The Cinema Works Again/ Ponovo Radio Bioskop! had its U.S. Premier April 8, 2009 at Magic Lantern Cinema, as part of the Innapropriate Covers Show at the The David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, RI. Curated by Braxton Soderman and Justin Katko.
Christopher Robbins, “The Cinema Works Again! Ponovo Radi Bioskop!,”
2008, color video, sound, 4:46The setting is Vranje, Serbia; the public cinema is broken; the films are Bring it on, Rocky IV, and Star Wars II; the actors are Vranje’s own silver screen hopefuls. Excerpts of the films are paired against their real-time Serbian reenactments, each denying the pure legibility of their counterpart. A cinema of relations (social and formal) is developed, of which this work is perhaps a preliminary demonstration. One is left wondering not only about the obscured social realities in which the actors are no doubt dramatically wrapped-up off-screen, but about the status, for instance, of the montage sequences newly derived as analogues of those in the originals. “The Cinema Works Again! Ponovo Radi Bioskop!” is a strange and pleasurable document, refreshingly crude and conceptually pure.
Magic Lantern Cinema presents - THE INAPPROPRIATE COVERS SHOW
Curated by Braxton Soderman and Justin Katko
Wednesday April 8, 2009
9:30 p.m.
Cable Car Cinema
204 S. Main St.
Providence, RI
Admission $5