Sasha Wortzel
Working between South Florida (Miccosukee & Seminole lands) and New York City (Lenape lands)
This is an Address: The Films of Sasha Wortzel
West Coast Premiere
Partner Program: This is an Address: The Films of Sasha Wortzel is organized by Stephanie Snyder and Kristan Kennedy in collaboration with the Hollywood Theatre
ACCESS NOTES
There is a wheelchair space available in the theater. Assistive listening devices are available upon request.
DESCRIPTION
Celebrated New York and Florida filmmaker Sasha Wortzel debuts her films on the West Coast in this one-night screening. Blending the archival and the imaginary, Wortzel uses film, video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how the past haunts and inextricably shapes contemporary American life. Projects examine queer place-making, geographies of resistance, and the systems that marginalize, extract, and erase communities, peoples, and histories. For This is an Address, we have gathered five shorts spanning the last decade of Wortzel’s practice including an excerpt from Wortzel’s forthcoming feature-length film RIVER OF GRASS, which brings audiences on a journey through the past, present, and precarious future of the Everglades, an imperiled and iconic American region on the verge of collapse. The films will be followed by a Q & A with Wortzel.
This is an Address, 2019, 18 min.
This is an Address I and II consider histories that have been razed, erased, and built over. These works trace the locations of past, essential, and community-building sites across New York City where LGBTQ+ people once gathered and lived—places now lost, redeveloped, and gentrified. This is an Address I follows a 1995 interview with the late trans activist Sylvia Rivera, who lived in an informal encampment—along with other queer, HIV-positive people—on the Hudson River piers; she spoke of their impending, and inevitable, displacement.
We Have Always Been on Fire, 2018, 6min
Film by Sasha Wortzel, Song by Morgan Bassichis
Set among the dunes of Fire Island, which have witnessed decades of cruising and dancing, the film blends a performance of Morgan Bassichis's song "We Have Always Been on Fire" with 1976 footage by queer nightlife documentarian Nelson Sullivan. We Have Always Been on Fire traces a queer lineage and engages with loss.
Paint it Again, 2010, 5:15 min.
A house shared for 40 years, and now the home of only one surviving partner, becomes museum-like, meticulously arranged and decorated, full of objects like artifacts that hold memories and hint at a shared life that is now gone.
Happy Birthday, Marsha!, 2018 | 15 min
A film by Tourmaline and Sasha Wortzel
Happy Birthday, Marsha! imagines transgender rights activist and performer Marsha "Pay It No Mind" Johnson in the hours before the 1969 Stonewall Riots. The film stars Independent Spirit Award Winner Mya Taylor as Johnson with cinematography by Arthur Jafa and an original score by Geo Wyeth.
Somewhere Between, 6 mins
A new short, made from footage from the artist's deep research and documentation of the Everglades. Highlighting the precarious future of this imperiled and iconic American region on the verge of collapse
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sasha Wortzel is a visual artist and filmmaker working between South Florida (Miccosukee and Seminole lands) and New York City (Lenape lands). Blending the archival and the imaginary, Wortzel uses film, video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how the past haunts and inextricably shapes contemporary American life. Projects examine queer place-making, geographies of resistance, and the systems that marginalize, extract, and erase communities, peoples, and histories.
Wortzel’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art’s DocFortnight, True/False Film Festival, DOC NYC, BAMcinemaFest, Blackstar, New Orleans Film Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Berlinale, among others. Their work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and The Kitchen, New York; and SALTS, Birsfelden. Wortzel has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Doc Society, Art Matters, and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. Wortzel has participated in residencies including Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, Abrons Arts Center, Watermill Center, New York; AIRIE (Artists in Residence in the Everglades) and Oolite Arts, Miami Beach. Wortzel’s film This is an Address (2020) is distributed by Field of Vision. Happy Birthday Marsha! (2018; co-director Tourmaline) won special mention at Outfest and is distributed by Frameline. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Miami Dade County Art in Public Places. She has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and New York Magazine. Wortzel received an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College.
SPONSORSHIP
This screening is presented and supported by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery and PICA in collaboration, with additional support from Oolite Arts (Miami Beach, Florida), and the Hollywood Theatre