What.s On at ACMI: Feb - March, 2017

ACMI celebrates the colourful, the queer and the cutting-edge during Asia TOPA
Events from early Feb
acmi.net.au/asia-topa
Joining Arts Centre Melbourne and a consortium of cultural organisations, ACMI showcases the colourful, the queer and the cutting-edge during the inaugural Asia TOPA program in 2017 – a festival-style program that celebrates the wellspring of moving image, performing arts and culture from the diverse Asia-Pacific region.

 

Screen installation Ex Nilalang
Until 5 Mar, Lightwell, 1–5pm
Free
acmi.net.au/events/ex-nilalang
Ex Nilalang is a cumulative moving image project by Australian-Filipino collective Club Ate, founded by multidisciplinary video and performance artists, Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra. Three episodes were created in 2015 and ACMI is proud to have commissioned the fourth for Asia TOPA, when the work fills ACMI's Lightwell space with the colourful alter-identities, costumes and spectacle of screen installation Ex Nilalang. The work explores queer mythological figures from the Filipino and South East Asian diaspora, seeking to transform existing Filipino mythologies that were once used to demonise queer identities by colonial powers. The artists draw from their own narratives, lived experiences and personal relationships to forge new connections between queer, migrant, spiritual and intercultural experiences. Additionally, Ex Nilalang artists speak at ACMI's monthly ART+FILM screening and talk series event on Wednesday 1 March.

 

One night club event Club Ate
2 Mar, 8–12pm
Free
acmi.net.au/events/club-ate
Club Ate is a hybrid party event featuring live performances, video art, music, food and drinks. The event is hosted by Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra, the Sydney-based artists behind ACMI's Asia TOPA screen installation Ex Nilalang.

 

ART+FILM with Benji Ra and Justin Shoulder
1 Mar, 6.30pm
Free
acmi.net.au/events/art-film
In this special ART+FILM event, Sydney-based, Australian-Filipino artists Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra present the first three episodes of a work started in 2015; Balud, Dyesebel and Lolo ex Machina; as well as the brand new fourth episode commissioned for Asia TOPA; Ex Nilalang. The screening is followed by a conversation with Justin and Bhenji about their unique creative practice, which explores the intersections of art, performance, film and identity. Ex Nilalang is a cumulative performance video project that explores queer mythological figures from the Filipino diaspora. The artists use intricately crafted costumes, prostheses, masks, movement and sound to transform their bodies into fantastical otherworldly creatures. ART+FILM is ACMI's free monthly program showcasing rarely-screened, short and feature-length works by leading Australian and international moving image artists.

Bombay Talkies exhibition
8 Feb – 2 Jul, Gallery 2, 10am–5pm
Free acmi.net.au/bombay-talkies
A major Asia TOPA highlight, ACMI exhibition Bombay Talkies captures the excitement and glamour of early Indian cinema with a treasure trove of artefacts collected by the -father of Bollywood cinema'. The exhibition showcases, for the very first time, the Dietze Family Trust archive, inherited by Melburnian Peter Dietze and his two brothers, who discovered late in life that their grandfather was a famous Indian filmmaker and entrepreneur. The collection comprises 3000 cultural artefacts in what is the most comprehensive collection of 1920s and 1930s Indian film studio ephemera in the world. Bombay Talkies is a household name in India, co-founded by ambitious and entrepreneurial filmmaker Himansu Rai (1892 – 1940) and his movie-star wife Devika Rani (1908 – 1994). Releasing 40 films over 20 years, Bombay Talkies was one of India's most innovative and highly resourced studios, launching the careers of several prominent luminaries including actor Ashok Kumar and director Raj Kapoor.

 

ACMI & Melbourne Queer Film Festival present Criminalising Queer panel event
21 Mar
The case of the San Antonio Four explored in Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, which screens during this year's Melbourne Queer Film Festival, is one of many crimes in which the sexuality of the accused (four queer Latina women), is used as damning evidence of their guilt. The Criminalising Queer panel discussion will draw on this and other true crime documentaries including Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hoods, The Staircase and The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst to examine cases where sexuality, assumed sexuality and the personal proclivities of the accused create fear and moral panic in the press and the public.

 

ACMI presents Philippe Parreno: Thenabouts
Closes 13 Mar
acmi.net.au/events/philippe-parreno-thenabouts
ACMI presents the first Australian solo exhibition of internationally acclaimed French artist and filmmaker, Philippe Parreno – a key artist of his generation and one of the most significant contemporary artists working at the intersection between art and film. Occupying ACMI's subterranean gallery, this exhibition will be the first retrospective of Parreno's filmic works – a cinematic ensemble in which the artist's films play with temporal and spatial boundaries, guiding the visitor through a complex journey of images, duration, memory, and the passage of time. Controlled live by a gallery technician, no one visit is ever the same. Through work that draws on cinema, science fiction, architecture, the phantasmagorical, and the natural, Parreno merges reality and fiction to produce exhibitions that radically challenge our notions of reality, memory and the passage of time.

 

Parreno Creative Response Series
Until 12 Mar
acmi.net.au/events/creative-response-series
In the spirit of Philippe Parreno's love of interdisciplinary collaboration, hear from noted visual artists, filmmakers, sound designers, dancers, critics and writers as they respond to key works and themes in Philippe Parreno: Thenabouts. The upcoming session on Sunday 26 February will feature award winning poet and novelist Lisa Gorton and on Sunday 12 March Justin Clemens will speak on Parreno, Science-Fiction and Technology.

 

ACMI's free, interactive Screen Worlds exhibition is open daily, and now features a new VR section

Open every day except Christmas Day, 10am–5pm
acmi.net.au/events/screen-worlds
Screen Worlds is ACMI's free, permanent and interactive exhibition that tells the remarkable story of the moving image; a vibrant biography that explores its past, past present and future. This stunning exhibition will change the way audiences think about the most pervasive and powerful cultural forms of our time. Presented in conceptually connected sections Emergence, Voices, Sensation, Games Lab and Kids Space, Screen Worlds brings together rarely seen footage, fascinating objects and interactive displays. ACMI's first virtual reality (VR) commission Stuck In The Middle With You joined the Screen Worlds display in early November following its short exhibition at ACMI in early 2016. The work is an exciting and immersive VR dance experience that fuses choreography, performance, documentary and drama to put viewers on stage with the Sydney Dance Company. A rotation of new VR commissions will join Stuck in the Middle With You inside Screen Worlds in future.