Minutes from the week of 6 Nov

If you stayed at home all week you missed Sarah Buccheri & Brent Coughenour's screenings at the first of this year's Nohl Fellows programs at the UWM Union Theatre on Weds, as well as the continuing exhibition for the Fellows in the visual arts at INOVA/Kenilworth; a rare screening of "the greatest failed art film," Boom!, from the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival's monthly series on Thurs; another chance to see Crossing Over and Current Tendencies II at the UWM Union Art Gallery & the Haggerty Museum of Art, respectively.

Buccheri presented a retrospective of 16mm film and various format video work dating back to 1997 and included a recent piece that documents the clean-up of a airplane crash that didn't touch the ground.  Like any good cross-section of an emerging artist's work, her program lacked in focus where it had a surplus of energy.  The subject matter ranged from the Antarctic ice-scapes to doors in portrait, the approaches were similarly varied.  Each of the pieces, none longer than 5 mins, were polished and exciting testaments, some documented and some performed, to Buccheri's kaleidoscopic vision.

Coughenour exhibited a sort of restlessness in the seven film/videos screened, all [in]completed this year, in his part of the evening.  Old footage from a trip to Russia was recut into a new piece from the perspective of the artist ten-years on, Lost was appropriated and reduced to pregnant stares, and the audio of an image on the sound strip of film was explored.  The common thread to these pieces seemed to be on improvisation with the camera, using images at the ready, including the artist's high-school yearbook.

The only remaining print of Boom!, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, was screened in all its color-faded and pink glory, missing reel and all.  The missing second reel was replaced by a dvd copy highlighting the organic and lossy nature film.  The result is delightfully playful and fitting for a film that inspires John Waters. 

If you stayed home this week, like your correspondent, you will notice that you have only 3 days remaining to see Crossing Over.  And you will have not seen Current Tendencies or The Nohl Fellows exhibit.