Tate Film

Artist and 'private ear' Lawrence Abu Hamdan's expanded video installation Walled Unwalled is on view in the Tanks at Tate Modern until 7 October. Don't miss it!

Friday night's free Uniqlo Tate Lates programme includes a video by N-Prolenta and a live audio-visual work by Hannah Catherine Jones in the Starr Cinema, as well as a conversation between artist Sam Smith and Assistant Curator Carly Whitefield on desktop performance. Don't miss it!

We look forward to welcoming Jeremy Shaw to present the UK premiere of Quantification Trilogy tonight at Tate Modern.
Entry from 18.10 at the cafe entrance (west side of the building). Tickets will be available for purchase in the cinema lobby.

Follow the astonishing story of seed preservation in the face of war and climate change in artist Jumana Manna’s latest feature
Jumana Manna joins us to present and discuss the London premiere of her second feature film Wild Relatives. An insightful reflection on biodiversity and resilience, the film captures the intertwining of traditional and modern preservation techniques and transnational exchanges.
Deep in the earth beneath Arctic permafrost, seeds from all over the worl...d are stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to provide a backup should disaster strike. Wild Relatives starts from an event that has sparked media interest worldwide: in 2012 an international agricultural research centre was forced to relocate from Aleppo to Lebanon due to the Syrian civil war, and began a labourious process of planting their seed collection from the Svalbard back-ups.
Following the path of this transaction of seeds between the Arctic and Lebanon, a series of encounters unfold a matrix of human and non-human lives between these two distant spots of the earth. It captures the articulation between this large-scale international initiative and its local implementation in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, carried out primarily by young migrant women. The meditative pace of the film teases out tensions between state and individual, industrial and organic approaches to seed saving, climate change and biodiversity, witnessed through the journey of these seeds.
-- Programme
Introduction by the artist
Wild Relatives, Germany / Lebanon / Norway 2018, DCP, colour, sound, 66 min, Arabic and Norwegian with English subtitles
Discussion and Q&A with the artist and Tate Film curators
-- Jumana Manna (b.1987, United States) is a Palestinian artist working primarily with film and sculpture. Her work explores how power is articulated through relationships, often focusing on the body and materiality in relation to narratives of state building and histories of place. She has been awarded the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Palestinian Artist Award and the Ars Viva Prize for Visual Arts. She has participated in multiple festivals and exhibitions, including the Viennale International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Chisenhale Gallery, London, Marrakech Biennale 6 and The Nordic Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.
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Don’t miss the premiere of a new, site-specific performance by artist and ‘private ear’ Lawrence Abu Hamdan exploring various aspects of sonic memory.
After SFX is a performance of the sounds from Abu Hamdan’s self-constructed sound effects library and their accompanying narratives. It uses inventive methods to uncover the unexpected ways in which we encode sonic events in our memories.
The performance stems from the artist's investigations into crimes that had been heard bu...t not seen. In his conversations with earwitnesses, he first attempted to use sound effects from the libraries of the BBC and Warner Brothers to see what comparisons could be made, however, these cinematic samples were too inflexible and imprecise to unlock witnesses' acoustic memories. He has since built Earwitness Inventory, a library of objects to be used specifically as mnemonic devices. These objects encompass both sounds that have been used in his interviews with earwitnesses to facilitate re-enactments of crimes, and sounds pertaining to stories in which surprising sonic analogies emerged, such as a building collapsing into a sinkhole ‘sounding like popcorn’.
The performance takes place in the context of Abu Hamdan’s free, weeklong expanded video installation Walled Unwalled in the Tanks (1 – 7 October 2018) and includes a viewing of this work.
-- Lawrence Abu Hamdan (b.1985, Jordan) is an artist and audio investigator based in Beirut, Lebanon. His background as a touring musician led him to develop a deep interest in sound and its intersection with politics, which has come to share his practice. His audio investigations have been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and as advocacy for organisations such as Amnesty International and Defence for Children International. The artist is affiliated with the Forensic Architecture department at Goldsmiths College London where he received his PhD in 2017. Abu Hamdan is the author of the artist book [inaudible]: A Politics of Listening in 4 Acts. Recent solo exhibitions include Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Portikus, Frankfurt (2016); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2014) and The Showroom, London (2012).
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Next Wednesday we welcome Shireen Seno to present and discuss the UK premiere of her award-winning film Nervous Translation. Set in the Philippines in the late 1980s, the film captures the uncertainty and curiosity of childhood in a highly original way.
bit.ly/NervousTranslation-Tate

Delve into extremes of subjective and hallucinatory experience with the premiere of this short film trilogy
Canadian-born, Berlin-based artist Jeremy Shaw joins us to present and discuss the UK premiere of his recently completed Quantification Trilogy, which imagines countercultural behaviours at three different points in the future.
The first film in the trilogy, Quickeners (2014), is set 500 years in the future and tells the story of Human Atavism Syndrome (HAS), an obscure...
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Negus is just one week away! We're thrilled that Simone Bertuzzi (one half of the Invernomuto duo) will be joining us for an introduction and Q&A.
Free tickets will be available for pick-up from the Turbine Hall ticket desk from 17.00 on the night.

