Screen/Society -- These Blazeing Starrs! – Films of Deborah Stratman

These Blazeing Starrs! - Films of Deborah Stratman

Spanning the geologic and the cosmic, this program travels from the mineralogical depths of Dawson City to the outer reaches of the observable universe. The selected films showcase Stratman's ongoing investments in landscape and history, foregrounding her explorations of the extreme, inhospitable, alien, and unknown.

Program

"Optimism" (2018, 15 min, USA, DCP)

"From Hetty to Nancy" (1997, 44 min, USA, 16mm)

"Xenoi" (2016, 15 min, Greece/USA, Digital)

"...These Blazeing Starrs!" (2011, 14 min, USA, 16mm)

*Q&A to follow with director Deborah Stratman and Prof. Shambhavi Kaul (Duke Art, Art History, and Visual Studies)

Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes work that investigates issues of power, control and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She regards sound as the ultimate multi-tool and time to be supernatural. Recent projects have addressed freedom, surveillance, public speech, sinkholes, levitation, orthoptera, raptors, comets, evolution, extinction, exodus, sisterhood and faith. She's exhibited internationally at venues including MoMA (NY), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Hammer Museum (LA), Witte de With (Rotterdam), PS1 (NY), Tabakalera (San Sebastian), Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), Yerba Buena Center (SF), MCA (Chicago), Whitney Biennial (NY) and has done site-specific projects with venues including the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Temporary Services, Hallwalls, Mercer Union and Ballroom Marfa. Stratman's films have been featured widely at festivals and conferences including Sundance, Viennale, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Oberhausen, True/False, TIFF, Locarno, Rotterdam, the Flaherty and Docs Kingdom. She is the recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim and USA Collins Fellowships, an Alpert Award, Sundance Art of Nonfiction Award and grants from Creative Capital, Graham Foundation, Harpo Foundation and Wexner Center for the Arts. She lives in Chicago where she teaches at the University of Illinois.