Events

April 18 - May 1, 2023 | In-Person Event

The Hemispheric Institute is pleased to announce the experimental film workshop, New York Citizen Cinema: Film Workshop at the Hemispheric Institute, directed by Mellon Artist in-Residence Juan Carlos Alom. Over the course of two weeks, artists and students will learn to shoot and edit 16mm films, the format Alom has worked with since the 90s. In this workshop, method and technique will be as important as experimentation and improvisation. Using the Cuban artist’s aesthetic sensibility as a guide, the workshops take error, chance, and the lack of materials as an invitation to artistic creation, which in turn gives rise to hybrid narratives and interdisciplinary connections.

There have been previous iterations of this workshop in Havana, Connecticut, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In this instance, New York, with its faces, streets, and chaotic beauty, will be the setting.

The film projects of workshop participants will be screened on May 1, 2023 at the Hemispheric Institute.

Juan Carlos Alom

Juan Carlos Alom, born in Cuba in 1964, is a filmmaker and photographer who has exhibited throughout Cuba, the Americas, Europe, and South Africa. Starting his career as a photojournalist in 1990s Cuba, Alom developed an artistic vision informed by the need for spontaneity demanded by that period of crisis. Among the films that Alom has directed are Una Harley recorre la Habana (1998, “A Harley Travels Around Havana”), Habana Solo (2000), Evidencia (2001), Iroko (2004), Diario (2009). A retrospective of his 16mm films was screened at the 2018 Los Angeles festival “Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America.” Recent group exhibitions include “Without Masks: Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art,” Audain Gallery, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver (2014), and “On the Horizon,” Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2017), among many others. Solo exhibitions have taken place at San Francisco Art Institute, Buzz Art Gallery, Miami; University of Connecticut Jorgensen Gallery; and El Apartamento Gallery, Havana. His work is held in permanent collections at Cuba’s Museum of Fine Arts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Ludwig Forum for International Art, Germany; Fototeca de Pachuca, Mexico; the Pérez Art Museum; the University of Texas’s Blanton Museum of Art; Museo Reina Sofia and Tate Modern. In 2000, Time Magazine selected Alom as one of the photographers of the millennium in Latin America.