As Above, So Below: An Evening with Sarah J. Christman
Director Sarah J. Christman will be in attendance to introduce the program and hold a Q&A following the films. Afterward, please join us for a reception with complimentary refreshments!
Sarah J. Christman’s non-fiction films examine the intersection between people, technology and the natural world. Her film Dear Bill Gates won the New Visions Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival awarded her Most Promising Female Filmmaker in 2007. Christman’s films and videos have screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Antimatter, Chicago Underground Film Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Oberhausen, PDX, SXSW, and the Athens, San Francisco, and Seattle International Film Festivals, among other venues. A Philadelphia native, Sarah received an MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University and a BA from Oberlin. She currently lives in New York City, where she is an Assistant Professor in the film department at Brooklyn College.
As Above, So Below
dir. Sarah Christman, USA, 2012, 16mm, color, 50 min.
For thousands of years, alchemists toiled to synthesize rare substances and universal cures, to manipulate the speed of natural processes. Today, a woman has her husband’s ashes transformed into a memorial diamond. Precious metals are extracted from obsolete electronics. What was once the world’s largest landfill– now also the final resting place of the World Trade Center’s remains– is being converted into a public park. The film intimately examines various transmutations, both microscopic and massive, that reshape matter and its meanings. What separates the permanent from the impermanent, the things we discard from those we preserve?
Broad Channel
dir. Sarah Christman, USA, 2010, 16mm, color, 14 min.
Over the course of four seasons, the nuances of everyday activity are examined along one narrow stretch of public shoreline in New York City’s Jamaica Bay. Moments of recurrence and change cycle through an ecosystem rooted in migration.
Dear Bill Gates
dir. Sarah Christman, USA, 2006, 16mm, color, 17 min.
A simple correspondence evolves into a poetic visual essay exploring the ownership of our visual history and culture. Combining original and archival film, video and images from the internet, Dear Bill Gates draws unexpected connections among mining, memory and Microsoft. Original music by Adam Granduciel.
