Two Films by Thomas Comerford
Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 7:30pm
177 Livingston Street, Brooklyn

The Indian Boundary Line, 16mm/8mm/S8mm on digital betacam, 2010, 41 mins
Over the last eight years, Chicago musician and filmmaker Thomas Comerford has been at work on a series of quietly-observed films that contemplate the entwined social, political, and environmental histories of Chicago (Figures in the Landscape, 2002; Land Marked/Marquette, 2005). The Indian Boundary Line (2010) follows a road in Chicago, Rogers Avenue, that traces the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis boundary between the United States and “Indian Territory.” In doing so, it examines the collision between the vernacular landscape, with its storefronts, short-cut footpaths and picnic tables, and the symbolic one, replete with historical markers, statues, and fences. Through its observations and audio-visual juxtapositions, The Indian Boundary Line meditates on a span of land in Chicago about 12 miles long, but suggests how this land and its history are an index for the shifting inhabitants, relationships, boundaries and ideas of landscape -- as well as the consequences -- which have accompanied the transformation of the “New World.”

Land Marked Marquette, 16mm, 2005, 23 mins
A series of clear, concisely observed landscape studies of sites and monuments in Chicago connected to 17th century exploration by Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette. In examining the monuments to Marquette, the "stories" the monuments tell, and the relationship of the monuments to their surroundings, the film deploys different audio-visual and stylistic tactics, allowing for the contemplation of both historical representation and the transformation of the land in the passage of time.

Followed by a conversation with Comerford.

Tickets - $7, available at door