Cinetracts '20

• Q&A: Charles Burnett
• Q&A: Su Friedrich
• Conversation: Kelly Gallagher, Cameron Granger, and Christopher Harris
• Q&A: Tony Buba
• Essay: Mercedes Chavez on Natalia Almada
• Conversation: Tamer El Said on the challenges of filming in 2020
• Q&A: Karrabing Film Collective"
• Stream it: the filmmakers of Cinetracts '20
• Essay: Akwaeke Emezi, "BATHE ME IN BLOOD"
• Q&A: Želimir Žilnik
• Q&A: Gabriel Mascaro

Natalia Almada’s Cinetracts contribution, Max, considers our relationship with technology—what it demands from us and what it offers us in return. Her past films include El General (2009), El Velador (2011), Everything Else (2016), and others. She was the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship. 

Tony Buba’s Cinetracts contribution documents a protest in Pittsburgh calling for the formation of a civilian police review board. His past films include Washing Walls with Mrs. G. (1980), Lightning Over Braddock (1988), Struggles in Steel (1996), and others. He was the recipient of a 1985 Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Charles Burnett’s Cinetracts contribution considers the personal and social ripple effects of the execution of a man in Texas. His past films include Killer of Sheep (1977), My Brother’s Wedding (1983), To Sleep with Anger (1990), and others. He was a 2017 recipient of a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Tamer El Said’s Cinetracts contribution takes the viewer on a drive through Cairo, Egypt. He introduced his first feature film, In the Last Days of the City (2016), at the Wex in 2018. He is the founder of Cimatheque - Alternative Film Centre in Cairo, a space dedicated to teaching and independent film programming.

Akwaeke Emezi’s Cinetracts contribution sees the filmmaker performing a ritualistic blood bath to process their embodiment as a nonhuman entity/an ogbanje/a deity’s child. Emezi is best known for their books Freshwater (2018), Pet (2019), and The Death of Vivek Oji (2020). They were awarded a Global Arts Fund grant in 2017 for their video work, and Freshwater is in early development as a TV series at FX. They won the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa and were one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees in 2018. 

Su Friedrich’s Cinetracts contribution captures a sunny Mother’s Day in her Brooklyn neighborhood. Her past films include Sink or Swim (1990), Hide and Seek (1996), Seeing Red (2005), and others. In 2015, the Library of Congress selected Sink or Swim for inclusion in the National Film Registry. 

Kelly Gallagher’s Cinetracts contribution expands upon a historical marker she discovered in her Syracuse neighborhood. Her past films include FROM ALLY TO ACCOMPLICE (2015), More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters (2016), MY GOSSIP (2018), and others. She was the subject of a 2018 Wex retrospective.

Cameron Granger’s Cinetracts contribution captures the conflicting interests of presence, isolation, and digital disappearance against the backdrop of the pandemic, the struggle for Black liberation, and the surveillance state. Working in video and installation, he has had residencies with the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and Red Bull Arts Detroit. His most recent projects include Ten Toes Down at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and “A library, for you,” a community library project.

Christopher Harris’s contribution to Cinetracts is inspired by the uprisings in Chicago following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the prisoner population in the Cook County Department of Corrections. His past films include Reckless Eyeballing (2004), Halimuhfack (2016), and still/here (2019), and others. He is a 2020–21 Fellow with the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. 

Sky Hopinka’s Cinetracts contribution collapses time and history through a running list of events that all occurred on the day of filming. His recent films include wawa (2014), I’ll Remember You as You Were, Not as What You’ll Become (2016), and Dislocation Blues (2017). His first feature, maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (2020), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He is a recipient of a 2020 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Film/Video and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Karrabing Film Collective’s Cinetracts contribution follows the group’s memorable and eventful bushwhacking sessions to clear a road to a distant, remote beach. Layers of current and historical events and ancestors circle around. Karrabing Film Collective consists of more than 30 intergenerational Aboriginal filmmakers from Australia’s Northern Territory. Their work has been exhibited at museums such as the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia, the Tate Modern, and MoMA PS1. In 2015, they received the Visible Award, the first European award for socially engaged artistic practice in a global context. 

