshop email CEMA@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation by April 5, 2024.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Last Things
Last Things by Deborah Stratman
Deborah Stratman in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.
March 7, 2024
Doors at 6:30pm, film begins at 7:00pm
Runtime 65 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCI 106
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
GEOPHONY
A Workshop with Deborah Stratman
The earth is a tape recorder. The earth is an oscillator. Landscapes are mediums for sensory vibration and political meaning. If rocks can tell stories outside of human time, there must be a listening outside of that time as well. How might the sonosphere be a medium for situated knowledge, transperception, and evolutionary perspective? A short workshop on the long now and potentials of geological listening.
March 8, 2024
1:00-4:00pm
To secure your spot in this workshop email CEMA@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation by March 1, 2024.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Salon with Christopher Harris
still/here and Other Films by Christopher Harris and Friends
Christopher Harris will be in-person at the screening.
February 22nd, 2024
Doors at 6:30pm, film begins at 7:00pm
Runtime 91 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCI 106
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Lose Your Mother: Transglobal Histories of the Personal Archive
A Workshop with Christopher Harris
Building on the insights of Christopher Harris’s groundbreaking work in experimental audiovisual historiography, this workshop offers an examination of filmmaking practices centered on personal histories and lineages. Participants will be tasked with bringing a short piece of media or artifact that intimately engages with personal history and archival practices. Through collective discussion and analysis, we will delve into the complexities and nuances of making within this context.
February 23, 2024
1:00-4:00pm
To secure your spot in this workshop email CEMA@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation by February 16, 2024.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
EXPEDITION CONTENT
A film by Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati
Ernst Karel will be in-person at the screening.
November 7th, 2023
Doors at 9:30am, film begins at 10:00am
Runtime 78 min.
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Room, SCI 106
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
MEDIATED LISTENING
An Ears-On Workshop with Ernst Karel
This workshop will focus on listening in multiple modes, with an ear toward audio work in nonfiction/ethnographic media. Participants will prepare for the workshop by engaging in a simple project involving listening both with and without technological apparatus, monitoring through headphones while both recording and not recording, and listening discerningly to the resulting recordings — an exercise loosely based on Pauline Oliveros’ 1979 text score, ‘Just Listening’. In the workshop we’ll discuss instruments for transducing sound into audio, listen critically to a variety of audio work, and engage in discussions around our experiences of listening and possibilities for sonic ethnography or other ways of engaging with reality-based audio.
November 10th, 2023
1:00-4:00pm
To secure your spot in this workshop email us at CEMA@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation by November 6th, 2023.
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
DRY GROUND BURNING
A FILM BY JOANA PIMENTA AND ADIRLEY QUEIRÓS
Joana Pimenta will be in-person at the screening.
October 26th, 2023
Doors at 6:30pm, film begins at 7:00pm
Runtime 153 min.
SCA 310, Steven Spielberg Building
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
MARGINAL IMAGES
A WORKSHOP WITH JOANA PIMENTA
This is a non-fiction filmmaking workshop with a specific focus on cinematography, directed to filmmakers who want to direct and simultaneously shoot their own work. We will explore a form of cinematography that works with natural light as well as with lights found on location, and talk about strategies to edit while you shoot. In this gymnastics of the director-cinematographer, you will think about how to use the tools of fiction in nonfiction shoots (by yourself or with a small crew, without a script or a plan) to control exposure and color, think about framing and lenses, lighting and composition, movement and operation, measurement and focus, pre-shoot model-making and post-production color correction, as well as using notational drawing and the viewfinder diagramming to prepare the choreography of anticipating our shots in advance, so that you can react, often instinctively and unexpectedly, ideally without the restraints of technical or conceptual control, when you are face to face with the world.
To secure your spot in this workshop email us at CEMA@usc.edu with your name and institutional affiliation by October 20th, 2023.
The workshop will be held on October 27th, 2023, 1:00-4:00pm
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA
A FILM BY VÉRÉNA PARAVEL AND LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR
Lucien Castaing-Taylor in-person with a Q&A to follow the film.
September 21st, 2023
Doors at 6:30pm, film begins at 7:00pm
Runtime 118 min.
The Michelle and Kevin Douglas IMAX Theatre
The Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
3131 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007
(Entrance on 32nd Street)
FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL USC STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
RSVP to CEMA@usc.edu
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts, USC Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life and USC School of Cinematic Arts.
IN THE FLESH
A WORKSHOP WITH LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR
This inaugural CEMA Visiting Artist Series Workshop with anthropologist and artist Lucien Castaing-Taylor attends to the mystery, beauty and horror of the human body. It will feature a screening of the groundbreaking film SOMNILOQUIES (2017, dir. Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 73 min.) followed by a discussion on how bodily experience and consciousness are depicted in the films DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA and SOMNILOQUIES. Participants will receive a prompt in advance of the workshop and are very strongly encouraged to attend the CEMA sponsored screening of DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA on 9/21.
The workshop is available to students selected through a competitive application process. To secure your spot, submit a statement expressing your interest in participating in this workshop to CEMA@usc.edu by September 18th, 2023.
The workshop will be held on September 22, 2023, 1:00-4:00pm
This event is co-sponsored by USC Center for Ethnographic Media Arts and Media Arts + Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
