A traveling selection of films from the week-long seminar celebrating exploration, introspection, and dialogue about the art and craft of the moving image.

Presented by: Margarita De la Vega-Hurtado
(notes by Isaac E. Mathes, John Columbus, Thomas Torres-Cordova and Roddy Bogawa)

Flashbacks From My Past “Starry Night” – Irra Vergitsky, 4:00 (NY, NY)
This telling animation incorporates paintings and drawings by the filmmaker’s father. His story and that of his daughter whose childhood memories of the brutal German occupation of her Russian village provide an indelible account of a Jewish family’s struggle to endure WWII. –J.C.

Light Is Calling – Bill Morrison, 8:00 (NY, NY)
This is an arresting film made from the deteriorating remnants of the 1926 film The Bells by James Young. The images have been reprocessed and edited to Michael Gordon’s violin piece performed by Todd Reynolds. Scenes depicting the transient nature of life and love are seen through the magnificently roiling emulsion. –J.C.

N-Judah 5:30 - Sam Green, 3:00 (SF, CA)
At dusk in a Western city, trams rumble through an intersection. The rhythm of their comings and goings hypnotizes, while lending impartiality to fleeting views of passengers floating past. Out of this nether world of fluorescent light and automated announcements, a moment of contact, a smile emerges, then darkness closes in. –I.M.

A Private Happiness – Leighton Pierce, 10:00 (Iowa City, IA)
The physical and psychological space between a pair of lovers, probed by handheld camera, is abstracted, collapsed and transformed into an erogenous zone of pure color and undulating movement. A visualization of touch, a cross section of desire. –I.M.

The Sixth Section – Alex Rivera, 26:00 (NY, NY)
Baseball fields, ambulances, irrigation system repair, and road construction are a few of the things needed to sustain a city. Philanthropic communities of Mexican immigrant workers organize and fund projects for their home pueblos. The “sixth section” (read: district) of Boqueron, Mexico, located in Newburgh, New York contends with the problem of only having a few legals. This empowering film explores the muscle of the American dollar. As its financial influence becomes more evident, opportunistic Mexican politicians take heed. – T.T.C.

Three Vignette Suite – Kevin Everson, 12:00 (Charlottesville, VA)
The short works (Chemistry, Picture from Dorothy, Aquarius) of Kevin Everson poetically invoke a complex representation of African American history and present daily life through subtle examination of place, (physical and psychological), time (through found footage and original material), and space (the construction of culture). –R.B.

Selma To Montgomery – Stefan Sharff, 10:00 (NY, NY)
This is a powerful and extremely rare film made during the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights. Stefan Sharff’s intimate documentary reflects his youthful work in the montage style under the great Russian filmmaker Sergi Eisenstein. The film features moving spirituals sung by the brave marchers including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King. –J.C.

Trickle Down Theory of Sorrow – Mary Filippo, 15:00 (NY, NY)
“It is an experimental, autobiographical documentary about my being both the daughter of a working-class mother, and someone who has become (economically at least) middle-class, and a mother herself.” – Mary Filippo

Bio: Margarita De la Vega-Hurtado is the Executive Director of International Film Seminars, organizers of the Flaherty Film Seminar. She holds a Doctorate in American Culture, focusing on Film Studies, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she was an Adjunct Professor. She has also taught at the University of California in Santa Cruz, Merrill College. She has programmed, curated, and presented film programs in Latin American and Latino Cinema, Independent American Cinema and Documentary Cinema, as well as published papers on those subjects, plus Colombian cinema, Louis Malle, and Luis Bunuel.