Filipino artist and filmmaker Shireen Seno joins us to present the UK premiere of her award-winning second feature film. Set in the Philippines in the late 1980s, Nervous Translation captures the uncertainty, magic and curiosity of childhood in a strikingly original way.
The film follows an introverted eight-year-old protagonist as she cooks food on her miniature kitchen set, watches television with her mother and obsessively listens to cassette tapes recorded by her father, ...a migrant worker in Saudi Arabia. Fanciful moments and playful jump cuts punctuate Seno’s tender film, which unfolds against the backdrop of Filipino society in the years just after the People Power Revolution.
-- Programme Introduction by the artist
Screening of Nervous Translation, Philippines 2018, DCP, colour, sound, 90 min, Filipino with English subtitles
Discussion and Q&A with the artist and Tate Film curators
-- Tate Film is pleased to be collaborating with Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival to present this joint UK premiere, which screens on 23 September in Berwick-upon-Tweed as the festival's closing night film.
-- Shireen Seno (b.1983, Japan) is a Filipino visual artist and filmmaker whose work addresses memory, history and image-making, often in relation to the idea of home. She studied architecture and cinema at the University of Toronto and taught in Japan before relocating to Manila, where she began working as a stills photographer for filmmakers Lav Diaz and John Torres. Her first two feature films, Big Boy and Nervous Translation premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the latter won the NETPAC award for best Asian film. Together with John Torres, Seno founded the Manila-based Los Otros collective, a studio, film laboratory, library and platform for live events.
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Don't miss a free screening of Italian artist duo Invernomuto's conceptual documentary, starring Lee 'Scratch' Perry (+Q&A)
Negus explores the convergence of history, myth and magic through the complex and competing legacies of Ethiopia’s last emperor Haile Selassie I. In Italy during the fascist rule of Mussolini, Selassie was portrayed as a black devil, justifying Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. During the same period the religion of Rastafarianism was emerging in Jamaica and... claiming Selassie as their living God and the black Christ resurrected. Negus is powered from the void between these two irreconcilable realities.
Lee 'Scratch' Perry — godfather of dub music and an architect of the foundational sounds of reggae — takes on a double presence in the film: lurking as a spiritual ghost over the Black Ark, his former recording studio in Kingston, Jamaica, that he burned down in the 80s, and as master of a ritual fire ceremony performed in Italy to re-invoke the spirit of Ethiopia's last emperor.
The film follows a circular structure and its locations (Italy, Ethiopia and Jamaica) are constantly mixed. Its interwoven form insists that the trajectories of communities, ideologies and mythologies are never one-way vectors, but always exist in the complexity of infinite feedback and recourse.
Programme Introduction by Simone Bertuzzi Negus 2017, DCP, colour, sound, 70 min Q&A
-- About Invernomuto Simone Bertuzzi (b.1983, Italy) and Simone Trabucchi (b.1982, Italy) have been collaborating as Invernomuto since 2003. Their practice focuses primarily on moving image and sound, while often integrating sculpture, performance and publishing into their work. Recent solo shows include The MAC, Belfast (2017), Artspeak, Vancouver (2015), Triennale di Milano, Milan (2014) and Museion, Bozen (2014). In 2017 Invernomuto won the Museion Prize 1 and is currently a finalist for the MAXXI Bvlgari Prize​. Bertuzzi and Trabucchi have developed individual lines of research into sound with their respective platforms Palm Wine and STILL.
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We were honoured to have Aldo Tambellini join us for the opening of a collection display of his works this week at Tate Modern. The immersive display explores the artist's interest in cosmic and primal energies, encompassing painting, film, video, slide projection and expanded media. See it for free in Level 4's Media Networks wing. bit.ly/TambelliniDisplay

Only one month left to see the landmark Joan Jonas exhibition at Tate Modern! The exhibition highlights how Jonas has continued to innovate ways of creating and displaying video, and the highly inventive dialogue she establishes between moving image, performance, drawing and installation.

