THE GROUNDBREAKERS SERIES:
SAW VIDEO LAUNCHES NEW INDEPENDENT FILM SERIES
AT MAYFAIR THEATRE
Wednesday Feb. 25th at 9:30 pm, and
Friday, February 27th at 9:00 pm.
Tickets are $9.00.
MAYFAIR THEATRE
1074 Bank Street, Ottawa
THE EXILES (1961) US, Kent Mackenzie, 72 min. - 35 mm - B/W
SAW Video announces the launch of a new independent film series in partnership with the newly refurbished Mayfair Theatre. On the last Wednesday of every month, The Groundbreakers Series will feature a film or video that has contributed to advancing the art of independent image-making. As the first installment in its series, SAW Video will present THE EXILES by the late American filmmaker Kent Mackenzie.
Don't miss this chance to see this beautifully restored 35mm print in truly gorgeous B&W.
One of the most highly praised films of 2008, THE EXILES is an astonishing ode to the native American diaspora and a now-vanished Los Angeles neighbourhood. Based entirely on interviews with the participants and their friends, filmmaker Kent Mackenzie follows a group of exiles living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles – transplants from Southwest reservations – as they flirt, drink, party, fight, and dance. Never distributed and lost for many years, THE EXILES is regarded as an important landmark in American cinema. Gritty, realistic and far ahead of its time (in a period when Hollywood films featured noble savages), Native American writers and activists have long considered the film as one of first works of art to portray modern life honestly and as an important forerunner for the cultural renaissance of American Indian fiction, poetry, filmmaking and theatre starting in the 1970s.
Bunker Hill, where most of THE EXILES is set, was once the glory of downtown L.A. - a haven for wealthy Los Angelenos set on a steep hill with a magnificent view. But by 1960, the area was a run-down neighborhood of decayed Victorian mansions and skid-row apartment buildings. The seedy charms of Bunker Hill have been celebrated in the novels of John Fante, Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski. For the men and women featured in THE EXILES, the neighborhood is an escape from the monotony of life "back home." The guys spend their night barhopping and gambling while the women try to hold their homes together and go to the movies to dream.
And a video from BEAR Witness
Preceding the Feb. 25th screening will be the Ottawa premiere of a new video by local media artist Bear Witness. Fresh from its screening at the Berlin International Film Festival, The Story of Apanatschi and her Redheaded Warrior is a remix of a German "Red Western" with the 1992 arcade game Virtual Fighter 5 featuring the howling loin-cloth-clad, red-haired Indian wrestler Wolf Hatfield. The video was commissioned for Culture Shock, a program of new aboriginal videos curated by Steven Loft and presented by the ImagineNative Film and Video Festival, V-Tape, and the Goethe Institute.
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Groundbreakers Series
A new independent film series in partnership with the newly refurbished Mayfair Theatre.
The Groundbreakers Series features film or video that has contributed to advancing the art of independent image-making.
Previous Screenings
Persepolis
July 29, 2009
Nanook Taxi (1977)
April 29th, 2009
RiP: A remix manifesto
March 27th, 2009
The Exiles
February 25th, 2009
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