monica freeman, ca 1977 • Photo: john wise
feminist elsewheres
April 19-20, 2025
Two-day film and conversation program, Maysles Documentary Center
Queer-feminist film work is collective, transnational, and complicated. The networks that emerge from it are expansive, ephemeral, and in need of care. With this program feminist elsewheres is looking for connections between historical and contemporary feminist film, tracing the stories, times, and border-crossing lineages of its existence.
From the Black feminist film scene in the US and film gatherings in Europe in the 1970s to poetic negotiations of borders and memories between Nigeria, Thailand, and Germany, this program is an unfinished search for the significance of queer-feminist film.
The event opens with a selection of films based on the feminist elsewheres research on the 1973 First International Women’s Film Seminar, Berlin. Other programs will include the complete works of Monica Freeman, contemporary films by Arisa Purkpong & Jana Buch as well as the German Television production The Snake in My Bed by LA Rebellion director Omah Diegu.
SUNDAY, APRIL 20TH – 3 PM
FRAGMENTS OF MEMORY / WORKS BY ARISA PURKPONG
Work In Progress
Arisa Purkpong, NO 2025, 3 min., digital file, b/w
Notes of Stone
Jana Buch & Arisa Purkpong, DE 2020, 9 min., digital file, color
Concept and Images: Jana Buch & Arisa Purkpong
Music: Tim Löhde
Voice: Elena Packhäuser
Copyediting: Sarah Herndon & Lóa A. Kristínardóttir
Untitled
Arisa Purkpong, DE 2022, 49 min., digital file, color
Transcriptions and translations: Jana Buch, Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn
Audio mixing: Vandy Roc
Music: Tim Löhde
Drawing (short mackerel): Suhpamid Purkpong
Arisa Purkpong in conversation with feminist elsewheres
Currently based in Oslo, artist Arisa Purkpong works with film collages, photography, installation, and publications. Their book Punched Card (Fat Vampire Press, 2024) takes up the work of feminist filmmaker Claudia von Alemann. By showcasing two films and an additional work in progress by Arisa Purkpong, feminist elsewheres presents artistic works by one of their own members, followed by a collective discussion.
Notes of Stone is a collaborative work by Arisa Purkpong and artist Jana Buch. It connects various narratives and points of interest, such as their engagement with films by feminist directors of the 1960s and 70s, as well as the question of how mythological female figures and their depiction are still present in current society. The video collage intertwines images, sounds and narratives, such as sequences that were filmed during the work with the “Friends of Women Foundation” organization in Thailand in 2019 to connect these with images of the Düsseldorf copy of the sculpture of Perseus holding the head of Medusa.
Untitled (2022) reflects on childhood memories of the artist’s father in a fragmented form and asks which gaps in histories remain open. Memories and their temporal excess structure the journey of Arisa Purkpong and their father through various places in Central and Northeast Thailand. With patience and precision, the camera explores its surroundings, family photographs, friends of the artist’s father and acquaintances they meet together on the way. Yet the more knowledge Untitled offers, the more distant its subject seems to grow – a meditation on the absences that linger in family histories, and in the fissures created by migration.
$15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price:
$40 / ALL EVENTS on BOTH DAYS
feminist elsewheres began as a festival in 2023 in response to two events that took place in Berlin: the 1973 First International Women’s Film Seminar and its 1997 revisitation ...the point is to change it. Films, Festivals, Feminism. It now operates as a collective at the intersection of archival research, film programming, and artistic experimentation.
No film stands alone.
No history is stable.
feminist elsewheres is many.
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