2016 Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance Launches Today

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC) presents its second annual Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP).

All day today, February 25 and tomorrow, February 26, MESTC (located at The Graduate Center, City University of New York) will present more than 30 features, shorts, documentaries, music videos, and discussions with leading NY-based and international theatre artists from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Burkina Faso, DR of The Congo, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Syria, UK, and the US.

All screenings are free, and seats are available on a first come, first served basis.

This event is co-curated by festival founder Frank Hentschker (Executive Director and Co-Director of Programming at MESTC), Antje Oegel (AO International and Co-Director of Programming at MESTC), and Nina Segal (Playwright and Producer). Festival Producer: Joy Arab.

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Full Line-Up and Schedule 2016:

Two screening locations: Segal Theater (70 seats) + Elebash Recitall Hall (180 seats), both on the ground floor, at The Graduate Center CUNY - 365 Fifth Ave (at 34th St.) All films are in English, silent, or with English subtitles unless otherwise indicated.

- THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25 -

11:00AM | Elebash Recital Hall
Evaldo Mocarzel - BR-3 Documentary (Brazil, 2009). 76 min.

BR-3 Documentary records the testimony of actors and technicians involved in the staging of BR-3 at Rio Tiete in Sao Paulo. The plot of the play follows the saga of three generations of a northeastern family. The play begins when Brasília was still a construction site in the 50s, and then moves to the traffic on the outskirts of the 90s.The film also shows director Antonio Araújo's process in the mounting of the play.

IN PORTUGUESE WITH SPANISH SUBTITLES.

11:00AM | Segal Theatre

Frank Castorf - Dämonen (Germany, 2006). 178 min.

Frank Castorf, the internationally renowned German artistic director of the Berliner Volksbühne theatre for almost two decades, staged his very first film in 2006 -based on his own stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Demons and Camus's The Possessed. For the film, the late legendary stage designer Bert Neumann created within the barren landscape of Berlin's provincial Mecklenburg-Vorpommern county, a simple set: a dacha, an old garden shack next a "swimming pool"- A HAUNTING post-Soviet pan-slavistic panopticon.
IN GERMAN WITH NO SUBTITLES.

12:30PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Gob Squad - Live Long and Prosper (Germany/UK, 2008-2009). 20 min.

Seven film sequences are re-staged by seven performers across the city of Berlin. Shown on a split-screen, the devices of narrative film are doubled up and reflected back on themselves in a cinematic game of 'spot the difference'. The intertwined sequences and their doppelgangers weave simultaneously towards their inevitably tragic ends. Performers prepare and play-out their scenes with tender seriousness, leaving a trail of pretend corpses, extracted from their borrowed sources and abandoned in cinematic pull backs that reveal everyday urban life continuing around them.

1:00PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Mijke de Jong/Wunderbaum- Stop Acting Now (The Netherlands, 2016). 82 min.

The Rotterdam Actors group, Wunderbaum, will stop acting and will switch over to REAL action. We will follow the actors' frantic efforts to radically change the world. The actors, who have created socially orientated theatre for years, will set up various world-improving projects in 'real' life. The differences in approach, vision, and effectiveness are putting the group under considerable pressure. The central issue is the extent of our personal engagement for the common cause.

2:00PM | Segal Theatre

Sibylle Dahrendorf - Crackle of Time: Christoph Schlingensief and His Opera Village in Burkina Faso (Germany, 2012). 106 min.

Despite his battle with cancer, Christoph Schlingensief made frequent trips to Burkina Faso. Crackle of Time tells the story of his impossible project: to build an opera village in Burkina Faso, a space which would combine art and life, with a school, theatre, hospital, living quarters, a football field, and a lunchroom. Schlingensief wanted to include everything one needs to live and survive in one place. Everything changed when Christoph Schlingensief died in August 2010. From the initial location search in May 2009 to the emergence of the school, the documentary takes us up close to Schlingensief and his Burkinabé architect, Diébédo Francis Kéré. In October 2011, the school celebrated its opening.

2:00PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Sandra Trosel & Lilli Thalgott/Rimini Protokoll - World Climate Change Conference (Germany, 2015). 55 min.

Berlin's groundbreaking experimental theatre ensemble Rimini Protokoll, made up of Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel, work in many realms: theater, sound and radio plays, film, and installation. In 2014, for Hamburg theatre Schauspielhaus, the ensemble created a mammoth-scale "drama of diplomacy" - a simulation of the 2015 Paris UN Conference on Climate Change. Rimini asked audience members to divide into 196 national delegations and to reenact proceedings of international climate diplomacy. Documentary filmmakers Sandra Trosel & Lilli Thalgott documented the process.

4:00PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Krzysztof Garbaczewski - A Memoir (Poland, 2013). 50 min.

