The 13th Open City Doc Fest, which will run 6–12 September in London, will host In Focus programmes with filmmaker Mary Helena Clark and artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, festival organisers have announced.
Open City will also feature the ‘No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image’ screening series, dedicated to works of non-fiction that ‘invent new languages for the representation of gendered experience,’ the fest writes. Additionally, ‘The Invisible Self’ is a programme of feminist films made in India between 1985-1991, curated by Shai Heredia. The full festival programme will be announced on 27th July 2023.
In Focus: Mary Helena Clark
Open City will present the first UK survey of the US artists and filmmakers work and includes all her short films as well as a screening curated by Clark herself. “Mary Helena Clark makes enigmatic, associative, oneiric films that propose cinema as both a trance-like and transparent experience, one that operates on dream logic until disrupted by a moment of self-reflexivity, like tripping on an extension cord,” write festival organisers, “Whether working with 16mm film, video or installation, with found footage or her own images, Clark uses the language of collage in order to bring together disparate sounds, images and texts that suggest an exterior logic or code, a puzzle to be solved, a mystery to be cracked.”
In Focus: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
The festival will present three recent works by artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley for the first time in London. Brathwaite-Shirley is a London-based artist working across media including moving image, animation, performance and print. “Using a range of digital tools, particularly early 3D game engines, Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice creates worlds that serve as archives of black trans experiences designed for black trans audiences in the present and future,” the festival writes.
No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image
Curated by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, No Master Territories originated as a gallery exhibition and film programme of over 100 works by 89 individuals and collectives, on view at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in Summer 2022. Open City Documentary Festival presents a 5-programme iteration with selected works drawn from the original exhibition.
“No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image is dedicated to works of non-fiction that invent new languages for the representation of gendered experience. Concentrating on the period of the 1970s to 1990s, a time when women’s liberation movements took hold internationally, it responds to the contemporary imperative to recover the breadth of women’s contributions to film history in a global context,” Open City writes.
The Invisible Self
“Rooted in the social and political struggles of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s, this programme of feminist films made between 1985-1991 journeys through the lives of women who challenged traditional patriarchal structures in India,” the festival writes. “The complexities of women’s invisible labour as reproductive machines, sexual objects, home makers, and keepers of tradition, morality and cultural history are made starkly visible. By highlighting the interconnectedness of the individual and social self, these films offer an encounter with diverse forms of feminisms. Personal liberation is embedded in collective liberation.” The programme presents works by Deepa Dhanraj, Reena Mohan, Mira Nair and Nilita Vachani, and is curated by Shai Heredia, founding director of Experimenta India.
Open City x Another Gaze: Critics Workshop
The festival is also looking for participants for its third Critics Workshop in collaboration with Another Gaze: A journal of film and feminisms, which will take place during the 2023 festival. Previous participants of the Critics Workshop have included early-career critics and programmers, post-graduates looking to develop their non-academic writing, and non-film writers who want to extend their practice to the moving image. The workshop is open to all ages and genders and applicants outside London are very welcome to apply.
