In which Neither/Nor returned home, spotlighting repertory work from Missouri born and raised filmmakers who are broadening the boundaries of nonfiction filmmaking. Artists featured include Lisa Steele, Mike Henderson, Christopher Harris, and Tom Palazzolo.
In its Neither/Nor program, True/False celebrates groundbreaking nonfiction cinema from the past. For its seventh edition, Neither/Nor spotlights filmmakers who were born and raised in our very own state of Missouri. Artists featured include Lisa Steele (Kansas City), Christopher Harris (St. Louis), Mike Henderson (Marshall), and Tom Palazzolo (St. Louis).
The series opens with a program of films from Steele, a Toronto-based video art pioneer. Starting in the 1970s, Steele spent more than a decade working at Interval House, a women’s and children’s shelter. Drawing from this experience, Steele created composite characters for a series of films that explore how women navigate government systems.
At 6pm on Wednesday, March 4, the program kicked off with two works from this series, “Taking Tongues” (1982) and The Gloria Tapes (1980), as well as an earlier film called “A Very Personal Story” (1974). This marks the first time Steele’s work has been exhibited in Missouri.
Palazzolo is a Chicago-based artist who creates short films about American rituals—wedding showers, the lottery, beauty contests, picnics. His films find wry humor in their pageantry while also looking at their participants with warmth and tenderness.
In his masterful debut still/here (2000), Harris returns home to north St. Louis and creates his own cinematic language to look at its vacant spaces. Harris will be joining the festival in person Friday morning for a 16mm screening of the film. In a separate program, the festival will be featuring Harris’ “Reckless Eyeballing” (2004).
Henderson, who hails from Marshall and lives in San Francisco, is an artist, painter, blues musician, and experimental filmmaker. Some of his films turn household appliances into mesmerizing abstractions, while others, such as the slave trade reenactment “Down Hear,” find radical ways to explore history. The festival will be exhibiting a 16mm program of his work.
To accompany each Neither/Nor film series, we publish a monograph with extended essays, writings, and interviews. The monographs are available for free at various venues in downtown Columbia and are published online, in their entirety. Follow the link on the cover photo to read the monograph.
NEITHER/NOR IS SUPPORTED BY A FILMWATCH GRANT FROM THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURES ARTS AND SCIENCES.