Bouchra Khalili’s Cinetracts contribution traces the evolution of public sentiment and police reaction to striking health care workers in France before and during COVID-19. Her past works include The Mapping Journey Project (2008–11), The Speeches Series (2012–13), and The Tempest Society (2017), which premiered at documenta 14 in Athens, Greece. Her film Twenty-Two Hours (2018) was developed during her 2017–18 fellowship with the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Gabriel Mascaro’s Cinetracts contribution is a metacinematic response to the conditions of watching (and being watched) in the time of COVID-19. His past films include the documentaries High-Rise (2009) and Housemaids (2012) and the narrative films Neon Bull (2015) and Divine Love (2019), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was supported by a residency in the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio.

Rosine Mbakam’s Cinetracts contribution examines the lack of representation of African frontline health-care workers in Belgium during the COVID crisis. Her feature films include The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman (2016) and Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018). Recently featured on NPR, she was called “one of the foremost filmmakers of creative nonfiction working right now” by The New Yorker’s Richard Brody. 

Natasha Mendonca’s films include Jan Villa (2011) and Strange Love/Ajeeb Asheeq (2016). They received the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and a jury prize at the 20th Contemporary Arts Festival at SESC_Videobrasil. Mendonca is the recipient of a 2018 Wexner Center Artist Residency Award, which supported their newest work Land of the Breasted Woman (2020).

Dani and Sheilah ReStack’s Cinetracts contribution shows their family unit undertaking a vision quest during the earliest days of the COVID lockdown. The ReStacks have collaborated on films and installations including Strangely Ordinary This Devotion (2018) and Come Coyote (2019). Their works have screened at the Whitney Biennial, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and other notable venues. 

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s Cinetracts contribution reflects on the possibilities of this moment, following her teenage son and daughter and one of their friends during lockdown as they set out in a forest to make a film about making a film. Santiago Muñoz’s past films include Fábrica Inútil (2002), Farmacopea (2013), Marché Salomon (2015), and Oneiromancer (2017). She is the recipient of 2016 United States Artist Fellowship and a 2019 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Film/Video.

Cauleen Smith’s Cinetracts contribution defies presidential narratives surrounding the global pandemic. Part memorial, part meditation, the film contemplates the number of Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19. Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose works in film and video include Drylongso (1998), The Fullness of Time (2008), Remote Viewing (2011), The Way Out Is The Way Two: Fourteen Short Films about Chicago and Sun Ra (2012) and H-E-L-L-O (2014). She is the recipient of a 2016 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Film/Video, a Rockefeller Media Arts Award, and a Creative Capital Award.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinetracts contribution alternates between scenes from the filmmaker’s home, a makeshift nursery for kids whose schools have been closed due to the pandemic, and Twitter posts documenting protests about the disappearance of a Thai political exile. All the while, the winds and rains of change reverberate. His past films include Tropical Malady (2004) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), as well as installations such as Unknown Forces (2007), Primitive (2009), and Fever Room (2015). Among his many awards are the 2008 Fine Prize from Carnegie International, the 2010 Palme d’Or from the Cannes Film Festival, and a 2013 Sharjah Biennial Prize.

Želimir Žilnik’s Cinetracts contribution documents a somber day in Serbia as a farce of a parliamentary election takes place amidst the pandemic and boycotts from opposition parties. Žilnik remains one of the most prominent figures of the Yugoslav Black Wave and has made numerous notable short films and features, such as Black Film (1971), Uprising in Jazak (1972), Marble Ass (1995), and Logbook_Serbistan (2015). He has won awards at festivals around the globe, including a 1969 Golden Bear and 1995 Teddy Award, both from the Berlin International Film Festival. He has been the subject of major retrospectives from São Paulo to Harvard and included in exhibitions such as documenta in Kassel, Germany, and the Sharjah and Venice biennials.