Art of the Real 2017

The Dazzling Light of Sunset
Now in its fourth year, the Art of the Real festival offers a survey of the most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking. This edition features titles from established figures such as Laura Poitras, Ignacio Agüero, Jem Cohen, Robinson Devor, and the late Michael Glawogger alongside up-and-comers Theo Anthony (Rat Film), Salomé Jashi (The Dazzling Light of Sunset), and Shengze Zhu (Another Year), as well as a tribute to the late Brazilian filmmaker Andrea Tonacci.
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Presented with support from MUBI.
Now in its fourth year, the Art of the Real festival offers a survey of the most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking. This edition features titles from established figures such as Laura Poitras, Ignacio Agüero, Jem Cohen, Robinson Devor, and the late Michael Glawogger alongside up-and-comers Theo Anthony (Rat Film), Salomé Jashi (The Dazzling Light of Sunset), and Shengze Zhu (Another Year), as well as a tribute to the late Brazilian filmmaker Andrea Tonacci.
Presented with support from MUBI.
Tickets on sale now! See more and save with a 3+ Film Package or All Access Pass. And, don't forget to take advantage of our discounted student tickets!
Rat Film
Risk
Closing Night • North American Premiere • Q&A with Laura Poitras and producer Brenda Coughlin • Post-screening reception for all ticket-holders
Laura Poitras returns to the knotty territory of political truth-telling and international espionage with this years-in-the-making portrait of controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.2+2=22 [The Alphabet]
North American Premiere • Q&A with Heinz Emigholz
The first part of the director’s ambitious new “Streetscapes” cycle is a response to Godard’s One Plus One, an immersive look into both the recording of Kreidler’s album ABC and the architecture of Tbilisi.Ama-San
U.S. Premiere
This intimate documentary focuses on the Japanese women who have been performing traditional dives (sans oxygen tanks) together for 30 years.Another Year
U.S. Premiere • Q&A with Shengze Zhu and producer Zhengfan Yang
Through a simple premise—13 meals shared by a family of migrant workers over 14 months, rendered in leisurely long takes—Shengze Zhu’s compassionate film speaks volumes about socioeconomic realities in contemporary China.Brothers of the Night
U.S. Premiere · Q&A with Patric Chiha
With visuals inspired by Fassbinder’s Querelle, Patric Chiha’s stylized film follows a group of Bulgarian Roma in Vienna who support their families back home by taking on gay sex work.Casa Roshell
Mixing digital, 16mm film, and closed-circuit TV footage to locate a glamorous utopia within the confines of a Mexico City transgender club, Casa Roshell is a richly detailed and immersive portrait of a place whose patrons are allowed to own their identities and feel less alone.
The Dazzling Light of Sunset
Q&A with Salomé Jashi
In a provincial Georgian town, an ultra-low-budget local news team covers weddings, politics, and teenage beauty pageants with a remarkable code of professionalism.Dark Skull
Q&A with Kiro Russo
Made in collaboration with a crew of Bolivian miners, this formally ambitious work tells an unsparing tale of grueling work, family drama, and drug abuse.Doppelgänger: a cine-performance by Basma Alsharif
Live Event · U.S. Premiere
In this cine-performance, Alsharif weaves together the Occupation of Palestine, narrative cinema, and the possibility for Utopia.Empathy
North American Premiere • Q&A with Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli
Rovinelli’s rigorous yet sensitive debut follows Em, a queer sex worker struggling to kick heroin, and depicts what it means to be young and at odds with oneself today.From a Year of Non-Events
North American Premiere
Renninger and Frölke’s latest tenderly traces the daily rhythms and rituals of 90-year-old Willi Detert on his rural northern German farm by way of an elegantly interwoven tapestry of 16mm and Super 8mm images.Gray House
North American Premiere • Q&A with Austin Lynch and Matthew Booth
Austin Lynch (son of David) and Matthew Booth candidly explore the American working class through a stunningly photographed weave of verité footage, interviews, landscapes, and fictional elements.In Time to Come
U.S. Premiere • Q&A with Tan Pin Pin
Tan Pin Pin returns to themes of redevelopment and excavation of the past in Singapore, subtly questioning our relationship to time and each other.The Modern Jungle
Q&A with Charles Fairbanks and Saul Kak
This bold, reflexive ethnography charts the relationship of an indigenous couple struggling with health problems and land rights.Moyra Davey: Two Premieres
U.S. Premiere • Q&A with Moyra Davey + Book Signing!
Hemlock Forest (2016, 42m) + Wedding Loop (2017, 23m)These two new works by artist Moyra Davey are personal and essayistic tributes to Chantal Akerman, Karl Ove Knausgård, and Julia Margaret Cameron.
The Other Day
Introduction by Ignacio Agüero
Ignacio Agüero’s documentary encompassed his family and national history, Chile’s economic problems, identity, and nature even while being shot primarily inside his home and through a door that leads to the street.Pow Wow
Q&A with Robinson Devor
Robinson Devor (Zoo) illustrates the legend of a native American youth through breathtaking views of California’s Coachella Valley and interviews with its oddball denizens.The Sky, the Earth, and the Rain
Introduction by José Luis Torres Leiva
In remote, rural southern Chile, Ana, Veronica, Marta, and Toro struggle to find connections with each other and discover themselves.Streetscapes [Dialogue]
This Is the Way I Like It II
U.S. Premiere • Q&A with Ignacio Agüero
Moving between past and present, this fascinating portrait reveals today’s Chile through the eyes of one director (who remained in Chile throughout the dictatorship) and his contemporaries.Untitled
North American Premiere
The late Michael Glawogger’s longtime editor combines the remarkable footage from the director’s final, unfinished project with excerpts from his journals for a revealing and moving elegy.Voyage to Terengganu
North American Premiere • Q&A with co-director Badrul Hisham Ismail and composer Zulhezan
Retracing the early 19th-century travels of the great Malaysian writer Munshi Abdullah through the eastern Malaysian state of Terengganu, this humanistic travelogue explores contemporary beliefs about money, religion, and nationhood.The Wind Knows That I’m Coming Back Home
U.S. Premiere • Q&A with José Luis Torres Leiva
A filmmaker prepares to shoot his first fiction film, about the real-life disappearance of two lovers in the woods of Chile’s remote Meulín Island in the early 1980s.World Without End (No Reported Incidents)
Q&A with Jem Cohen
Jem Cohen (Museum Hours) offers a sweet-hearted, structuralist look at three cities along the Thames Estuary: Southend-on-Sea, Leigh-on-Sea, and Canvey Island.Spotlight on Andrea Tonacci
Blah Blah Blah + Bang Bang
Two classics of the marginal cinema movement that opposed both the Cinema Novo movement and Brazil’s military government.
Hills of Disorder
Introduction by film scholar Ivone Margulies
Through a heady blend of re-enactments and archival news reports, the film tells the story of Carapiru, an indigenous man who survived the massacre of his tribe in 1978.
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Art of the Real 2018
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Art of the Real 2017
Now in its fourth year, the Art of the Real festival offers a survey of the most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking. This edition features titles from established figures such as Ignacio Agüero, Jem Cohen, Robinson Devor, and the late Michael Glawogger alongside up-and-comers Theo Anthony (Rat Film), Salomé Jashi (The Dazzling Light of Sunset), and Shengze Zhu (Another Year), as well as a tribute to the late Brazilian filmmaker Andrea Tonacci. Read More
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Art of the Real 2015
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