Screening with UCLA Film and Television Archive at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, LA
AN EVENING WITH LARISSA SANSOUR
Saturday, December 14: 7:30 PM
Born in East Jerusalem, Palestine, and currently based in London, interdisciplinary artist Larissa Sansour creates works that examine the collective memory and trauma of the Palestinian people through allegorical and experimental science fiction films. Sansour works closely with her partner, Danish filmmaker and writer Søren Lind, co-directing and writing most of their films. Their works can be comical and/or dark, but always speak to the current political climate and push against unquestioned mainstream narratives. Our closing night screening includes the three films in Sansour’s science fiction trilogy — A Space Exodus (2009), Nation Estate (2013) and In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain (2015) — along with her follow-up science fiction film In Vitro (2019). Though varied in aesthetic and approach, the films relate to one another in their examination of inherited history and identity, trauma and resistance. —Nicole Ucedo
Science Fiction Against the Margins showcases filmmakers who occupy the “margins” of mainstream cinema in order to challenge and subvert the science fiction genre. Hollywood’s ubiquitous sci-fi story structure functions within the conventions of action-driven melodrama, resolving social issues in private, emotional and moral terms that reinforce the status quo. This series offers an alternative body of media wherein a speculative mode of thinking outside familiar expectations of narrative resolution opens up representations of race and ethnicity, gender politics and cultural identity. While the focus is on the feature film as a global form of mass entertainment, the series also includes documentaries, shorts, video art and television episodes.
Free tickets at the Billy Wilder Theater box office available 1 hour prior to event; no advance reservations. The Billy Wilder Theater is located inside the Hammer Museum at 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Science Fiction Against the Margins is part of this year’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, presented by The Getty.