NOTE TO SELF: FILMS OF NAZLI DİNÇEL
AFW/ARENA, Thursday October 11, 7.30pm | Entry $7/$5 (AFW Members)
An evening of visceral and provocative handmade films that explore bodies, acts of the solitary, text, language, visual information and personal exposure. Nazlı Dinçel’s hand-made work reflects on experiences of disruption. She records the body in context with arousal, immigration, dislocation and desire with the film object: its texture, color and the tractable emulsion of the 16mm material. Her use of text as image, language and sound imitates the failure of memory and her own displacement within a western society.
PROGRAM
Her Silent Seaming
16mm, 10min, Color, Super 16 Image-Sound, 24fps, 2014
A transcription of what I have been told during intimate experiences while separating from my husband. Sections consist of destroyed originals from Leafless (2011) and motifs of the "feminine". These decorative objects are re-valued through a controlled act of cutting, with an allusion to synchronization. Direct sound of cuts and hand processing are composed of 26 frame shots. Un-synced, it reveals a hearing of past images, as an act of translation.
Sharing Orgasm: Communicating Your Sexual Responses
(Educational Found Film)
16mm, 12 min, Color, optical sound, 24fps, 1977
Solitary Acts #4
16mm, 8min, Color, Optical Sound, 24fps, 2015 Exacto Knife, Typewriter
The filmmaker films herself masturbate the object of debate. She hears others claim her body, her habits: those in her conservative surroundings as a child. She learns how to read.

Solitary Acts #5
16mm, 5min, Color, Sound, 24fps, 2015 Exacto Knife, Fishing Line, Sewing Machine
The filmmaker films herself practice kissing with a mirror. She recalls teenage memories of overconsumption, confusing oral fixations that are both sexual (kissing) and bodily (eating). She ends up eating the carrot she is masturbating with, and feels a sense of cannibalism.
Solitary Acts #6
16mm, 11min, Color, Optical Sound, 24fps, 2015 Exacto Knife, 1.5mm Letter Punches, Hammer, Leather Puncher
The filmmaker films her subject in a private act, complicating what could be considered a solitary act. This is a feminist critique of the Oedipal complex, narrating from the perspective of the female. The filmmaker recounts an abortion she had in 2009. The aborted child takes the place of her lover.
Void (4.Inability)
16mm, 4min, color, silent, 18fps, 2016 Exacto Knife, Ektachrome, Sea water
Failures is an experimental feature (2016-Ongoing) consisting of 38-40 single camera roll films each dealing with a human failure.This is a re-destroyed film that I was unable to finish in 2013. Filmed both in ruins: at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco and in final domestic spaces occupied with a former partner. Film was destroyed in ocean water.
Shape of a Surface
16mm, 9min, Color, Optical Sound, 24fps,Turkey, 2017
The ground holds accounts of once pagan, then Christian and now Muslim ruins of the city built for Aphrodite. As she takes revenge on Narcissus, mirrors reveal what is seen and surfaces, limbs dismantle and marble turns flesh.
Between Relating and Use
16mm, color, 9min, sound, 24fps (Argentina/USA) 2018, Laser engraver, Ektachrome
Borrowing words from Laura Mark's "Transnational Object" and DW Winnicott's "Transitional Object", this film is an attempt to ethically make work in a foreign land. Transitioning from assuming the position of an ethnographer, we turn and explore inwards- on how we use our lovers.

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ABOUT
Born in Ankara, Turkey, Dinçel immigrated to the United Sates at age 17. Dinçel resides in Milwaukee, WI where she is currently building an artist run film laboratory. She obtained her MFA in filmmaking from UW-Milwaukee. Her works have been exhibited in numerous venues around the world including Tiger Shorts competition at IFFR, NYFF, BAFICI, EIFF and HKIFF.
She recently won the Helen Hill Award at the 2018 Orphan Film Symposium, the Eileen Maitland Award at the 2018 AAFF, Jury Awards at 2018 ICdocs and MUFF for Between Relating and Use (2018)
In addition to exhibiting with institutions, Dinçel avidly self-distributes and tours with her work in micro-cinemas, artist run laboratories and alternative screening spaces in order to support and circulate handmade filmmaking to communities outside of institutions.
