The mission of the festival is to showcase artists, designers, craftspeople, collectors, curators and makers from around the world while entertaining, educating, and reflecting on the influence art and design have on community, history, politics, personal expression and our contemporary landscape.
The festival is the first offering from the Providence Center for Media Culture, a pending 501c3 non-profit, established as part of the Rhode Island Innovation Fellowship we received in April 2015.
Pell Humanites Inititiative: Rhode Island Celebrates 50 Years of the NEH! #PEllHumanities
All films are showing at the CABLE CAR CINEMA unless otherwise noted. Regular admission is $10 per screening time, student and seniors $7.50. Opening night reception and film admission is $25. Tickets may be purchased here.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 29th
5:30 pm • PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT
Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland • USA / Italy / UK • 2015 • 96 minutes
Lisa Immordino Vreeland paints a stunning portrait of the socialite, bohemian, collector and iconoclast, Peggy Guggenheim. In this fascinating documentary of the infamous art patron who amassed one of the world’s foremost collection of modern art, we see her remarkable influence on the tastes and trends of the modern art world.
5:30-7:00 • Opening Night Reception at the RISD Museum, (Metcalf Auditorium, 20 North Main St., Providence, RI 02903) with food & wine provided by the Ocean State Oyster Festival & Campus Fine Wines. Featuring James Falzone & Ensemble.
7:00 • Film screening Q&A to follow with Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and John Smith, Director of the RISD Museum.
7:00 • Film screening Q&A to follow with Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and John Smith, Director of the RISD Museum.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 30th
3:00 pm • FABERGE: A LIFE OF ITS OWN
Directed by Patrick Mark • UK / USA / Switzerland • 2014 • 87 minutes
Most famous for their extraordinary jewel-encrusted eggs made for the Russian Tsars, Faberge designed some of the finest objects ever created. With unprecedented access to the most esteemed collections, the film allows audiences to experience the wonder of seeing Faberge’s exquisite objects in stunning detail on the big screen.
Q&A to follow with local designer and RISD Professor Matthew Bird, and Margaret Steward Campbell, Jewelry Historian and Gemologist living in Portland, Maine.
5:30 pm • TROUBLEMAKERS
Directed by James Crump • USA • 2015 • 72 minutes
Troublemakers unearths the history of land art in the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s. The film features a cadre of renegade New York artists that sought to transcend the limitations of painting and sculpture by producing works on a monumental scale in the desolate desert spaces of the American southwest.
Q&A to follow with designer and artist Adam E. Anderson, and Markus Berger, RISD Interior Architecture Graduate Program Director.
8:00 pm • BELTRACCHI: THE ART OF FORGERY
Directed by Arne Birkenstock • Germany • 2014 • 93 Minutes
A mesmerizing, thought-provoking documentary on the life and times of Wolfgang Beltracchi, a larger-than-life personality famous for the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era.
Q&A to follow with painting conservators Lance Mayer & Gay Meyer, and Emily Peters, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the RISD Museum.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 31ST
10:30 am • MAKER
Directed by Mu-Ming Tsai • Taiwan/USA • 2014 • 66 minutes
Maker, a new documentary by the directors of Design & Thinking, explores the current Maker movement in America and the transformative influences it is exerting on our culture and economy.
Directed by Martin Hablesreiter & Sonja Strummerer • Austria/ Netherlands • 2010 • 52 minutes
Food Design takes a fascinating look inside the secret chambers of a major European food manufacturer to uncover the complex intersection of the science and design process of manufactured food.
Q&A to follow with product designer Dave Sharp, and Beth Mosher, Associate Professor of Industrial Design at RISD.
1:30 pm • STRANGE & FAMILIAR
Directed by Katherine Knight and Marcia Connolly • Canada • 2014 • 55 minutes
With the decline of the local fishing industry on remote Fogo Island, native Zita Cobb, returns home to help create a secure and sustainable island economy by commissioning modern architect Todd Saunders to design a destination for artists and geo-tourism.
Directed by Brent Huffman • USA • 2014 • 60 minutes
A Chinese mining company is planning to demolish a 5,000-year-old archaeological site in Afghanistan called Mes Aynak in order to unearth $100 billion dollars worth of copper buried beneath the ruins. Follow Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori as he battles Chinese miners, the Taliban, local politics and time to save the site from imminent destruction.
Q&A to follow with Vazira F-Y Zamindar, Associate Professor of History at Brown University, and Jonathan Knowles, architect and RISD professor.
