Every House Has A Door | Performance Space New York

Waking Things by Melika Bass

“Characters announced in exquisite typeface. . . scurry along paths, dart through doorways and sleep upright. Bass mystifies the work of these plain folk with her own filmic magic.”
-(Chicago Sun-Times)

“A house in a forest. Preparations for an archaic ritual. Lights and shadows of an incomprehensible world. Filmmaker Melika Bass directs as if time did not exist, with a rigor that transforms images into still lifes, loading them with a heartbreaking and threatening beauty.” (Torino Film Festival)

In a house in a primeval wood, a mysterious, misfit family prepares a seasonal feast for a visiting party of outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature — one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition, blood for blood.

A short film co-produced by and featuring ensemble members of Every House Has a Door Performance group.

US Premiere – Anthology Film Archives
European Premiere – Waves Section, Torino Film Festival, Italy

16mm to video, color, sound, 2011, 34 mins.

Presented to coincide with Every House Has a Door’s Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never. at PS122, January 5-9 2012

Named “one of the most promising emergent practitioners in Chicago” by the Chicago Tribune, Melika Bass is the recipient of an Artadia Award, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council, and the Kodak/Filmcraft Imaging Award for Best Cinematography from the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Her film work has been screened and exhibited in cinemas and art spaces worldwide, among them the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (solo exhibition, February 2011); Torino Film Festival, Italy; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Ann Arbor Film Festival; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Northwest Film Center; Segal Center for the Performing Arts, Montreal; Hamburg International Film Festival, Germany; and the Split Festival of New Film, Croatia.

Presented as part of the
7th Annual COIL Festival
150 1st Ave., Manhattan, NY

Saturday, January 7 4:30pm
2012

Every House Has a Door
Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never.

Time Out Chicago praised the show for “..the meticulous way that the piece invites comparisons–between film and theater, between Croatian and English, between Stephen Fiehn’s delicate hops up the aisles and lanky Mislav Čavajda’s long strides right behind him–and for its potent tonal blend of pedagogy and ominous revelation.”

“Let us think of these things… keeps viewers hooked with scenes and images that suck you in, hold you close and turn you loose. For every bawdy or slapstick gesture there are equal parts silence and reflection.” – Chicago Art Magazine

Lin Hixson & Matthew Goulish, co-founders of performance group Goat Island, propose a cultural encounter via the films of Serbian filmmaker Dusan Makavejev and the work of American philosopher Stanley Cavell, through responses to an unlikely, “equidistant” third entity, Ingmar Bergman. Film becomes a basis for choreography, a catalogue of abandoned practices offers a degree of humor, and theater frames an encounter of difference and engage the histories of utopianism and revolt in an unjust world.

The creation of this performance has been supported by a grant from the Trust for Mutual Understanding. It is a co-production with OOUR and Centre for Drama Art with further support from the City Office for Culture Zagreb, The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, ekscene platform in collaboration with CeKaO “Zagreb”, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, FACE Croatia, commissioning support from The Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, UK, and a United States Artists Ziporyn Fellowship. This work is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund/Forth Fund Project co-commissioned by Performance Space 122 in partnership with Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,Fusebox Festival and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). The Forth Fund is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information: www.npnweb.org

everyhousehasadoor.org

FREE presentation of Malika Bass’ Waking Things (co-produced by and featuring ensemble members of Every House Has a Door) with your ticket to any COIL Show.

Presented as part of the
7th Annual COIL Festival
January 5 – 9
Jan 5 – 6 at 8pm; Jan 7 at 6pm, Jan 8 – 9 at 3pm
1 hr 20 min