America the Beautiful

A miners’ strike is brew­ing in Butte, Mon­tana, in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary year of 1917. Tens of thou­sands of men have already lost their lives in the copper mines of the … read more

Detroit’s story has encap­su­lat­ed the iconic nar­ra­tive of Amer­i­ca over the last cen­tu­ry— the Great Migra­tion of African Amer­i­cans escap­ing Jim Crow; the rise of man­u­fac­tur­ing and the middle class; … read more

One region, two lan­guages: Brault’s film ELOGE DU CHIAC takes place in New Brunswick, in the east­ern­most part of Canada, where both French and Eng­lish are spoken. A ded­i­cat­ed young … read more

In some parts of St. Louis, Mis­souri, preg­nant moth­ers hope they will have girls. Half of the boys who grow up here don’t live to cel­e­brate their eigh­teenth birth­day. This … read more

What is this land that promis­es a better future for so many people, luring them to come and settle, to cul­ti­vate it, to live? What is this land whose real­i­ty … read more

In 1979, short­ly before he died, James Bald­win wrote an unfin­ished work in which he reflect­ed on his life as a homo­sex­u­al writer in the con­text of the black Civil … read more

What char­ac­ter­izes public life? What­ev­er it is, it could hardly be more lively than in Jack­son Heights, where 167 dif­fer­ent lan­guages are spoken. There are shops, restau­rants, and places of … read more

In LONG STORY SHORT, over 100 people at home­less shel­ters, food banks, adult lit­er­a­cy pro­grams, and job train­ing cen­ters in Los Ange­les and the Bay Area in Cal­i­for­nia dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences of pover­ty – why they are poor, how it feels, and what they think should be done. Numer­ous inter­views are stitched togeth­er to form a poly­phon­ic account of pover­ty from the inside.
The film uses the tools and aes­thet­ic forms of the shar­ing econ­o­my to ampli­fy the voices of those most dis­placed and dis­pos­sessed by it. While indi­vid­u­als filmed in sep­a­rate spaces appear in iso­la­tion, words flow across the screen like a musi­cal ensem­ble, an imag­i­nary col­lec­tive yet to mate­ri­al­ize. (www.longstory.us)
Grand Prize Cinéma du Réel, Paris 2016

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Natal­ie Bookchin ist eine Videokün­st­lerin, deren Arbeit­en inter­na­tion­al gezeigt und aus­geze­ich­net worden sind, u.a. von LACMA, PS1, Mass­MO­CA, the Walker Art Center, the Pom­pi­dou Centre, MOCA LosAn­ge­les, the Whit­ney Museum, the Tate. 1998-2015 lehrte sie im Pho­tog­ra­phy & Media Pro­gram an der Cal Arts in Los Ange­les. Zurzeit lebt sie in Brook­lyn und ist Pro­fes­sor of Media an der Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. Filme: LOCATION INSECURE (2006), ROUND THE WORLD (instal­la­tion, 2006), ZORNS LEMMA 2 (2007), TRIP (2008), PARKING LOT (2008), MASS ORNAMENT (instal­la­tion, 2009), NOW HE’S OUT IN PUBLIC AND EVERYONE CAN SEE (2012), TESTAMENT (instal­la­tion, 2016/2009).

In the early 1980s, Diego Echev­er­ria took a 16mm camera into the streets of the South­side of Williams­burg, then a pri­mar­i­ly Puerto Rican neigh­bor­hood and one of the city’s poor­est, … read more