Filmfront presents a screening of 88:88 along with shorts selected by filmmaker Isiah Medina.

Shot in his hometown of Winnipeg, 88:88 signifies the reset code that appears on an appliance’s digital clock when the power is cut. Material for this film comes from the daily lives of friends and loved ones. It picks up on the world through their word–in conversation, visible as text messages, and floating in narration. 88:88 is at once simple and complex in its way of opening up to a new way of watching and thinking cinema.

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Démolition d’un mur
by August and Louis Lumière
1896, digital, 1min28sec

Truth and Illusion – An Introduction to Metaphysics
by King Vidor
1964, digital, 25min

Street Dreams (Remix)
by Hype Williams
1996, digital, 4min53sec

88:88
by Isiah Medina
2015, digital, 1h5min

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“Pop music’s history is full of extravagant personalities, but few are as crazy and extravagant as Flavor Flav, reality star and member of hip hop group Public Enemy. I don’t have much space to abound on the long list of Flavor’s eccentricities, but my favorite one, and also an object of many political readings, is his use of a giant clock around his neck as opposed to a diamond necklace. In Flavor’s own words: “The reason why I wear this clock is because it represents time being the most important element in our life… Time brought us up in here, and time can also take us out.” More than 30 years after Public Enemy’s first appearance, there is another time-obsessed proponent of hip-hop. This time it is a young Canadian of Filipino descent, who exchanges the mic for an iPhone camera, and hip-hop’s direct confrontation for philosophical tangents. The numbers 88:88 appear the moment at which digital clocks reset, digits that Isiah Medina uses as metaphor for poverty, but also of a new beginning. His film is a flow of constant images; we find difficulty in trying to decipher more conventional, spatio-temporal scenes. In the permanent jump of images, there appears to be no references to which we can anchor ourselves; yet Medina returns time and again to the same stories of his life and the world, of his friends living in suburban Winnipeg, passing their time of unemployment between Badiou and freestyle improvisations. Throughout the film, their voices appear dialoguing, whispering or rapping, always in line with 4 pillars of Medina’s discourse: love, science, art and politics. This collage of digital images and voices reminds us of the more rhythmic Godard, an influence Medina sometimes detracts from, but doesn’t outright deny.” – translated from Cinéfilo Revista

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Tags: 88:88 + selected works, August and Louis Lumière, Chicago, FilmFront, Hype Williams, Isiah Medina, King Vidor, Pilsen