"MONO X: Western Disturbances"

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2016 @ Maysles Cinema & Documentary Center
343 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY, 10027
7:00 - 9:00 PM

PROGRAM

Co-presented by Maysles and MONO NO AWARE
New York Premiere of feature-length documentary performance film by Alex Cunningham.

A guide in how to not find what you weren't really looking for, Western Disturbances is a feature-length performance, multi-media, personal documentary film exposing the inherent folly in expectation as seen through the filmmaker's attempt to document the 2015 South Asian Monsoon. This program will open with a series of 16mm films entitled, Raining Ragas nos 1-6. Inspired by the structured yet highly improvisational style of the Indian raga, these six rolls of 16mm film, shot and edited in-camera, perform the filmic plea of a musical raining raga in hopes of inducing the monsoon. Shot in Kerala and West Bengal during the weak and delayed onset of the 2015 South Asian monsoon, Raining Ragas Nos. 1-6 reveal the anticipation, frustration, and confusion in awaiting the unpredictable weather system.

Alex Cunningham is an experimental and documentary filmmaker currently based in North Carolina. He received his BFA from Ithaca College in 2012 and his MFA from Duke University in 2016. His films explore the issues of the physical earth as a living object and human physical intervention into and relationship with the landscape and climate, and underlying personal and psychological themes of anxiety, uncertainty, and instability. He is also a professor of photography and cinema at Duke University, a curator and programmer, and a film projectionist.

The Maysles Cinema, the only independent film house north of Lincoln Center in Manhattan, is dedicated to the exhibition of documentary film. It provides programming and forum discussions at least four nights out of every week. The Cinema is committed to a democratic experience, one where filmmakers are asked to attend the screenings of their work, and audiences have the opportunity to actively engage the films and each other in post-screening forums. Maysles.org