The Illuminated Space: Book Launch with Screenings, Readings & Conversation
Sliding scale admission: $5–25.
Please pay what you can; proceeds support Northwest Film Forum during our closure!
• • HOW TO PARTICIPATE VIRTUALLY • •
- Purchase your sliding scale ticket through Brown Paper Tickets.
- Registrants will receive an email from NWFF at least 1 hour before showtime with information on how to tune in to the live program. (Don’t see it? Check your spam filter.)
- If you encounter any issues tuning in, please contact rana@nwfilmforum.org for a quick follow-up. (But please, check your spam first!)
Visiting Artist
** This live, one-time event is co-presented by The 3rd Thing, MicroActs, and Three Dollar Bill Cinema; the program includes screenings of Marilyn Freeman’s short films, readings, and a discussion moderated by Elliat Graney-Saucke. Full details below! **
About
This live event features contemplative filmmaker Marilyn Freeman who will share a selection of their short, evocative films interspersed with brief readings from their new book, The Illuminated Space (The 3rd Thing, 2020). Praised by filmmakers, film theorists and leaders in the contemplative practice community, Freeman’s film work and writing invites us, as audiences and readers, into deep encounters with the world and with ourselves. Moderated by fellow filmmaker Elliat Graney-Saucke, the evening’s program will include an introduction and conversation, allowing ample time for audience interaction with the artist.
“In this startlingly beautiful and evocative work combining essay, poetry and prayer-like reflection, Marilyn Freeman… urges us to wake up, to learn to love everything in the loving of one thing. I felt as though I was hearing the voice of a great mystic calling to me through time, through distance, through fog, speaking to me personally.” Judith Valente, Author of How to Live and The Art of Pausing
“If you are unfamiliar with the work of Marilyn Freeman, you must get acquainted. These films have been transformative for me in the deep spiritual way that I have encountered other artists like Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, and bell hooks.” Gabriel Molinaro, Songwriter/Musician, Curator & Pastor of Sanctuary Church Seattle
Co-presented by:
About the book:
The Illuminated Space: A Personal Theory & Contemplative Practice of Media Art
In this many-faceted, vibrant gem, author Marilyn Freeman offers up a contemplative practice of dowsing for and creating “opportune moments” of insight and healing in media art. With humor and humility, Freeman reveals an innovative process developed over years of art-making, study and personal searching—a process of waking up again and again to the extraordinary possibilities hidden in everyday existence. Freeman introduces a theory of “evocative” practice as an alternative to the conventions of narrative and non-fiction filmmaking—a risky and rigorous engagement with form that invites the audience to participate in the creation of meaning. Freeman’s inquiry goes far deeper than just a critical study of audio/visual media—into the human heart, with its shimmering capacity for honest and compassionate reckoning. Transgressing disciplinary boundaries and trading authority for authentic inquiry, Freeman takes us with them on a foray into time-based art that leaps and wanders from movie theaters to museums to Instagram in search of the “illuminated spaces” where we encounter ourselves and each other. (from the publisher, The 3rd Thing)
“In a lyrical, devoutly modest and vibrantly alive voice, Freeman awakens us to numinous possibilities that await both in art and in the whole wide world around us … a book of uncommon grace.” – Bill Nichols, author of numerous film books including Introduction to Documentary, 3rd ed.
“The Illuminated Space is a lyrical poetic tribute to queer independent and experimental film.” – Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Filmmaker, Author & Professor of Film, University of Nebraska
“By staging propitious encounters with the past and the present, the living world and inspiring films, Marilyn Freeman discloses the infinite potential of a dialectical method that seeks its own illuminated space in between sounds and images, trauma and intimacy, lyricism and playfulness, time and consciousness.” – Laura Rascaroli, author of The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and The Essay Film and How the Essay Film Thinks
📚 Buy the book! 📚
Get a 20% discount with the publisher’s Transfer of Power sale now through inauguration day, January 20th. And, with every sale, the publisher donates 20% to The Okra Project — an organization by and for trans artists of color.
Film program:
Mercy
(Marilyn Freeman, 2016, 5 min)
A road trip unexpectedly leads American filmmaker Marilyn Freeman to the origins of racism in this contemplative video essay on reckoning with the religious roots of white supremacy.
Loss and Love
(2019, 4 min)
A dream, the blurring edges of reality, a sibling’s passing and an owl coalesce in this lyrical filmic essay pondering the mystery of love.
All the Courtesy of Love
(2020, 5.5 min)
Laced with mystical bits from Rumi and St. Benedict, this fragmentary, playful, reflection on hospitality is paired visually with an enduring shot through the open doorways of an empty farmers’ market in mid-winter.
How Long Will You Sleep
(2019, 5.5 min)
About consciousness and arousing one’s soul through the everyday, this spacious poetic film is inspired by a troubled meditation on a medieval saint.
On Opening
(2020, 3.5 min)
With that dreaminess of a slow ride through town as the sun rises, the miseries of our moment give way to what might be possible in this fleeting meditation on the act of imagining.
I love what you said to me
(2019, 5 min)
Time and space are upended in a visual diptych of an otherwise ordinary coastal sunset in this intimate contemplation on how the moment of loving one thing connects us to every moment we have loved any thing.
About Marilyn Freeman
Media Artist | Writer | Queer | Contemplative
http://marilynfreeman.com
About Elliat Graney-Saucke
Filmmaker | Educator | Organizer
https://elliat-creative.com | https://contrastvisionproductions.com