On Site is a moving image series rooted in senses of place, focusing on contemporary and historic artists’ cinema. The series draws from a diversity of works that commonly recruits cinematic form to attend enduring and ephemeral environments.
February 29, Doors 6:30 Screening at 7:00 PM
Free
Garden in the Machine
A program of short films literally and metaphysically grounded in nature, taking terra firma as a point of inception and departure, of loss and renewal.
Program length 80 mins.
Yaangna Plays Itself
Adam Piron
2022 / Kiowa, Mohawk / 7 min
An anguished ode to the noble sycamore tree (El Aliso) that once stood at the heart of the Indigenous Gabrieleño village of Yaangna, from which the city of Los Angeles would grow. A sensory, profilmic blast derived entirely from elements at the original site and nearby Los Angeles River.
To Pick a Flower
Shireen Seno
2021 / Philippines, Japan / 17 min
From the image of a faded photograph a Filipina bride is seen in a white gown posing not beside a groom but rather a potted plant, an enigma investigated in this quietly composed photo essay on the botany of empire during American colonial occupation. Seno’s taxonomy of native flora – trees such as Balete, Eucalyptus, Molave – questions historical hierarchies, and resounds like a eulogy to the land and its people.
Bloom
Samuel M. Delgado Helena Girón
2023 / Spain / 18 min
An archipelagic excavation of mythic San Borondón, an island in the Canarias, submerged and reappearing through the centuries. A cinematic expedition - via otherworldly 16mm and digital footage - recovers the land-beneath-the-sea from seeming oblivion.
When Light is Displaced
Zaina Bseiso
2021 / Palestine, US / 6 min
A simple orchard in Los Angeles is subtly transformed into an arena of multigenerational memory, as a filmmaker draws parallels with the fate of the Jaffa orange and stories of Palestinian diaspora.
Tutto qui
Anna Marziano
2022 / France, Italy / 12 min
A film mulched from 16mm compositions, inspired by Charles Darwin’s final text on the evolutionary debt to the industrious earthworm, trained at micro-level: a poem of decay and regeneration.
COP26FILM
Luke Fowler
2023 / Scotland / 7 mins
Shot in the director’s home city of Glasgow during the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2021, the film prowls the periphery of official proceedings to disclose counter-narratives on display, including the presence of La Minga Indigena - a collective of indigenous peoples from across the American continent staking their claim to representation.
End of the Season
Jason Evans
2020 / US / 13 min
A stark portrait of seasonal matsutake mushroom foragers - primarily immigrants of Southeast Asian descent - seeking to unearth the last treasures in an exceptionally dry year in South Central Oregon. A contemplation of nature, consumption, labor, displacement, and shelter.
SAVE THESE DATES for forthcoming screenings here at MMCP
Mar. 28
April 25
See you soon!
Curated by David Dinnell, Ellen Ito, Jay Kuehner
David Dinnell is a film programmer currently living in Seattle. He is the former Program Director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Media City Film Festival and the Tacoma Film Festival. He has curated film programs for the Flaherty Film Seminar, The Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento (Buenos Aires), UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art (NYC), Canyon Cinema 50, among others. He is co-founder and co-curator of Mur Murs, an ongoing Los Angeles-based series presenting artists and cinema.
Ellen Ito is an artist, programmer, and curator raised in the Lower Duwamish Valley. Current and upcoming projects include the exhibition Soft Power, on view at TAM through September 2024, the curation of Future Forward (Jan. 2024 at MMCP), and the documentary Following Gordon. Ellen is the Curator of Special Projects at the Tacoma Art Museum.
Jay Kuehner is an independent film critic, curator, and educator based in the Pacific Northwest whose