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Past Film/Video | Visiting Filmmakers | Documentaries
Mary Jo Bole in person Q&A follows
World Premiere
$10 for all audiences through Cinema Columbus
ACCESSIBILITY We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation such as CART captioning or ASL interpretation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Requests made by two weeks in advance will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the Wexner Center for the Arts will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Columbus-based artist Mary Jo Bole’s first feature film explores her family’s history in Cleveland through their eccentric family archive.
Artist and director Mary Jo Bole’s documentary explores the two sides of her family tree, a trove of inherited possessions, and a preoccupation with death, all of which have informed her artistic practice. Bole takes a historian’s interest in her family’s storied genealogy, which includes industrial titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller on one side and Eastern European immigrants on the other. She pieces together their stories through a collection of inherited photographs, newspaper articles, and other ephemera as well as interviews with her mother, Ruth, recorded before her passing.
Preserved and handed down by a lineage of women, Bole’s eccentric family archive documents the Industrial Revolution and offers a familial front row seat to the Gilded Age of Cleveland and its demise. As she reconciles the weight of these excessive family possessions, Bole offers a parallel history of her own artistic practice, which has been influenced by this archive and her upbringing in post-industrial Cleveland.
Bole was a longtime professor in Ohio State’s Department of Art. She was awarded an Ohio Humanities Film Fellowship through the Wexner Center, and she received post-production support in the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio for Family White Elephants. (102 mins, DCP)
We’re excited to partner with the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA), Drexel Theatre, Gateway Film Center, Grandview Theater & Drafthouse, McConnell Arts Center, and Studio 35 Cinema & Drafthouse in presenting this event. Check out the rest of the festival schedule.
IMAGE CAPTIONFamily White Elephants, courtesy of the artist.
2024 Cinema Columbus Film Festival sponsors: CENCAM, Breezeline, Gateway Film Center, and Ohio Arts Council.
2024 Cinema Columbus Film Festival media partners: WCBE, WOSU Public Media, and Orange Barrel Media.
This film has been made possible in part by Ohio Humanities Film Fellows at the Wex and the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this film do not necessarily represent those of Ohio Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.
SUPPORT FOR THIS PRESENTATION PROVIDED BYOhio HumanitiesNational Endowment for the Humanities
FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY National Endowment for the Arts Ohio Humanities
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Rohauer Collection Foundation
WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY Ohio Department of Development Greater Columbus Arts Council The Wexner Family Institute of Museum and Library Services Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts CampusParc Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme The Columbus Foundation Nationwide Foundation Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Mike and Paige Crane Axium Packaging Nancy Kramer Ohio State Energy Partners Ohio History Fund/Ohio History Connection Larry and Donna James David Crane and Elizabeth Dang Bruce and Joy Soll Rebecca Perry Damsen and Ben Towle Jones Day Alex and Renée Shumate
Past Film/Video
Family White Elephants
