Four short works by Filipa César
Friday, November 15th, 7 PM
$7-$10 suggested donation (cash only)

(Filipa César, 2010-2018, Various Countries, digital, 66 min total)

Artist in attendance!

The Nightingale is proud to welcome Filipa César to Chicago to screen four short genre-bending documentary works, in addition to the screening of her feature-length project Spell Reel (2017) at Conversations at the Edge. These short films and videos shot from 2010-2018 survey César’s current practice, as artistically innovative as it is politically significant.

Porto 1975
(2010, 11 min, Portugal)

Applying the same economy used in César’s other films — one shot which uses the duration of an entire 16mm film reel — Porto 1975 is a tracking shot that unfolds at the social housing complex, Cooperativa das Águas Férreas da Bouça, designed by Álvaro Siza Vieira, as an integral part of the Ambulatory Service of Social Support (SAAL, 1972–76).

Cacheu
(2012, 10 min, Germany / Guinea-Bissau)

Cacheu is a 10-minute shot of a lecture, performed by Joana Barrios, revolving around four colonial statues, which are stored today at the Fortress of Cacheu, one of the first bastions constructed by the Portuguese in 1588 in order to facilitate slave trade in the West African country of Guinea Bissau.

Conakry
(2013, 11 min, Germany / Guinea-Bissau)

Staged at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Conakry is a sequence shot on 16mm film that travels through time, space and media to revisit one film reel from the Guinean archive. This particular reel documents an exhibition curated by Amílcar Cabral at the Palais du Peuple in 1972 in Conakry, Guinea, reporting on the state of the war against Portuguese rule.

Sunstone
(with Louis Henderson, 2018, 35 min, France / Portugal)

Sunstone tracks Fresnel lenses from their site of production to their exhibition in a museum of lighthouses and navigational devices. It also examines the diverse social contexts in which optics are implicated, contrasting the system of triangular trade that followed the first European arrivals in the ‘New World’ with the political potential seen in Op art in post-revolutionary Cuba.

About the artist:

Filipa César is an artist and filmmaker interested in the fictional aspects of the documentary, the porous borders between cinema and its reception, and the politics and poetics inherent to the moving image and imaging technologies. Since 2011, she has been researching the origins of the cinema of the African Liberation Movement in Guinea Bissau as a laboratory of resistance to ruling epistemologies. The resulting body of work comprises 16mm films, digital archives, videos, seminars, screenings, publications, ongoing collaborations with artists, theorists, and activists, and is the basis for her Phd thesis at FCSH-New University of Lisbon.

César premiered her first feature-length essay film Spell Reel at the Forum section of the 67th Berlinale, 2017. Selected exhibitions and screenings have taken place at the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010); Manifesta 8, Cartagena (2010); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2011-15); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2012); Khiasma, Paris (2011-2015); Kunstwerke, Berlin (2013); SAAVY Contemporary, Berlin (2014-15); Tensta Konsthall, Spånga (2015); Mumok, Vienna (2016); Contour 8 Biennial, Mechelen, Gasworks, London, MoMA, New York (2017); The Harvard Art Museums, Boston (2018); HKW, Berlin (2019).

This program is produced in partnership with Conversations at the Edge and the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Tags: Conversations At The Edge, Filipa César, The Nightengale, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, video data bank, West Town