4:30 pm • CARTOONISTS: FOOTSOLDIERS OF DEMOCRACY
Directed by Stephanie Valloatto • France • 2014 • 106 minutes
Cartoonists: Footsoldiers of Democracy weaves together the stories of 12 political cartoonists from around the world, to explore exactly what it means to be an artist who can convey in pictures what others cannot say in words. As the Charlie Hebdo attack illustrated to the world, it is with great risk that these artists engage in an art form that can unnerve and sometimes enrage the political establishment.
Q&A to follow with TBA
8:00 pm • INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA
Directed by Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay • Germany / Japan / UK • 1995 • 104 minutes
Based on an adaption of a novel written by Jakob von Gunten, the plot follows the experience of a young man enrolled in a school to train servants, specifically to instill the philosophy of subservience in its students. Themes of oppression, rebellion and eventual destruction are presented in the mystical style that is signature of the Brothers Quay.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 1ST
11:00 am • TOMORROW WE DISAPPEAR
Directed by Jim Goldblum and Adam Weber • USA/India • 2014 • 80 minutes
For almost half a century 2,800 families have lived in the artist colony of Kathputli in New Delhi, India. Tomorrow We Disappear follows some of Kathputli’s most well known and talented performers as they struggle with potential eviction by developers who purchased the land they live on to develop a skyscraper.
Q&A to follow with Avishek Ganguly, Assistant Professor, Department of Literary Arts and Studies at RISD, and Yashas Vaidya, Brown University doctoral student studying the long-run effects of demographic processes on individuals and communities.
1:30 pm • SNEAKERHEADZ
Directed by David Friendly & Nick Partridge • USA • 2015 • 73 minutes
Sneakerheadz examines the crazy, humorous, and sometimes violent cultural influence sneakers have had on the design world, the fashion world and the daily lives of sneaker lovers and collectors around the world.
Q&A to follow with Designer, Producer & Director, Frank “The Butcher” Rivera and Kate Irvin, Curator and Head, Department of Costume and Textiles, RISD Museum.
4:00 pm • SHORTS PROGRAM
• • • Admission price includes all six films • • •
The A & D Shorts program is an opportunity to see the work of a variety of artists and designers from around the world in one sitting.
Directed by Teddy Goitom, Benjamin Taft, and Senay Berhe • Ghana/Sweden • 2014 • 28 min
One in a series of films highlighting new creative voices in African art. A visual mixtape of the most innovative artists, filmmakers, designers, musicians, photographers and cultural activists working in Ghana today. Storytelling and creative collaboration from a new and shifting African perspective.
Directed by Ronni Thomas • USA • 2014 • 19 minutes
A British pub owner and amateur taxidermist, Walter Potter created elaborate dioramas that became highly collectable objects of Victorian whimsy and continue to intrigue audiences today.
BRIAN CHIPPENDALE: NETWORKS 2012 RI ARTIST PROFILE
Produced by Joseph Chazan M.D., Video by Richard Goulis • USA • 2012 • 10 minutes
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Brian Chippendale has been living and working in Providence since the early 1990’s. A printmaker, cartoonist, painter and musician, he is a well known founder of the Fort Thunder artist collective and released five albums with his band Lightning Bolt. He is also a member of the band Black Pus.
Directed by Lucy Walker • USA • 2013 • 6 minutes
The story of iconic British artist David Hockney. Using archival footage, home video, paintings and photographs, director Lucy Walker (Devil’s Playground) captures Hockney’s stylistic evolution while paying tribute to his personal philosophy of living life in the now.
Directed by Ellen Vloet • The Netherlands • 2013 • 25 minutes
A giant hippo on The Thames? An 82 foot bunny in Taiwan? Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman is conquering the world by creating some of the biggest, most iconic and witty sculptures to appear in the urban landscape.
Directed by Zachary Heinzerling • USA/UK • 2015 • 10 minutes
From director Zachary Heinzerling (Cutie and the Boxer) is an artist profile of the Brooklyn based artist High Hayden woven into the the story of a hunter in the Scottish Highlands on his quest to capture the elusive, Red Grouse. Innovative storytelling subverts the traditional profile format along with narratives about identity and race.
7:00 pm • POP-UP PORNO
Directed by Stephen Dunn • Canada • 2015 • 12 minutes
Pop-up Porno is a series of shorts about meaningful and humiliating human experiences derived from three unique online-dating horror stories.
STATION TO STATION
Directed by Doug Aitken • USA • 2015 • 71 minutes
Contemporary artist Doug Aiken creates a 24 day cross country train trip exploring the process of artistic production. From San Fransisco to New York, with 10 stops along the way for organized “art happenings”, performers such as Beck, Patti Smith and Olafur Eliasson along with an ever changing passenger list of artists, collaborate on works along the way.