Saturday, April 22 at 8 PM

Doors 7:30 pm; LA Filmforum admission prices apply

“It was during a trip to Chile that the moon made 
its pulsating intrusion, frame by frame, into Szlam’s camera. This motif has perforated at times surreptitiously, like a needle of light, her recent works in film… Written words, seeking to exist through linguistic and bodily uncertainty, begin to accompany her in the process of filming… Both become records of the everyday, offering intimate snippets of daily experience organized around the various cycles of one’s own body, and of the earth.” —Jasmine Pisapia, Through the Keyhole: (Photographic) Desire and Astronomical Imagination

In this lecture/performance, Szlam will draw from her writing and personal visual film archive to compose an ephemeral re-enactment of her 2010 installation piece Through The Margin Of Mirrors. Fueled by experiences of displacement and migration between the Northern
 and Southern Hemispheres, Szlam will disclose aleatory links forged through dreams, language(s) and desire. An evening of reading and projection will form a vivid collage in dialogue with texts and recordings from friends, artists, and filmmakers.

The performance will be followed by a special screening of short experimental works by international filmmakers, curated by Szlam. Details to be announced at the show.

With filmmaker Malena Szlam in person from Montréal!

Malena Szlam’s visit made possible by a generous grant from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.

INFO: www.lafilmforum.org , 323-377-7238

Tickets: $5 general/students/seniors; free for Filmforum members.  Available in advance at https://szlamperformance.bpt.me or at the door.

MALENA SZLAM
Born and raised in Chile, Malena Szlam is an artist-filmmaker based in Montréal, Canada. She is a member of Double Negative, an artist collective dedicated to the production and exhibition of experimental cinema. Working at the intersection of cinema, installation, and performance, her practice explores the relationship between the natural world, perception, and intuitive process. The poetics developed through her time-based works engage the material and affective dimensions of analogue film practice.

Szlam’s work has been exhibited in numerous festivals and museums, including the Toronto International Film Festival’s Wavelengths, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Viennale, Hong Kong Film Festival, the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde, Media City Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Beirut Art Center, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, the Bienal de la imagen en movimiento, and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery.

Szlam is the recipient of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto’s (LIFT) Roberto Ariganello Artist Residency Award (2018). She was a participant artist, with Daïchi Saïto and John Price, in UNDERGROUND MINES: Canadian Artists’ Cinema in South America (2015), a multi-venue tour and research project celebrating analogue film curated by Oona Mosna (Program Director, Media City Film Festival). Past collaborations include Jerusalem In My Heart (2011-2013), a live audio-visual performance project with Montréal-based musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh that toured Europe, Canada, and Lebanon; and Breaking the Frame (2012), Marielle Nitoslawska’s feature-length profile of Carolee Schneemann, pioneer of feminist performance art and avant-garde cinema.

Szlam studied fine arts at Universidad de Artes y Ciencias Sociales in Santiago, Chile (BFA 2002) and cinema at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada (MFA 2010). In addition to her art practice, she is a programmer of experimental film and video. Together with Daïchi Saïto, she co-directed CinemaSpace at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts (2010-12). Her films are distributed by the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC).

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This program is supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts; the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

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