Suneil Sanzgiri, Muskrat Magazine
Golden Jubilee and Missing Matoaka
29
February 2024
29
Feb
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
Golden Jubilee and Missing Matoaka
Suneil Sanzgiri, Muskrat Magazine
29
February 2024
29
February
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks. In collaboration with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. In this inaugural season we have selected films that approach the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
See the full Seventh Cinema Season 1 program here.
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Golden Jubilee (2021) 19 minutes, directed by Suneil Sanzgiri
What is liberation when so much has already been taken? Who has come for more? "Golden Jubilee", the third film in a series of works about memory, diaspora and decoloniality, takes as its starting point scenes of the filmmaker’s father navigating a virtual rendering of their ancestral home in Goa, India, created using the same technologies of surveillance that mining companies use to map locations for iron ore in the region. A tool for extraction and exploitation becomes a method for preservation. The father, sparked by a memory of an encounter as a child, inhabits the voice of a spirit known locally as Devchar, whose task is to protect the workers, farmers, and the once communal lands of Goa. Protection from what the filmmaker asks? Sanzgiri’s signature blend of 16mm sequences, 3D renders, direct animation, and desktop aesthetics are vividly employed in this lush, and ghostly look at questions of heritage, culture, and the remnants of history.
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Missing Matoaka (2022), 81 minutes, created by BBDO Canada and Muskrat Magazine
The true story of Pocahontas is a tale of tragedy and heartbreak. In this alternative audio track, Pocahontas - or to use her real name, Matoaka - is the narrator and setting the historical record straight. Her story that was originally told as a romantic adventure, is in reality the story of one of the first documented Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women - the first of many sisters. The entire movie was rewritten and re-recorded word for word by Indigenous writers and Indigenous voices, with music composed and performed by Indigenous artists.
This event is supported by the City of Yarra through their Annual Grants Program.
Image Description: This image is a film still from Golden Jubilee, and features a warm glowing light set behind a figure walking through a foggy forested area.
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks. In collaboration with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. In this inaugural season we have selected films that approach the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
See the full Seventh Cinema Season 1 program here.
ϟ
Golden Jubilee (2021) 19 minutes, directed by Suneil Sanzgiri
What is liberation when so much has already been taken? Who has come for more? "Golden Jubilee", the third film in a series of works about memory, diaspora and decoloniality, takes as its starting point scenes of the filmmaker’s father navigating a virtual rendering of their ancestral home in Goa, India, created using the same technologies of surveillance that mining companies use to map locations for iron ore in the region. A tool for extraction and exploitation becomes a method for preservation. The father, sparked by a memory of an encounter as a child, inhabits the voice of a spirit known locally as Devchar, whose task is to protect the workers, farmers, and the once communal lands of Goa. Protection from what the filmmaker asks? Sanzgiri’s signature blend of 16mm sequences, 3D renders, direct animation, and desktop aesthetics are vividly employed in this lush, and ghostly look at questions of heritage, culture, and the remnants of history.
ϟ
Missing Matoaka (2022), 81 minutes, created by BBDO Canada and Muskrat Magazine
The true story of Pocahontas is a tale of tragedy and heartbreak. In this alternative audio track, Pocahontas - or to use her real name, Matoaka - is the narrator and setting the historical record straight. Her story that was originally told as a romantic adventure, is in reality the story of one of the first documented Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women - the first of many sisters. The entire movie was rewritten and re-recorded word for word by Indigenous writers and Indigenous voices, with music composed and performed by Indigenous artists.
This event is supported by the City of Yarra through their Annual Grants Program.
Suneil Sanzgiri
Suneil Sanzgiri is an Indian-American artist, researcher, and filmmaker. His work spans experimental video and film, essays, and installations, and contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture and diaspora in relation to structural violence. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a Masters of Science in Art, Culture and Technology in 2017. Sanzgiri’s work has been screened extensively at festivals and galleries nationally and internationally, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Camden International Film Fesitval, IndieLisboa, DocLisboa, Punto de Vista, Viennale, LA Film Forum, e-Flux, 25 FPS festival, and has won awards at BlackStar Film Fest, Open City Documentary Festival, VideoEx, Images Festival, and Chicago Underground Film Festival as well as Special Jury mentions at the European Media Arts Festival and Iowa City Docs. Sanzgiri was a 2016 resident of the SOMA program in Mexico City, a Flaherty NYC co-programmer in 2020-2021, a resident of the Pioneer Works Studio Residency in Spring 2021, an inaugural recipient of the Line of Sight Fellowship, and a 2021 MacDowell Fellow. He was named as one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in Filmmaker Magazine’s Fall 2021 issue. He is currently working on his first feature-length film.
MUSKRAT Magazine
MUSKRAT is an online Indigenous arts and culture magazine that honours the connection between humans and our traditional ecological knowledge by exhibiting original works and critical commentary. MUSKRAT embraces both rural and urban settings and uses media arts, the Internet, and wireless technology to investigate and disseminate traditional knowledges in ways that inspire their reclamation.
Kori Miles
Kori is an interdisciplinary and process-based takataapui artist, currently working and living on sacred Wurundjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne. They are of Maaori (Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Ahuru, Tainui/Waikato), Italian, Scottish & Anglo-Celtic descent, but born and raised in so-called Australia. They predominantly utilise performance, installation, sculpture, photography, video and poetry as mediums to explore/articulate ideas, knowledge and stories.
Kori’s practice is guided by the stories of Maaui—the trickster demigod of Maaori mythology—and how Maaui’s clever wit combined with the powers of shape-shifting and interdimensional travel are used to undermine structural authority and cause a paradigm shift in power distribution - a social and systemic change that benefits those with less privilege and access. Kori’s practice manifests visions that confront the ongoing damage of colonial and heteronormative social structures, whilst concurrently fostering a space for contemplation on transgression, eroticism, liberation, humour, healing, regeneration and resilience.
Lucie Loy
Lucie Loy is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and writer (currently) based in Northern NSW and Naarm (Melbourne). Alongside her independent practice which spans visual art, publishing, writing and curating she has committed much of her professional capacity to platforming independent, artist-led and experimental practice. Through her work with artist-run projects locally and internationally, Lucie has explored notions of the ‘artist-led’, platforming the importance of art and artists critically and creatively addressing global and social struggles. Working with the aesthetics of hope, resistance and imagination, as well as through policy advocacy, activism and frustrating bureaucratic frameworks, Lucie’s practice and work seeks to explore the intersection of art, political ecology, social and environmental justice and postcolonial globalisation. Lucie is interested in collaboration, ideas of the commons and critical, transdisciplinary projects. Her recent research explores biopolitics, notions of power and the philosophies and contexts of post-truth.