September 12, 2010, 7pm

3rd Ward (map)

Films, food and live performance that focus on sustainability and deliciousness.

Our return to 3rd Ward will be equal parts BBQ, screening, and live cooking show. Featuring a sneak peak at American Meat by Graham Meriwether, a live demonstration of the Brother Mark cooking show and the chef’s at Mable’s Smokehouse and Banquet Hall plus a collectively-prepared, locally-sourced BBQ meal by members of Umami: People + Food. Graham Meriwether and Brother Mark will participate in a Q&A following the show.

Presented as part of the Farm City Festival and the French Institute Alliance Française: Crossing the Line Festival.

Featuring

American Meat by Graham Meriwether

American Meat explores the complexities embedded in the highly debated practices of the American meat industry. As the economy drives a contraction of conventional chicken, pork and beef operations, we hear the innovative methods of the charismatic, Virginia-based farmer, Joel Salatin. Joel, who is a leader of the growing niche of people who are opting for animals raised outside and without the use of antibiotics, believes that if more people become sustainable farmers, the movement could fracture centralized commodity production. Conventional farmers argue that small-scale farming can’t expand production enough to adequately meet the demands of the nation. As the dialogue ensues, Salatin signs a deal with fast-food chain Chipotle in a surprising move, with widespread implications for the industry.

Brother Mark’s BBQ- Mark Bernal & Matt Rivera

Brother Mark, a chef who looks like he just came in from the Appalachian Trail but cooks with an appreciation of smoke and flavor befitting an urbane foodie, will be screening episodes of his comedy cooking show and preparing a special masterpiece live.

Umami: People + Food

Laura Braslow and Chloe Bass of Umami: People + Food will be working the grill, providing a collectively-prepared and locally-sourced meal that won’t strain your wallet. Umami is a break-even project dedicated to fostering community around what we eat, how we eat it, and who we eat it with. (photo by Lee Manvil)

Mable’s Smokehouse and Banquet Hall

Conceived by Jeff Lutonsky and Meghan Love, Mable’s Smokehouse and Banquet Hall is a new BBQ restaurant and bar in Williamsburg Brooklyn serving a menu of simple country fare found in the roadside BBQ joints of the South.

Farm City Festival: Where Are You Growing?

Over three weekends, Farm City celebrates Urban Agriculture and explores the possibilities of a new agrarian future within the current urban reality. Components include: Farm City Fair, Farm City Film, Farm City Tour, and Farm City Forum, spotlighting the work of artists, farmers, activists, planners, architects, chefs, and foodies, all devoting themselves to feeding the city both culturally and agriculturally. Farm City is co-curated with Derek Denckla, editor of thegreenest.net and founder of FarmCity.US.

French Institute Alliance Française: Crossing the Line

Crossing the Line, the French Institute Alliance Française’s inter-disciplinary contemporary arts festival presented each fall, is conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of transdisciplinary artists working in France and New York City.

August 30, 2010, 8pm

Sternberg Park (map)

A brand new site-specific dance film by Zena Bibler of the Dance Film Lab that is an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of the park made up of 10-second to one-minute clips filmed by the community at the park this summer. Scroll down to see a the new video map of the park. The screening includes a short live performance and a dance film by Itziar Barrio. Click here to view the video map.

Featuring

The Sternberg Project- Zena Bibler

The Sternberg Project will be an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of July in Sternberg Park and its surrounding area. The project is an assemblage of short videos made on anything from an HD camcorder to a camera phone that capture and create the movement of the park including dances, conversations, home runs, images, narratives, stills, sounds for the month of July 2010.

Zena Bibler is a Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer, and experimental filmmaker. She holds an MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and a BA in History from Yale University. Her latest projects include The Union Square Experiments, an expanding set of site-specific, geo-tagged, Google-Mapped, public dance performances with Katie Schetlick and Ashley Hannan and Little Dances Everywhere, a series of short, site-specific dance films that function like postcards from particular moments and situations. See the full film here.

Here’s the map:

View The Sternberg Project in a larger map

(Ballad of) Knowville- Itziar Barrio & Elena Demyanenko

Shot in abandoned industrial locations in New York City, (Ballad of) Knowville attempts to explain our present world through the murder ballad aesthetic. This aesthetic is a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form (often an American version of an older European ballad), that relays details and often consequences of crimes of passion but with the elements of supernatural retribution removed. In this video piece, the murder ballad is an entry point into a world that conjures tension, intrigue, and mystery and where death is decorative, lyrical, and aestheticized. (Ballad of) Knowville teeters on the edge of a dream-state, repeatedly falling into dance-induced lyricism only to abruptly regain the stark reality of self-awareness.

Dance Film Lab

The Dance Film Lab is moderated and organized by Zach Morris (Third Rail Projects) in cooperation with the Dance Films Association. Hosted by Dance Theater Workshop, this salon brings dance filmmakers together to present raw footage, drafts, works-in-progress and newly finished films to their peers for constructive feedback, to share information, and address technical, practical and artistic challenges. The lab is free and open to the public, though reservations are necessary.

August 9, 2010, 8pm

Sternberg Park (map)

A moving documentary tells the story of activist single mothers who managed to be parents and effect broad-based social change at the same time. Plus Latino selections from the Ultra Short 30-Second Film Festival: Art By Chance

Featuring

A Crushing Love by Sylvia Morales

The film honors the achievements of five activist Latinas: labor organizer/farm worker leader Dolores Huerta, author/educator Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, writer/playwright/educator Cherrie Moraga, civil rights advocate Alicia Escalante, and historian/writer Martha Cotera and considers how these single mothers managed to be parents and effect broad-based social change at the same time.

Questions about reconciling competing demands are ones that highly acclaimed filmmaker Sylvia Morales, a working mother of two herself, pondered aloud as she prepared this documentary. Historical footage and recent interviews with each woman reveal their contributions to key struggles for Latino empowerment and other major movements of our time. Both they and their grown children thoughtfully explore the challenges, adaptations, rewards, and missteps involved in juggling dual roles. Scenes of Morales at work and at home, often humorously overlaid with her teenage daughter’s commentary, bring the dilemma up to date. Chicana continues to be used in classrooms more than thirty years after it was made; A CRUSHING LOVE is a memorable sequel which offers us indelible portraits of unforgettable women, including one of Morales herself.

No Time by Carolina Arce Herrero

This video intends to propose that perhaps, there is no time like an unidirectional succession of realities, and maybe, what we know as present past and future, could be the same time in different spaces.

Women Make Movies

Established in 1972 to address the under representation and misrepresentation of women in the media industry, Women Make Movies is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women. The organization provides services to both users and makers of film and video programs, with a special emphasis on supporting work by women of color.

Art By Chance

The ultra-short film festival that takes place on digital signage in more than 20 countries every May.