Albertyna, Marcel, a couple, Charlus, Morel, Lea and others are living their dream together in a 19th century mansion. By following your imagination as closely as possible and motivating your neural networks and memories, you produce a story of your own choice. It is an experiment in understanding the biography of the other. Based on the novel, The Captive, by Marcel Proust, a masterpiece that asks if a human being could be discovered as a utopian project-a definition of his own life and memories and a sensual model of behavior in circumstances that are given only for a particular time period.

4:30PM-5:30PM: MOVEMENT | Segal Theatre:

4:30PM: People Get Ready/Ty Flowers- Physiques (US, 2014). 4 min.

Physiques is an experimental video collaboration between video artist Ty Flowers and choreographer Steven Reker of the performance/music collective People Get Ready. Reker choreographed a dance to the song Physiques, written by the collective, at 2.5x the normal speed. The video was shot at 2.5x the normal frame rate and, when played back, the dance stays in sync with the music, while all other background elements are surreally out of place.

4:40PM: César Vayssié & Boris Charmatz - Levée (France/Germany, 2013). 14 min.

The 24 dancers of the choreographic piece Levée des conflits, by Boris Charmatz, perform an extract of the show on top of a slag-heap in Germany. Film maker César Vayssié and choreographer Boris Charmatz filmed this never ending spiral with their on-board helicopter camera.

5:00PM: Carlos Soto - close your eyes up tight; you will not sleep tonight (US, 2013). 17 min.

The piece utilizes a 1965 Mustang as a mobile mount for a camera that catalogues nighttime streets in the countryside surrounding Willem de Kooning's Long Island studio. Accompanied by the blues-infused drawl of an electric guitar, the visuals transition slowly from shots of treetops passing overhead to lyrical images from within the car. Utilizing keen frame-rate manipulation and prolonged dissolves, the viewer is pulled in the direction of the car's motion.

FOLLOWED BY A BRIEF DISCUSSION.

5:00PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Keeril Makan/Jay Scheib - Persona (US, 2016). 81 min.

Persona is a provocative and artistically complex opera-theatre depiction of human frailty, cruelty, and identity. The libretto has been adapted from Ingmar Bergman's original screenplay for the 1966 classic film, which has been described as a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth dealing with ontological subjectivity and the gaze of cinema itself. The film is based on Makan and Scheib's 2015 staged version of Persona at National Sawdust in Brooklyn.

FOLLOWED BY A BRIEF DISCUSSION.

5:30PM-6:45PM: GENDER AND IDENTITY | Segal Theatre:

5:30PM: Eleanor Fogg and Vivianna Chiotini/johnsmith - what it feels like for a girl (UK, 2015). 6 min.

johnsmith is a whatever being. Channeling Patrick Bateman and Madonna, john gets something off their chest in this razor sharp and revealing cabaret performance.

5:40PM: I Am A Boys Choir - demonstrating the imaginary body (US, 2015). 27 min.

demonstrating the imaginary body is a work that exists somewhere between a gender studies lecture and an ice skating competition. Powered by the queer imagination, I Am A Boys Choir investigates the body myth of the female athlete and the process of earning institutional validation by conforming to specific identity markers in regards to class and gender. There is also a lot of Tonya Harding.

6:15PM: Sylvan Oswald & Maria Cataldo - Outtakes (US, 2015). 15 min.

Outtakes is a lo-fi web series based on the genre of the transition video. People in the process of transitioning their gender create these raw journal entries on cell phones and webcams to share experiences and information, and to feel less isolated by reaching out and building community online. Outtakes blurs the lines between what is real and what is imagined. The show is about what it means when a very private journey has to happen in public.

INTRODUCTION BY THE ARTIST & FOLLOWED BY A BRIEF DISCUSSION.

7:00PM - US PREMIERE | Elebash Recital Hall

Adam Soch - Reza Abdoh: Theatre Visionary (US, 2015). 112 min.

The impact of wunderkind theatre director Reza Abdoh's explosive work is finally brought to light twenty years after his death from AIDS, with live performance footage and interviews with those closest to him. Reza Abdoh: Theatre Visionary, directed by Adam Soch (Abdoh's long-time collaborator and video archivist) is an intimate portrait of the world and work of Abdoh and his company, Dar a Luz. It features excerpts from Abdoh's most important productions alongside interviews with Abdoh himself, his collaborators, critics, friends and family. These elements combine to illuminate his legacy; his groundbreaking work and his visionary, theatrical genius.

FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION.

7:00PM | Segal Theatre

Jörg Jeshel & Brigitte Kramer - Passion: Last Stop Kinshasa (Belgium/Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2009). 90 min.

