Artist Film Workshop is thrilled to present a program of 16mm experimental film work by Mexican based film artist Naomi Uman

where and when:

7:30PM TUESDAY 26 JULY

THE BRUNSWICK GREEN

313/315 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

$10

Naomi’s work is marked by her signature handmade aesthetic, often shooting, hand-processing, and editing her films with the most rudimentary of practices. Her work focuses on repetitive manual practices, agrarian ways of living, women’s work, and the intersection of ethnography, portraiture, and self-portraiture. She works in many media, ranging from 16 millimetre hand-processed film, to video installation and tempera paintings. All films screening on 16mm prints loaned by the artist.

Leche, 1999, 30 mins
A dreamlike evocation of a dairy farm in Mexico, Leche pushes the outermost boundaries of the documentary form. Shot in 16mm black and white, with an extravagantly textured film surface (Uman developed her film in buckets), the film wittily plays with sync, narration, and titles. Uman creates a film that’s as much a document of a timeless place and the people who work there as it is an experimental meditation on the labour and magic of crafting things by hand.

Hand Eye Coordination, 2002, 10 mins
Hand Eye Coordination explores the manual manipulations upon the film body, examining the cinematic result of mechanical interventions. This film tells the story of its own making.

Private Movie, 2000, 6 mins
A love story in three parts. Through studies on light, movement, happiness, glowing darkness and flickering melancholia, this film tells of a woman's journey of love, with nostalgia, pets, places, and men.

Removed, 1999, 5 mins
Using a piece of 1970s porn film, nail polish and bleach, Uman creates a new pornography, one in which the woman exists only as a hole -- an empty animated space.

Kalendar, 2008, 11 mins
This film depicts the meaning of the months of the year in the Ukrainian language. Each month is presented and followed with a title card which gives the name of the month in Ukrainian Cyrillic, the meaning of that name in italics, and the name of the month in English. This film speaks to the concept of language acquisition, as you are presented the word for the month but are not given a transliteration. If you are unable to read the letters, you cannot know how the word will sound. This film, in its silence, represents the door that can be opened when a language is learned but which remains closed until that time.

In addition, as is our new practice, we will also screen a new film by an AFW member. This month screening My Friend Richard by Sebastian V.