Harn Museum offers new series of films

September 11, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – With its re-opening in full swing, the Harn Museum of Art continues to enhance patrons’ experiences with a new season of RISK Cinema, an experimental, documentary and narrative film exhibition that will focus on the moods of suspicion, paranoia and outright conflict that have rocked the recent past.

The fall 2006 RISK Cinema season, titled “Present Tense,” kicks off Sept. 12 with films by critically acclaimed artist Paul Chan and continues Sept. 26 with a series of short films.

“An Evening of Paul Chan” will be featured at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 12. The exhibition will showcase highlighted shorts by this critically acclaimed artist and activist whose provocative work engages the conflicts and contradictions of art, politics and religion. His visually intense and graphic work spans from drawing to digital rendering and manipulation. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Nebraska, his video work animations have been screened in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the 54th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, and the 8th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France.

The screening will feature four video works: “Now Let Us Praise American Leftists,” “The Operation,” “Now Promise, Now Threat,” and “Untitled Video, Lynn Stewart and Her Conviction, the Law and Poetry.” The films will be introduced by Kerry Oliver-Smith, curator of contemporary art at the Harn Museum of Art.

The RISK Cinema season continues at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26 with “Media, Art, War and Present Day Paranoia: An Evening of Shorts,” a series of seven short films and videos that engage humor, cynicism, fantasy and documentary analysis to examine present life in the West and the Middle East.

Highlighted artists include San Francisco native Bryan Boyce, whose film and video work have been showcased at venues worldwide, including Rotterdam International Film Festival, NY Expo of Short Film and Video, RESFest and the Pacific Film Archive; Sherry Millner, who has been producing films, videotapes and photo montages since the mid-1970s and is known for her mixture of humor, analysis and personal insight; and Jennet Thomas, whose work has had increasing international exposure from such venues as the New York and Chicago Underground Film Festivals, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival and many others.

Artists and films shown will include Bryan Boyce, “30 Seconds Hate/Suckers;” Hassan Khan, “Transitions;” Les LeVeque, “Notes from the Underground;” Sherry Millner, “The Art of Protective Coloration;” Sean Snyder, “Casio, Seiko, Sheraton, Toyota, Mars;” Jennet Thomas, “Because of War;” and Aaron Young, “Freedom Fires.”

RISK Cinema events will continue through December. Admission is $4 for adults and $3 for students. For more information about fall programs and events call 352-392-9826 or visit www.harn.ufl.edu