Nora Sweeney
The Concrete River, by Nora Sweeney. World Premiere!
Sunday April 21, 2024, 1pm
At 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057
In person: Nora Sweeney, programmer Diego Robles
Including the World premiere of her newest film!
Tickets: $15 general, $8 students/seniors, free for Filmforum members
At https://link.dice.fm/dac99dc4674b
The subtle and absorbing camera of Nora Sweeney unfolds with care and wonder the extraordinary of our ordinary everyday. Her films ask us to create a relationship with reality. Her choice of using 16mm film to bring out the colors and textures of people and places she engages, serve as a slow reveal that frames into portraits and landscapes the life-lived by many in and around the confines of Los Angeles County, and beyond. The world is made into an album that welcomes viewers to come, sit-down, and be with the reality we are all viewing - one moment at a time, one experience at a time.
Among the shorts that will show is the world premiere of The Concrete River, an exploration of how different communities spend time along the Los Angeles River. Nora will be with us in person to discuss her work.
All films on 16mm film! Note that the show is a matinee.
Nora Sweeney, is a Los Angeles-based documentary filmmaker, artist, and professor who focuses her work on cultural traditions, labor, communities, and public spaces. As the grandchild of Jewish and Assyrian immigrants, she has grown up with a deep appreciation of food, cultural heritage, and community. Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, she received her B.A., majoring in art, from Oberlin College and M.F.A. in Film/Video from CalArts. She taught documentary filmmaking and photography through a two year teaching fellowship at Lady Doak College in Madurai, India, and currently teaches at Pierce College and CalArts. In 2022, she was a Nature Art Habitat Residency Fellow in Sottochiesa, Italy. Her work has screened at such venues as the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, REDCAT, Antimatter, and the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, where her film, Fausto and Emilio, won a Juror’s Prize.
Masks are highly recommended at Filmforum shows - N95 or KN95.
Portrait of Inez
Portrait of Inez
2012, 16mm, 1 minute
Inez McWright, an 89-year-old African American woman from rural Louisiana, has lived in Val Verde, California since 1956. She approaches aging with nonchalance - working in her garden every day and preferring to stay active rather than dwell on her aches and pains.
Something Like Whales
Something Like Whales
2013, 16mm, 5 minutes
In a dying industrial neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Queensgate Train Yard pulses with life. A local worker describes the haunting sound emanating from the yard as "something like whales." This film was shot in part with a camera obscura.
Sweet Oranges
Sweet Oranges
2014, 16mm, 18 minutes
Heading west from my house, I explore the back roads off of California State Route 126, finding small, historic towns, farms, and railway tracks nestled between mountains and orchards - a landscape that evokes a dream of California’s past. It resembles what migrant workers might have envisioned when traveling west in search of work in the 1930s, a vibrant, fertile promised land. This migration continues. In an orange grove, I meet Jaime, Blanca, and Hugo, a group of orange pickers from Michoacán, Mexico, who share with me their songs, dreams, aspirations, and thoughts about work.
Fausto and Emilio
Fausto and Emilio
2014, 16mm, 13 minutes
“I like it...because it’s my job.” Waiting, snipping, shaving, smoking, and chatting. These are the daily rhythms of a barbershop in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio where brothers Fausto (age 83) and Emilio (age 75) have worked together for decades. The barbershop, with its turquoise barber chairs, porcelain sinks, collection of glass bottles of aftershave, vintage postcards from Italy, is more than a workplace - it is a window into an earlier time.
Birds of a Feather
Birds of a Feather
2019, 16mm, 18:41
Elderly Armenian men convene daily at a park in Glendale, California to play cards, backgammon, and dominoes. Laughing, singing, arguing - they transform the public space into a portal to their home countries and pass the time together as they age
The Concrete River
The Concrete River
2023, 16mm, 16 min.
World Premiere!
An exploration of how different communities spend time along the Los Angeles River, a 51-mile waterway largely channelized with concrete that cuts through various neighborhoods of Greater Los Angeles. While people fish, skateboard, paint, play music, have quiet moments to engage with the landscape, or carve out a place to live by the banks, egrets and herons roost in trees growing in the middle of the river. I was drawn to the river as an unregulated public space where people converge with each other and nature, finding respite from the city.