The series Acts of Faith showcases films that depict a wide variety of religious rituals across cultures, ranging from individual acts of devotion to community-wide sacred practices. The selections range from ethnographic documentaries, to fictional narratives, to experiments in cinematic form. Highlights include works by documentarians Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner, Charles Dekeukeleire and Freida Lee Mock; artist’s films by Jeanne Liotta and Tania Cypriano; and international feature films by directors Jessica Hausner, Jorge Sanjinés, and Vijay Sharma.
Adults $8 / Students and Seniors $5. Five-event pass, $35. Gallery admission is free with a purchased ticket. For tickets and information visit: bgc.bard.edu
Acts of Faith is guest curated by Ed Halter.
Ed Halter is Critic in Residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York and a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. His publications include From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Videogames (2006), Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century (2015), and From the Third Eye: The Evergreen Review Reader (2018). His writing on cinema, art and technology has appeared in 4Columns, Artforum, the Village Voice and elsewhere, and he has curated screenings at exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, MoMA PS1 and Artists Space.
September 28, 2018
Jai Santoshi Maa (dir. Vijay Sharma, 1975, India, 130 minutes)
October 19, 2018
Lourdes (dir. Jessica Hausner, 2010, Austria, 96 minutes)
October 26, 2018
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (dir. Freida Lee Mock, 1994, USA, 105 minutes)
November 16, 2018
Selected Shorts
Crosswalk (dir. Jeanne Liotta, 2010, USA, 19 minutes)
Visions de Lourdes (dir. Charles Dekeukelaire, 1932, Belgium, 13 minutes)
Mammy Water (dir. Jean Rouch, 1956, France, 18 minutes) “Courtesy Icarus Films”
Sons of Shiva (dir. Robert Gardner and Ákos Östör, 1985, USA, 29 minutes)
(Total run time 86 mins)
Mixing artists’ films with ethnographic cinema, this program features a variety of approaches to envisioning public acts of faith. In Ex Voto, artist Tania Cypriano uses video itself as a votary medium, while Jeanne Liotta’s Crosswalk expressively documents a Catholic procession on the Lower East Side, and Charles Dekeukeleire’s quasi-surrealist film visits the structures surrounding the shrine at Lourdes. Mammy Water and Sons of Shiva depict community-wide rituals in Ghana and West Bengal, respectively, conveying the aesthetic and devotional power of such large-scale, communal events. Followed by a conversation on filmmaking and faith between Liotta and curator Ed Halter.
December 14, 2018
The Secret Nation (dir. Jorge Sanjinés and the Ukamau Group, 1989, Bolivia, 128 minutes)
Jeanne Liotta makes films, videos, and other ephemera including installed projections, works on paper, and photographic works. Her works encompass a constellation of mediums and interests often located at a lively intersection of art, science, and natural philosophy. Observando El Cielo (2007), her signature 16mm film of the night skies, was voted one of the top films of the decade by The Film Society of Lincoln Center, took the Tiger Award for Short Film at Rotterdam International Film Festival, and was listed in Artforum Top Ten Films of 2007. In 2011 Liotta was voted among the top filmmakers of the decade by Film Comment magazine, and in she 2012 received the Helen Hill award from the Orphans Film Symposium. In 2013 Anthology Film Archives held a retrospective of her work called The Real World at Last Becomes a Myth, and she installed Stein Times (2013) an altered Gertrude Stein poem in the windows of Gridspace Gallery, Bklyn. She also works with Microscope Gallery in Bushwick, Bklyn. In 2014 she collaborated on an art/science project with the NOAA, creating SOON (2014), a media work about climate change for a 360 degree screening platform which premiered at The Fiske Planetarium in Boulder CO . Her works are exhibited internationally, including The New York and Rotterdam Film Festivals, The 2006 Whitney Biennial, The 2013 Sharjah Biennial, The Centres George Pompidou, The Cinematheque Francais, The Arthouse/ Jones Center in Austin, The Exploratorium in San Francisco, The Wexner Center for the Art in Ohio, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and the Cornell Astronomical Society amongst other venues. For 17 years she was the creative force behind Firefly Cinema, a community garden microcinema curated from the 16mm collection at The New York Public Library. She has taught widely and is presently Assistant Professor in Film Studies at The University of Colorado Boulder, as well as Film/Video faculty for the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She divides her time between Manhattan and Colorado.
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Leading support for Public Programs at Bard Graduate Center comes from Gregory Soros and other generous donors.
