SPECIAL EVENT : TRIBUTE TO WOMEN IN FILM

MFF IN CONVERSATION WITH JESSICA MITRANI

Marfa Film Festival will honor the work of multimedia artist Jessica Mitrani, a Colombian-born, New York–based artist whose

work traverses a range of media, including performance, theater, objects, and film. 

Jessica Mitrani’s provocative explorations into female subjectivity are deeply invested in notions of desire as both an agency exercised by women and as a social apparatus that suspends women’s potential by delimiting them as objects. Her amusing acts, often expressed in an affective range that is excessive, absurd, and melodramatic, recontextualizes and reconfigures quotidian gestures, scenes, and objects in a magical realist realm that is nothing short of fantastical.

The program will open with a very special screening of selected short films and followed by a conversation with the artist. 

Jessica Mitrani is a Colombian-born, New York-based artist that works in performance and film. Employing narrative, humor, and psychoanalytic tropes, she investigates how the social and aesthetic construction of femininity shapes identities. 

Her work has been exhibited, screened, and broadcasted internationally. Some of the works she has written and directed include Rita goes to the Supermarket (47 Oberhausen Film Festival), Headpieces for Peace (Grand Prix at the ASVOFF5 Festival at Centre Pompidou, Paris), La Divanee, (Presented by Nowness, Marfa Film Festival, Oaxaca Film Festival) to name a few. In 2016, her theatrical collaboration The Undertaking appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of its New Wave festival and She performed in Ryan McNamara’s Back to School at MoMA PS1 in New York. In 2018 she launched A Crucigramista which is a series of short videos written and directed for ARTE1 (Brazil).

Mitrani received a grant from the Hermès Foundation in support of her immersive film and performance work Traveling Lady (2014) starring iconic Spanish actress Rossy de Palma. The production was presented at the Crossing the Line festival in New York, the New Settings program in Paris, the Soluna International Music and Arts Festival, in Dallas and El Museo del Chopo in Mexico City.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Rita Goes to the Supermarket  (2000) TRT (15 min) 35mm. 

A tale of irony of the everyday business of supermarket shopping. In this parody of blue detergents, soap squirts, blood dripping from bags of meat, plastic brushes, appearances of Frida Kahlo and rolls of toilet paper Rita confronts the demons that are part of her pink and complex feminine world.

Rita was broadcasted in ARTE / WDR France-Germany. Featured in numerous film festivals including the 47 Intl Oberhausen short film festival as well as the permanent collection of several museums and institutions.

Mary Jane, (2006) TRT (2 min) 

Mary Jane (2007) is a two-minute video, starring the single-strapped party shoe that signals a child’s transition from baby to little girl or boy. Mary Jane is part of Part of the series “In a Single shoe”,” a project comprising ten single shoes and videos that feature a stiletto, a marabou mule, a platform (à la designer Vivienne Westwood), and a nurse’s shoe, among others.

(Hors pistes festival Centre Georges Pompidou) 

Headpieces for Peace (2011/2014) TRT (5 min) 

Film and installation 

Headpieces for Peace is a non-hierarchical, nomadic organization on a tandem bicycle that seeks to initiate free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia. The organization consists of eleven interchangeable and fluctuating members who belief that collective expressions of desire are possible.

Traveling Lady/ The perfect Brand (2014/2015) TRT (8 min) 

Traveling Lady conjures the daring spirit of Nellie Bly, the 19th-century American journalist who circled the globe in 72 days, carrying little more than the clothes on her back. Traveling Lady maps a journey through time and space, mirroring the idiosyncrasies of so-called femininity of the past with those of the present.

Visit a Plant (2016) TRT (1 min) 

Communication with the Non-Human. Curated by Melanie Bonajo, part of The One Minutes series Presented at the EYE Museum in Holland. 

A Crucigramista | América invertida Episode 4 – Emancipation (2018)  TRT (7 min) 

A Crucigramista, is conceived , written and directed by Jessica Mitrani with Paula Parisot for ARTE1 in Brazil, the first TV channel devoted exclusively to art and culture in that country. 

In an interdisciplinary way and with a sense of humor, the program subverts ideas that shape the formation and construction of identities to create a dialogue between iconic figures and contemporary artists in Latin American culture.

The first season"America Invertida” premiered on March 16 2018 and consists of seven videos of seven minutes each with a focus on Latin American art.