NO FLUKE: Interview with Founder Ashley Capps • Artist Profile: Caroline Williams, author of ‘Lucy Negro Redux’ • Into the Rabbit Hole • BLANK’S BIG EARS ARTIST GUIDE • FILM Guide • Pilot Light • Tickets • Schedule
“★” by Johann Lurf
Using found footage from 124 years of humans photographing the stars, Austrian filmmaker Lurf has crafted an ode to the cosmos through the vision of man. The colorful celestial jamboree would fit in just as well at the 12-Hour Drone as it will at UT’s Downtown Gallery, but the experience will be worth embracing regardless.
“Recent Work” and “I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead” by Beatrice Gibson
Serving as the largest U.S. display of London-based filmmaker Beatrice Gibson’s work, Big Ears will be hosting a plethora of pieces by the multifaceted storyteller whose life has been rife with collaboration and unbound by scope. Featuring a reaction to Trump’s election, an analogy between the curves of nature and modern composers and a view of the end times from the eyes of a mother, Gibson’s work will be covering a lot of ground.
“Dead Souls” by Wang Bing
It’s pretty easy to ask yourself why you would leave a day full of world-renowned music being performed all over downtown Knoxville to embrace a nine-hour documentary about the struggle of displaced Chinese dissidents entrapped by the Communist government in the late ‘50s. However, the reality is that it’s really why Big Ears is Big Ears: unafraid to tackle the difficult situations, instead embracing and allowing the beauty of art to have a home. Playing in a continual block (rather than with the typical two intermissions), this programming is obviously meant to be experienced in fragments. For some people, it will be serve as an epiphany amidst the outside sound.
“The Grand Bizarre” and “Hoarders Without Borders” by Jodi Mack
When Jodi Mack last visited Big Ears in 2016, she brought with her a remarkably eclectic film program, blasting audiences with beautiful colors and patterns that felt like sprinting through a Mark Rothko museum. This year, Mack will return to showcase her homespun electric musical “The Grand Bizarre” (Mack’s first feature film) and another abstract roller-coaster piece showcasing a Harvard professor’s gigantic rock collection. Expect to see something unlike anything you have before.
NO FLUKE: Interview with Founder Ashley Capps • Artist Profile: Caroline Williams, author of ‘Lucy Negro Redux’ • Into the Rabbit Hole • BLANK’S BIG EARS ARTIST GUIDE • FILM Guide • Pilot Light • Tickets • Schedule
Another set of good films released!