Thursday, June 14, 2018 at 7:30pm
Other Tongue: An Evening with NANG
155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn
Curated by Maryam Tafakory and Julian Ross
As part of an ongoing series dedicated to bringing the most vital international film publications to New York audiences, Light Industry hosts an evening with NANG, a new magazine of Asian cinema published out of Seoul.
Mouth to Mouth, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 1975, digital projection (originally for monitor), 8 mins
Fatima’s Letter, Alia Syed, 1992, 16mm, 21 mins
Sugiharti Halim, Ariani Darmawan, 2008, digital projection, 10 mins
Poem and Stone, Maryam Tafakory, 2015, digital projection, 11 mins
Highview, Simon Liu, 2017, 16mm quadruple projection, 20 mins
Language is an integral part of film. Film itself is like a conversation: between shots, between sound and image, between itself and an audience. Whether verbal, textual, or visual, language may be used to reveal or hide, to agree or contradict, to familiarize or alienate, to connect or undo, to comfort or disturb. As much as what is said, how it is told is also of importance: the tone or pitch can determine the direction that a dialogue takes. Speaking in our "mother tongue" puts us at ease. But this option is not always available, especially to those who have moved, for one reason or another, away from where they once called home.
In our program "Other Tongue," we celebrate films and videos by artists and filmmakers with a connection to Asia who voluntarily or involuntarily left their country of origin, works that play with language to explore issues of displacement, belonging, gender, and class. While they are more than their split identity, these pieces share characteristics of in-between-ness.
The artists and filmmakers presented here are also those to whom we dedicate issue 4: IN & OUT of NANG, a magazine on Asian cinema which we were invited to co-edit and will be launching at this show. The issue takes a broad look at Asian "accented cinema," while the event focuses on language in particular.
More than anything, we intend the volume and this first launch event of IN & OUT to be the beginning of their own conversation.
- MT/JR
Tickets - $8, available at door.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm.
Presented in collaboration with the Flaherty Seminar.