June 8, 2022, 9pm
224 Greene Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
USA
Bar Laika is very pleased to announce the return of its weekly film screenings, starting on Wednesday, June 8 at 9pm with Rosalind Nashashibi’s Lovely Young People (2012, 13 minutes) and Eyeballing (2005, 10 minutes).
Lovely Young People (2012, 13 minutes)
Nashashibi chose to portray Scottish Ballet dancers indirectly, reflected through mirrors and through the eyes of local people from Glasgow’s Southside. They are invited to walk in during rehearsals, penetrating the closed world of the Company. Concentrating on the gaze and thoughts of the non-dancers, and the bodies and breath of the dancers, she draws attention to our own projections, dreams, and longing around the mythologized idea of the dancer. Exaggerated looking, the back and forth of the flow of power through looking, watching how private individuals and public officers look and what their gaze looks like, are at the heart of this film. Sound is used to draw us into the different perspectives within the film—whether that of the dancers or the visitors, “the insiders or the intruders”—while Nashashibi’s camera allows us close-up, lingering views of individuals more normally seen at a remove. The comments on the youth and grace of the dancers, like those used for the title, or comments on their seemingly superhuman strength and endurance, are instances of a chorus-effect, a revealing of efforts of interpretation as well of efforts of looking. The chorus effect, via the “gods,” features first in Nashashibi’s previous film Carlo’s Vision (2011). Commissioned by Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and Scottish Ballet.
Eyeballing (2005, 10 minutes)
The anthropomorphic city. A series of faces found in architectural facades or in objects around an apartment are juxtaposed with shots of policemen in uniform loitering around their precinct.
For more information contact laika@e-flux.com.