This snapshot of Cineprobe’s engagement with politics spans from the Vietnam War to the AIDS crisis. Tom Palazzolo and Joyce Wieland’s filming of parades and union strikes offers aesthetic perspectives on civic society and collective action, while the antiwar movement is broadcast in Nick Macdonald’s anarchist satire of the political establishment. Views from the 1990s include Robert Fenz’s experimental documentary of Havana in economic crisis following the Soviet Union’s collapse, in which measured, radiant 16mm imagery finding beauty and resilience in ordinary street life. The program culminates in a rare screening of the full sequence of Third Known Nest, Tom Kalin’s video series capturing the tumultuous 1990s “a year at a glance.” The New Queer Cinema auteur created these shorts in the context of Trans-Voices: Questions for a New Order, a 1992 project from the Public Art Fund and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Part diary, part music video, part agitprop, they form a powerful statement of affirmation and resistance in the second decade of the AIDS crisis. Kalin presented the series in a 1999 Cineprobe, pointing to the series’ expansive approach to the moving image, even as, since 1983, it had come to alternate with the media-focused Video Viewpoints. Program 81 min.
America’s in Real Trouble. 1967. USA. Directed by Tom Palazzolo. 16mm. 15 min.
No More Leadershit. 1971. USA. Directed by Nick Macdonald. 16mm. 4 min.
Solidarity. 1973. Canada. Directed by Joyce Wieland . 16mm. 11 min.
Meditations on Revolution, Part 1: Lonely Planet. 1997. Cuba. Directed by Robert Fenz. 16mm. 13 min.
Third Known Nest. 1991–99. USA. Directed by Tom Kalin. Courtesy Video Data Bank. Video. 38 min.