Fringe! are excited to welcome back festival alumnus Liz Rosenfeld for a special event at The Cinema Museum in two parts, featuring a new film made during her recent Goethe at Lux residency alongside a curated programme of works from the LUX film archive based on research on her forthcoming feature film Foxes. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Liz Rosenfeld. A selection of works will be shown on 16mm.
Part One: Queer Ecologies
Selected from the LUX Moving Image archive during her 2017 Summer Residency, Rosenfeld looked to these experimental works for inspiration regarding her own research towards her first feature length film, Foxes. Foxes is a queer-feminist speculative fiction narrative which follows Ruby, a 16-year old girl who is part of the last generation of humans, and coming out in the wake of a global energy crisis where foxes are the only mammals that are mysteriously still able to procreate. This screening is part of Rosenfeld’s two-year creative body of research regarding themes in Foxes consisting of performances, expanded cinema works, short films/ videos, curated programs, interviews and 2D-works.
20HZ (2011), UK, 5 min, directed by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt (Semiconductor)
Waves (1978), UK, 3 min, directed by Jenny Okun
Drink Deep (1991), USA, 9 min, directed by Jem Cohen
Natural Disasters (Urban Myths, Urban Legends) (2007), UK, 6 min, directed by Grace Ndiritu
Gentlemen (1988), UK, 15 min, directed by David Farringdon
Break
Part Two: Companions
During a three month residency serving as the Goethe at LUX Artist in Residence, Liz Rosenfeld created a new filmic work entitled, Fuck Tree. After spending time in the LUX film archive, Liz came across Luther Price‘s film, Sodom (1989). At the time of its completion, Sodom was questioned for its depiction of the AIDS Crisis and reflections on ‘pre-AIDS’ gay culture. After extensive research into the history, methodology and imagery of Sodom, Liz decided to create a new film which portrays an infamous tree in the cruising area of Hampstead Heath and reflects on her own questions relating to queer historical public space and shifting ecologies. Taking from Luther Price’s methodologies of eroding film, Rosenfeld buried parts of her original print in the LUX Garden and also soaked it in her own cum. Together, Rosenfeld considers these works to address questions dealing with queer dystopia, a positive embrace of apocalypse, invisible genocide, while drawing parallels between the way information was publicly disseminated in the early days of the AIDS/ HIV crisis, and the current spread of information about climate change and environmental destruction. She has made Fuck Tree as a companion piece to Sodom, specifying that it can only ever be screened publicly alongside Luther Price’s film.
Sodom (1989), USA, 25 min, directed by Luther Price
‘Power, control, brutality – all are there, companions to lust and pleasure – even the sex and death equation whether related to AIDS or not… Sade and Bataille both explored the darker side of sex, as has Kenneth Anger. It seems to me that Luther Price has upped the ante. I see Sodom as part of a tradition whose precursors, perhaps, are Anger’s Fireworks (1947) and Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour (1950). These films, now distanced by history, challenged received notions of sexual portrayal and were controversial in their time. There have been few films that dealt with gay sexuality since.’ – Michael Wallin
Fuck Tree (2017), UK, 9 min, directed by Liz Rosenfeld,
Created as a companion work to Luther Price’s infamous film, Sodom (1989), Fuck Tree is an encounter of a relationship between the filmmaker and a historically infamous tree in Hampstead Heath. Rosenfeld’s experimental film portraits her afiar with this tree, and it’s usefulness in the way that ecology has and continues to holds space for queers to convene, fuck, and occupy public space.
Presented in association with LUX.
Doors open at 18.00 for an 18.30 start.
Refreshments will be available in our licensed cafe/bar.
TICKETS & PRICING
Tickets £10. Advance tickets available from Outsavvy.
