House of Science: A Museum of False Facts
An evening of visceral and provocative handmade films that explore bodies, acts of the solitary, text, language, visual information and personal exposure. Nazlı Dinçel’s work reflects on experiences of disruption. She records the body in context with arousal, immigration, dislocation and desire in juxtaposition with the medium’s material: texture, color and the passing of emulsion. Her use of text as image, language and sound attempts the failure of memory and her own displacement within a western society.
PROGRAM
HOUSE OF SCIENCE: A MUSEUM OF FALSE FACTS
Lynne Sachs | 1991 | USA | colour | 30 minutes
"Offering a new feminized film form, this piece explores both art and science's representation of women, combining home movies, personal remembrances, staged scenes and found footage into an intricate visual and aural college. A girl's sometimes difficult coming of age rituals are recast into a potent web for affirmation and growth."
-SF Cinematheque
"Throughout 'The House of Science' an image of a woman, her brain revealed, is a leitmotif. It suggests that the mind/body split so characteristic of Western thought is particularly troubling for women, who may feel themselves moving between the territories of the film's title -house, science, and museum, or private, public and idealized space - without wholly inhabiting any of them. This film explores society's representation and conceptualization of women through home movies, personal reminiscences, staged scenes, found footage and voice. Sachs' personal memories recall the sense of her body being divided, whether into sexual and functional territories, or 'the body of the body' and 'the body of the mind.'"
-Kathy Geritz, Pacific Film Archive
Preceded by:
SCHMEERGUNTZ
Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley | 1966 | USA | B&W | 15 minutes
"SCHMEERGUNTZ is one long raucous belch in the face of the American Home. A society which hides its animal functions beneath a shiny public surface deserves to have such films as SCHMEERGUNTZ shown everywhere - in every PTA, every Rotary Club, every club in the land. For it is brash enough, brazen enough and funny enough to purge the soul of every harried American married woman." - Ernest Callenbach, Film Quarterly
Artist Bios
Lynne Sachs makes films, installations, performances and web projects that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with each and every new project.
Gunvor Nelson studied at University College of Art, Craft and Design (1950-51) and at Beckmans College of Design (1952-53), both in Stockholm. Moved to the USA in 1953 and studied at Humboldt State College (1954-57), San Francisco Arts Institute (1957) and Mills College in Oakland (1957-58). She graduated with an MFA in painting. At the Institute she met Robert Nelson whom she married in 1958. Film debut with Schmeerguntz in 1965, co-made with Dorothy Wiley. Teaching positions at San Francisco State University 1969-70 and San Francisco Art Institute 1970-1992. Moved back to Sweden in 1993 and began creating new work in video and installation. Numerous major awards and grants, most recently the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's Grand Award (2006).
This program is supported in part by the London Arts Council through the City of London’s Community Arts Investment Program.