Film screening: Persistence

Daniel Eisenberg
Persistence (1997)

Date: March 3, 2022
Time: 7 pm CST
Location: Neatby-Timlin Theatre (Arts 241)
Cost: Free and open to the public
With introduction and closing remarks by Daniel Eisenberg

As part of the exhibition material + time, currently on view at the University of Saskatchewan Kenderdine Art Gallery, three films that expand on themes of temporality, materiality and built form will be presented. Each work investigates complex and layered accounts of historical moments and worldviews, often bringing societal ambitions for progress into question, as suggested in a narrative sequence from Daniel Eisenberg’s Persistence: “things have become better than they were a year ago, though not much. Or, has one simply grown used to the rubble?”

All screenings are free of charge to the public. Guests must comply with University of Saskatchewan COVID-19 protocols.

Directions to the University of Saskatchewan Neatby-Timlin Theatre can be found here.

PERSISTENCE (1997)
RUNTIME: 81 MINUTES

“Persistence was shot in 1991-1992 in Berlin and edited along with films shot by U.S. Signal Corps cameramen in 1945-1946 that were obtained from Department of Defense archives. Interspersed through these materials are filmic quotations from Rossellini's Germany: Year Zero, also shot in 1946.

“Persistence is a meditation on the time just after a great historical event, about what is common to moments such as these, about the continuous and discontinuous threads of history. The film is also about various kinds of cinematic observation: personal, documentary, fictional; and our attachment to these traditional modes of observation that necessarily shape our view of events."

- From "Notes for Persistence," written by Daniel Eisenberg on occasion of the Berlin Film Festival, 1997.

Daniel Eisenberg’s films and videos challenge the conventions of non-fiction film representation and production. Over the last three decades, he has forged a unique body of films that have become internationally recognized for expanding the boundaries between traditions of the personal avant-garde film and historical documentary. His films have been screened throughout Europe, Asia, and North America with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Musée du Cinema, Brussels, De Unie, Rotterdam, and Kino Arsenal, Berlin. Eisenberg lives and works in Chicago and is a professor in the departments of Film/Video/New Media/Animation, and Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

(Biography courtesy of Daniel Eisenberg)

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