MIXNYC | Experimental Film Festival

As the weather cools, we begin to seek refuge amidst the comfort of a warm movie theater. MIX NYC begins anew next week with a startling list of thoughtful, experimental gay, lesbian and queer films including John Greyson’s politically charged and visually stunning docu-opera, “Fig Trees,” about two AIDs activists. From gentrification to sapphic erotica to sexual transgression to gender anarchy to satanic queers and psychedelic boys, MIX NYC 2009 promises a stellar lineup of visual inappropriateness that would surely make Carrie Prejean poop her pants. This is filmmaking that is worth supporting, trust us on this one.

Schedule Overview

Tues, Nov 17 @ 8 PM
Opening Night: Making All Local Stops
This year, MIX takes off with Green Fuse on the express track, a swirl of colors and frenetic editing. On the local track, pause with the meditative biography of Delphinium, about the early life of Derek Jarman. The works in this show are from all boroughs, and terminate Swedish-style with an erotic interpretation of everyone’s caboose.

Weds, Nov 18 @ 7.30 PM
Bulldozed!
From Brooklyn to Berlin to Nova Scotia, the films in this program trace different histories of gentrification and corporate takeover from the late 1960s to present day. From Brooklyn to Berlin to Nova Scotia, the films in this program trace different histories of gentrification and corporate takeover from the late 1960s to present day. Vanessa Renwick’s House of Sound portrays a loss in Detroit, while Jem Cohen longs for the city of New York with Patti Smith, and Samara Halperin laments Astroland.

Weds, Nov 18 @ 10 PM
Our Gorgeous Nightmares
MIX presents a banquet of fragrant imagery and flagrant catastrophe, fashioned by directors making love with designers and actors doubling as models poised on Jungian runways in hyper-colored darkness and swimming in dreamscapes encrusted with poetic texture.

Thurs, Nov 19 @ 6 PM
Facilitate This!
EE Miller, guest curator
Facilitate This! considers representations of “the meeting” in queer imagination and history. How do we imagine meeting? How do we come together? The program includes a montage of fabulous meetings from features and movements past; a selection of short films; and presentations for the “perfect meeting” from kara lynch, Sarah Schulman, and Ginger Brooks Takahashi.

Thurs, Nov 19 @ 8 PM
Fig Trees
Fig Tress is an operatic documentary about the struggle of two AIDS activists–Canadian Tim McCaskell and South African Zackie Achmat. Both have fought tooth-and-nail for the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to treat AIDS. In John Greyson’s film they are ably supported by Gertrude Stein, a singing albino squirrel, and St. Teresa of Avila.

Thurs, Nov 19 @ 10 PM
Luminous Darkness
Daniel Mckernan, guest curator
After the success of Homoccult & Other Esoterotica (MIX 2007), this lineup of shorts is a second coming of satanic queers and psychedelic wild boys. This is a new set of magickal, sexually transgressive videos focusing on erotic ritual and performance. Luigi & Luca, Lukas Beyeler, Gio Black Peter, Dominic Johnson, JodyJock, Zackary Drucker, and others show us works dealing with sex, violence, the occult, magick, and other mystic esoterica.

Fri, Nov 20 @ 7 PM
Stepping Out of Time
Breaking down the language of dance, and luring the human form into new realms of cinematic experimentation, the films in this program are stories told primarily with the body, and its capacity to communicate with its shape and momentum. With a world premiere from Arthur Aviles and US premiere by Mara Mattuschka & Chis Harring.

Fri, Nov 20 @ 7.30 PM @ Union Docs
Travel Queeries*
Travel Queeries is a feature documentary film that explores the life, culture, art and activism of queer individuals and groups throughout a selected group of European cities.

Fri, Nov 20 @ 8.30 PM
Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry
Awarded the 2008 Images Prize at its premiere, Daniel Barrow’s newest “manual animation” combines overhead projection with video, music, and live narration to tell the story of a garbage man with a vision to create an independent phone book chronicling the lives of each person in his city.

Fri, Nov 20 @ 10 PM
Never Satisfied
A program of international sex and subversion, and a swift kick in the pants to conformity. This red-hot lineup includes a transgender homage to Peter Berlin and to psychedelic sapphistry.

Fri, Nov 20 @ 12 MID
Misanthropic Mania
These defiant, dysfunctional, deviant heroes show unapologetic displays of camp, gender anarchy, bodily fluids and boundary bashing. It’s a tsunami of expression, releasing frustration against the co-optation of queer, crashing down the walls of static identities. Catch Gary Femb’ots sci-fi imagining of AIDS activism and Nica Ross’s queeruptive take on The Wizard of Oz.

Sat, Nov 21 @ 6 PM
Mirrors, Smoke and Glass
Through lenses and glass, distorted in mirrors, in retrospect and in spectacle, fragmented, pieced together and embedded in their surrounding environments, the artists in this program render reflections of themselves or paint a portrait of other artists.

Sat, Nov 21 @ 8 PM

Bigger Than Life
Join author Jeffrey Escoffier and his guests Wakefield Poole (Boys in the Sand), Joe Gage (Kansas City Trucking Co.), Owen Hawk, and others, for this talk and clip show about the intersection of gay porn and experimental film. ASL interpreted.

Sat, Nov 21 @ 10 PM
Creepy Dirty Girlie
Creepy Dirty Girlie includes both direct and indirect examinations of dark and queer aspects of women’s sexuality not often seen in our commodity-driven media. We see desires that are unresolved, elude a single meaning, and extract pleasure where it has often been denied.

Sun, Nov 22 @ 4 PM
A Different Take
Lights, sound, camera, action! Welcome to MIX NYC’s fourth year of “A Different Take,” a video production workshop for LGBTQ youth and young adults. This year, participants were paired up with college filmmakers who mentored students through their production process.
Free admission for youth age 23 and under

Sun, Nov 22 @ 6 PM
Do It To It
This program highlights works that actively demonstrate, reflect, and interpret the hard work that people do; these works have varying relationships with local and global communities and with activist and artistic projects, including Zavé Martohardjono’s doc about Transy House in Brooklyn.

Sun, Nov 22 @ 8 PM
Closing Night: Maggots & Men
Seeing Cary Cronenwett’s Maggots and Men, you have nothing to lose but your perceptions of gender. This Utopian re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921, featuring film history’s first cast of over 100 transgender actors, paints an idyllic portrait of formerly pro-Soviet sailors at the Kronstadt naval garrison who rebelled against the perceived failures of the new Bolshevik state.

Installations
Once again, the MIX Factory will transform itself from the inside out, and in the process present a number of engaging, if not provocative, site-specific installation and performance pieces. Enrich your MIX experience before and after screenings by taking in these exhibitions and experimentations in multi-media.

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