Les Ballets C de la B was on tour for one year with the piece, pitié!, from director Alain Platel and musician Fabrizio Cassol. The tour took them to major capital cities including Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo. After more than 100 performances, pitié! concluded in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic Kongo. Following several years of unrest and political instability, the country is aspiring to new cultural horizons. For filmmakers Jörg Jeshel and Brigitte Kramer this was the starting point for the documentary Passion: Last Stop Kinshasa.

- FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 -

11:00AM | Elebash Recital Hall

Frederick Wiseman - La Comédie-Française ou L'amour joué (France/US, 1996).

223 min.

La Comédie-Française is the oldest continuous repertory company in the world, founded in Paris in the late 17th century. This is the first time a documentary film-maker has been allowed to look at all the aspects of the work of this great theatrical company. Sequences in the film include sections of plays, casting, set and costume design, administrative meetings and rehearsals, and performances of four classic French plays, Don Juan by Molière, La Thebaide by Racine, La Double Inconstance by Marivaux and Occupe-toi d'Amelie by Feydeau.

12:00PM | Segal Theatre

Kazuhiro Soda - Theatre 1 (Japan/US, 2012). 172 min.

Theatre 1 (Observational Film Series #3) is a feature length documentary, which closely depicts the world of Oriza Hirata, Japan's leading playwright and director, and his theatrical company, Seinendan.
By depicting them, the film leads the audience to revisit fundamental but timely questions: What is theatre? Why do human beings act? The first of a two-part (5 hour, 42 minute) observational documentary.

3:00PM-3:30PM: MUSIC VIDEOS | Segal Theatre:

3:00PM: Dorota Maslowska - Mister D x Anja Rubik - Chleb + Mister D - Haj$
(Poland, 2014). 8 min.

Mister D. is the stage name for the famed Polish novelist, playwright, and recently - musician, Dorota Mas?owska. She has released her debut album Spo?ecze?stwo Jest Niemi?e (Society Is Not Very Nice) which immediately became a major talking point in the Polish media, with the video for the single Chleb featuring supermodel Anja Rubik instantly going viral online.

3:10PM: Half Straddle/Tina Satter - Secret Notebooks: Half Straddle Rap + Free the Skull: Music Video for Moon Duo (US, 2012/2015). 8 min.

Secret Notebooks: With a few months off one summer, Half Straddle set out to make their first-ever rap song and accompanying video.

Free the Skull: Half Straddle were inspired by a sort of noir detective sound heard in Free the Skull and an instinct to filter this sensibility through the dreamscape of young girl detectives.

3:00PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Lucien Bou Rjeily - About 66 Minutes in Damascus (Lebanon, 2012). 20 min.

Lucien Bou Rjeily's short documentary about his site-specific play, 66 Minutes in Damascus. Inspired by the descriptions of Syrian detention centers from foreign journalists and local activists arbitrarily incarcerated by the autocratic regime, 66 Minutes in Damascus puts the audience in the place of a group of tourists who visit the Syrian capital, only to be arrested by the Syrian secret service.

3:30PM-6:00PM: NEW YORK | Segal Theatre:

3:30PM: Temporary Distortion/Kenneth Collins - Only the Hand That Erases (2016). 14 min.

Purely imagery and yet pure of image, moments previously captured on celluloid are erased and revisited as ideas inside the mind. This piece was conceived specifically for the festival and shaped while in residency at The Watermill Center.

3:45PM: John Jesurun - Snow (2000). 77 min.

A toxic American cocktail of death, desire, technology, and television. Jesurun's four screen mixdown of the original 2000 performance launches four "characters" and twenty-two shifting POVs through the unforgiving eye of one virtual actor. During the presentation of an original four screen live edit of the 2000 piece, that audience experienced this work similarly on four screens. The secluded live performance was transmitted and edited live to four screens in the audience area. There were four live actors and one "virtual actor"-a computerized camera POV with attached "character" voice.

INTRODUCTION BY THE ARTIST.

5:15PM: Shaun Irons/AutomaticRelease - Why Why Always (2016). 15 min.

Why Why Always is a multidisciplinary performance installation which uses Jean-Luc Godard's seminal 1965 film Alphaville as a poetic roadmap, blending together live film, music, dance, sculptural objects and a vibrant array of technologies. These short films feature Jim Fletcher riffing on Alphaville's intergalactic secret agent Lemmy Caution. These sequences will be integrated into the live performance.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 cont.

5:30PM: Daniel Fish & Jim Findlay - THE SOURCE (2014). 8 min.

THE SOURCE is an oratorio with four-channel video concerning Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Army private responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. The text is an assemblage of Twitter feeds, chat log transcripts, court testimony, and Iraqi and Afghanistan war logs.

3:30PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Zeina Daccache - Scheherazade's Diary (Lebanon, 2013). 80 min.