Our William Kentridge screening is just one week away! Tickets are going fast... bit.ly/Kentridge-ShadowProcessions

We're thrilled to announce that Leilah Weinraub will be joining us for a discussion and Q&A following Friday's screening of SHAKEDOWN, her debut feature. A limited number of free tickets will be available from the Level 0 ticket desk from 17.00 on the day. More info at: bit.ly/SHAKEDOWNTate

Enjoy a selection of short animated films by South African artist William Kentridge
This screening takes us on a journey through five decades of William Kentridge’s filmmaking practice. Beginning with one of the artist’s first films, the programme moves through a range of different animation techniques he has experimented with and themes he has explored throughout his career. The screening is curated by Kentridge himself, who will give an extended introduction to his practic...e before the films commence.
The screening coincides with the opening of Kentridge’s Ubu Tells the Truth film installation in Tate Modern’s Artist and Society display (Boiler House, Level 4). It is presented in advance of his performance The Head & the Load, the artist’s most ambitious project to date.
-- Programme:
Introduction by the artist
Discourse on a Chair 1975, 16mm transferred to digital, colour, silent, 1 min
Vetkoek/Fête Galante 1985, 16mm transferred to digital, colour, sound, 3 min
Exhibition 1987, 16mm transferred to digital, colour, sound, 3 min
Sobriety, Obesity, and Growing Old 1991, 35mm transferred to digital, colour, sound, 9 min
Shadow Procession 1999, 35mm transferred to digital, black and white, sound, 7 min
Drawing Lesson 17 (A Lesson in Lethargy) 2010, HD video, colour, sound, 6 min
Intoxicating Liquor Cash Sales Book / Ref: 04/05/2010 (Drawing Lesson 34) / 1’31” 2010, HD video, colour, sound, 2 min
Other Faces 2011, HD video, colour, sound, 10 min
Second-hand Reading 2013, HD video, colour, sound, 7 min
Tango for Page Turning 2013, HD video, colour, sound, 3 min
-- William Kentridge (b.1955, South Africa) is an artist best known for his prints, drawings, animated films and performance. He originally trained in painting and drawing before studying mime and theatre. His films are constructed through a variety of animation techniques from hand drawing to shadow play, filmed using a meticulous stop-motion process. His works are often marked by humanist and political overtones. Kentridge has exhibited at major international art museums and biennials the world over.
'William Kentridge is not just South Africa's most famous artist, he is arguably the most acclaimed animator in international art and a draughtsman whose polemical strength harks back to Daumier and Goya. His images tell stories, and not just because they are strung together in filmed animations. Every picture Kentridge makes has its own narrative force: he is a fabulist working in pencil, ink and charcoal.​' —The Guardian
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Gabriel Abrantes 'Oρνιθες (Ornithes - Birds) 2012 film still Courtesy the artist and A Mutual Respect

Catch a free screening of SHAKEDOWN, an intimate chronicling of a club scene forged by and for LA's black lesbian community, followed by a Q&A
Leilah Weinraub joins us to present and discuss SHAKEDOWN, her debut feature. The film takes us inside a biweekly party at a Los Angeles club, founded by and for black queer women and featuring strips shows and explicit dancing. The Shakedown party was one of the few spaces where lesbian subcultures could flourish, being as much about... the network that formed around it as it was about the economy that supported its organisers, performers and costume makers. The party ran for eight years before it was shut down by police.
SHAKEDOWN is an intimate portrait of this community, anchored in the stories of four of its protagonists: Ronnie Ron, the butch creator and emcee of Shakedown; Mahogany, the legendary mother of the scene; Egypt, a single mother, beauty pageant fanatic and dedicated self-(re)inventor; and Jazmyne, the complicated and sometimes conflicted ‘queen’ of Shakedown.
Composed over a period of fifteen years, Weinraub’s film weaves together the footage she shot backstage and on the dance floor; interviews with participants, security guards and dancers’ children; and archival materials. Its score is composed by Tim Dewit, a drummer and producer who goes by the alias Dutch E Germ and co-founded the band Gang Gang Dance.
‘The story functions as a legend where money is both myth and material, cumulatively questioning how to diagram a utopian moment.’ —Leilah Weinraub
-- Programme
Introduction by the curators
Leilah Weinraub, SHAKEDOWN, United States 2018, DCP, colour, sound, 82 min
Discussion: Leilah Weinraub, Andrea Lissoni and Carly Whitefield, followed by a Q&A
Note: This screening is rated 18+, and contains sexually explicit scenes
-- Leilah Weinraub (b.1979, United States) is an artist and director living in New York. She was mentored by director Tony Kaye before enrolling in an MFA in Film at Bard College. Her films document unacknowledged tastemakers, particularly those belonging to queer, autonomous communities of colour whose creative output is often plundered by mass culture but whose stories are rarely told on their own terms. Her work was recently included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Weinraub is also the CEO of Hood By Air, a New York-based fashion collective that radicalised the industry by championing a rising class of consumers who subvert traditional markers of race, class and gender.
This screening is presented in collaboration with ICA and Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève
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Just one week away! Don't miss this premiere + artist talk with Beirut-based artist Bahar Noorizadeh

Don't miss our last weekend of events with Joan Jonas!