Western Disturbance

Thursday, November 10th, 7:30pm

Western Disturbances

Co-presented by MONO NO AWARE and Maysles Cinema at the MDC

New York Premiere of feature-length documentary performance film by Alex Cunningham.

A guide in how to not find what you weren't really looking for, Western Disturbances is a feature-length performance, multi-media, personal documentary film exposing the inherent folly in expectation as seen through the filmmaker's attempt to document the 2015 South Asian Monsoon. This program will open with a series of 16mm films entitled, Raining Ragas nos 1-6. Inspired by the structured yet highly improvisational style of the Indian raga, these six rolls of 16mm film, shot and edited in-camera, perform the filmic plea of a musical raining raga in hopes of inducing the monsoon. Shot in Kerala and West Bengal during the weak and delayed onset of the 2015 South Asian monsoon, Raining Ragas Nos. 1-6 reveal the anticipation, frustration, and confusion in awaiting the unpredictable weather system.

Alex Cunningham is an experimental and documentary filmmaker currently based in North Carolina. He received his BFA from Ithaca College in 2012 and his MFA from Duke University in 2016. His films explore the issues of the physical earth as a living object and human physical intervention into and relationship with the landscape and climate, and underlying personal and psychological themes of anxiety, uncertainty, and instability. He is also a professor of photography and cinema at Duke University, a curator and programmer, and a film projectionist.

MONO NO AWARE, based in Brooklyn,  presents monthly artist-in-person screenings, organizes affordable analogue filmmaking workshops, facilitates equipment rentals, operates a film distribution initiative, plans cinema field trips, and hosts an annual exhibition for contemporary artists and international filmmakers whose work incorporates Super 8mm, 16mm, 35mm or altered light projections as part of a live performance or installation.

The term MONO NO AWARE is a Japanese phrase that means "a connection to the ephemeral".....

MONO NO AWARE strives to provide the tools and skills to make traditional filmmaking affordable and approachable in the hands of makers; to teach filmmaking at its core, from hand processing film to shooting techniques, from camera-less filmmaking to digital post-production and distribution. MONO NO AWARE celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2016.

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