The women inmates of Lebanon's Baabda Prison mine the depths of personal experience and confront patriarchy as they prepare and present the first theatre performance staged inside an Arab Women's prison. Filmed during, and after, the ten-month drama therapy/theatre project run in Baabda prison, in 2012, by drama therapist and director Zeina Daccache, this gripping and tragicomic documentary features the women inmates who, through their unprecedented theatre initiative entitled, Scheherazade in Baabda, challenge societies that oppress women.

5:00PM | Elebash Recital Hall

Steven Soderbergh - And Everything is Going Fine (US, 2010). 89 min.

The late Spalding Gray was a brilliant New York playwright and actor, known for his dazzling, distinctive monologues, an art form all his own. Here, master filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who collaborated with him on King of the Hill and Gray's Anatomy, takes Gray's own words-captured over 25 years-to craft a profound, insightful and wonderfully entertaining portrait of this quintessential American artist.

6:00PM - PRESENTATION | Segal Theatre

David Levine & David Conison - THEATR (2015). 30 min.

David Levine and David Conison discuss their provocative, innovative and disruptive idea on how you can commission theatre in your own home: "Our project is an app, somewhere between Uber and Seamless, that will offer theater on-demand, straight to your home, and basically get rid of the entire institutional and physical architecture of theater."

6:30PM-7:30PM | Segal Theatre:

6:30PM: Back to Back Theatre - The Democratic Set - North Melbourne + Edinburgh International Festival + (Australia, 2012/2014). 15 min.

The Democratic Set is a residency model for creating short films and performances, to explore the BELIEF that all people are, in principle, equal and should enjoy social, political and economic rights and opportunities.

6:50PM: Hugo Glendinning & Tim Etchells - Uncertain Fragments (UK, 2016). 39 min.

Film essay reflecting on the work and process of the world-renowned UK performance ensemble, Forced Entertainment, combining interview fragments, performance excerpts, backstage, and rehearsal room material from diverse projects, focused around an excerpt from the group's 2001 performance, First Night.

6:30PM-7:30PM | Elebash Recital Hall:

6:30PM: Crystal Moselle - Excerpt from The Wolfpack (US, 2015). 16 min.

The Wolfpack is a coming of age story following the six Angulo brothers who have spent their entire lives locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For years, movies served as a productive way to stave off loneliness - but when one of the brothers escapes, everything changes.

6:50PM: Mukunda Angulo - Mirror Heart (US, 2015). 7 min.

A short film of dreamlike characters coming together in unity to overcome their differences, the making-of which is featured in The Wolfpack.

7:30PM-9:00PM | Segal Theatre:

7:30PM: Romeo Castellucci - Brentano (Italy, 1995). 25 min.

Visionary theater director Romeo Castellucci's rare venture into film: a theatre of mental mysteries. Inspired by a 1913 short story of Swiss novelist Robert Walser about the death wish of German Romantic poet Clemens Brentano (1778-1842).

8:00PM: Jan Fabre - The Problem (Belgium, 2001). 30 min.

In this work Jan Fabre compares himself to his fetish animal, the dung beetle, and considers that his goal as an artist is similar to the role of insects in life evolution. A performance with the German star philosophers Peter Sloterdijk and Dietmar Kamper. The film is an homage to the latter.

8:30PM: Robert Wilson - Winona Ryder Video Portrait (US, 2004). 17 min.

Winona Ryder channels the character Winnie from the Samuel Beckett play, Happy Days. Buried to her neck in sand, with a Carmen Miranda headdress, an open purse, toothbrush, and gun, the play unrolls in her head, not the stage. Musical score: Michael Galasso.

7:30PM - NEW YORK PREMIERE | Elebash Recital Hall

Sascha Just - Heirs (US/Germany, 2015). 88 min.

New Orleans, city of jazz and Mardi Gras at the shores of the Mississippi river, is the setting for Heirs. Between French flair and African rhythms, ballrooms and street parades, the film explores the Crescent City's heritage of racist injustices-and the roots of its legendary performing arts scene. Heirs follows three New Orleanian artists - percussionist Jason Marsalis, theatre artist/Carnival Ball Queen Lisa D'Amour, and Black Indian Chief Darryl Montana, on journeys to their families' artistic histories.

***Festival Program is subject to change***

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Check www.thesegalcenter.org for all schedule updates and film descriptions.

All screenings are FREE and open to the public on a first come, first served basis at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street. Subway: Herald Square, lines B, D, F, M, N, Q, R. For more information, visit www.thesegalcenter.org or call 212-817-1868.

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC), The Graduate Center, CUNY, is a non-profit Center for theatre, affiliated with CUNY's Ph.D. Program in Theatre. The Center's primary focus is to bridge the gap between the academic and professional performing arts communities by providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts.

Pictured: Wunderbaum/Mijke de Jong's Stop Acting Now