UCLA Film and Television Archive Hosts Visible Evidence VII, an Academic Conference & Public Film Series on the Role of the Documentary.

LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--July 16, 1999--

Visible Evidence Film Series, Aug. 18-20

Visible Evidence Conference, Aug. 18-21

The UCLA Film and Television Archive hosts Visible Evidence VII, a four-day academic conference, Aug. 18-21, and public film series, Aug. 18-20, focusing on the role of film/video as witness and voice for active, social reality.

Visible Evidence VII will take place on the UCLA campus in the James Bridges Theater. Additional information and registration for the conference can be accessed on the Archive Web site, www.cinema.ucla.edu/visible, or by calling the Archive Research and Study Center at 310/206-5388.

Parallel to the Visible Evidence VII Conference, the Archive will host two evenings of public screenings and a panel discussion examining the boundaries and/or intersections between fiction and documentary film. Admission to the film screenings and panel discussion is free.

On Wednesday, Aug. 18, at 7:30 p.m., the film program begins with three new works by Los Angeles film/videomakers that question history, memory and society. Directors Tran T. Kim-Trang, Jesse Lerner and William E. Jones sample or recycle pre-existing material -- in the form of old newsreels, archival documentation, movies, television and home video -- to vastly different effects than their prior intended and original purposes.

Ultimately, the finished product yields subversive new meanings and raises intriguing questions about "authenticity" in documentary practice. Kim-Trang and Jones will be in attendance.

The second day of Visible Evidence VII, Thursday, Aug. 19, at 7:30 p.m., will be "An Evening with Marina Goldovskaya." Internationally acclaimed documentarian Marina Goldovskaya has the distinction of being the first filmmaker to reveal the horrors of the Soviet gulag in her 1988 film "Solovky Power."

Currently, a UCLA professor teaching documentary filmmaking, she worked for more than 20 years for Russian television, and has been dubbed "the best of her generation of filmmakers" by the esteemed film historian Naum Kleinman. Goldovskaya will present her 1994 Prix Europa Best Film of the Year Award winner, "A House On Arbat Street," and clips of her later films, which explore contemporary Russian life.

The last day of the series, Friday, Aug. 20, at 7:30 p.m., is to be announced. For further information on the day, call the Archive main number, 310/206-8013, for updates, or visit the Web site, www.cinema.ucla.edu.

Programming at the UCLA Film and Television Archive is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and other sponsors.

A complete film schedule is below. Photos, videotapes and interviews with Goldovskaya, Kim-Trang and Jones are available.

A complete list of Visible Evidence VII panels is also below. -0-

                             FILM SCHEDULE
                     WEDNESDAY, AUG. 18, 7:30 P.M.

     "Ekleipsis" (1998, Betacam-SP video, 23 min.) Directed by Tran T.
Kim-Trang. "Ekleipsis" connects the histories of hysteria as a disease
and recent war in Cambodia to elucidate the incidence of "hysterical
blindness" among Cambodian women in Long Beach, Calif. Refugees from
the Khmer Rouge genocide, the women are not able to see despite the
absence of physical problems.

     "The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography" (1998,
Betacam-SP video, 20 min.) Directed by William E. Jones. Every image
in this film comes from gay erotic videos produced in Eastern Europe
since the introduction of capitalism. Director Jones' ("Finished,"
Winner of Best Experimental Film 1998, L.A. Film Critics' Association)
reassemblage provides a glimpse of young men responding to the
pressures of an unfamiliar world -- one in which money, power and sex
are now connected.

     "Ruins" (1999, 16mm, 78 min.) Directed by Jesse Lerner. Surveying
representative moments from the history of Mesoamerican
antiquarianism, this experimental documentary suggests how diplomacy
and pan-Americanism framed the recontextualization of archaeological
objects as art. "Ruins" uses appropriated sounds and images to
contemplate a history of appropriated objects.

                          THURSDAY, AUG. 19
             AN EVENING WITH MARINA GOLDOVSKAYA IN-PERSON!

     "A House On Arbat Street" (1993, 16mm, 58 min.) Directed by
Marina Goldovskaya. Once a home to the privileged, then an apartment
commune and now an office complex, the story of this building is truly
the story of 20th-century Russia. Built around the turn of the

century, the "House with Knights" is the most remarkable structure on
Moscow's Arbat Street. In this exceptional film, Goldovskaya examines
the progression of tenants from princesses to informers in order to
describe the history of her country. As the film's narrator declares,
"For 70 years, all of Russia was like this building -- a strange
family indeed." Plus additional film excerpts.

                      FRIDAY, AUG. 20, 7:30 P.M.
                           TO BE ANNOUNCED.

     Visit the Archive Web site, or call the Archive Research and
Study Center for updates, 310/206-8013


                VISIBLE EVIDENCE VII CONFERENCE PANELS

                          WEDNESDAY, AUG. 18

REGULATING THE REAL
EVIDENCE
BORDER GENRES: FACTS, FICTIONS & SPACES BETWEEN
VIDEO NATIONS: BROADCASTING VIDEO DIARIES IN BRITAIN AND THE U.S.

                           FRIDAY, AUG. 20

REAL PHANTASIES
WORKSHOP I & II: Documenting Activism
BOXING
KEYNOTE

                          SATURDAY, AUG. 21

REAL PHANTASIES II
BORDER WARS
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
HISTORIOGRAPHY

                 SUNDAY, AUG. 22 -- WORKING SESSIONS

DIGITAL DOCUMENTARY PROJECT
HAND HELD CAMERAS AND OTHER THINGS: DOCUMENTARY SEXOLOGIES
THE MOVING IMAGE IN SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL PRACTICE
THE ZONE: AT THE ENDS OF THE VISIBLE