San Jose Museum of Art Presents

Creative Minds: Dante's Inferno Film Screening and Artist Q&A

When
Sat Jul 17, 2010
Where
Camera 12
Time
12 p.m.
Cost
$6 - $10
Tags
Arts, Movies, Galleries

Description

The San Jose Museum of Art will present a special screening of Dante’s Inferno (2007, 88 minutes) on Saturday, July 17, at 12 p.m., at Camera 12 Cinema, 201 South 2nd Street, San Jose. The program, part of the San Jose Museum of Art’s “Creative Minds” series, will include a Q&A session with artist Sandow Birk, writer and producer of the film. The feature length movie was made with hand-drawn paper puppets in the tradition of “Toy Theatre,” a European style of puppetry from the 1700s. Tickets are $10 ($6 for Museum members), which includes admission to the Museum on July 17. Tickets are available at artsopolis.com.

Directed by Sean Meredith, Dante’s Inferno features the voices of Dermot Mulroney as Dante and James Cromwell as Virgil. The film is based on Birk’s illustrated translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which set the 14th-century classic in contemporary urban America. The film has won numerous awards including Best Feature Film at the 2007 Lausanne Underground Film Festival, Staff Award for Best Feature Film at the San Francisco Indie Fest, and the Spirit of Underground Award at the Boston Underground Film Festival.

Four large-scale paintings by Birk—San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, CA (2000), Inferno (2003), Purgatorio (2003), and Paradiso (2004)--are on view in the exhibition Real and HyperReal through August 1. Based in Los Angeles, Birk is a well traveled graduate of the Otis/Parson's Art Institute. Frequently developed as expansive, multi-media projects, his works have dealt with contemporary life in its entirety. With an emphasis on social issues, frequent themes of his past work have included inner city violence, graffiti, political issues, travel, war, and prisons, as well as surfing and skateboarding. He was a recipient of an NEA International Travel Grant to Mexico City in 1995 to study mural painting, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, and a Fulbright Fellowship for painting to Rio de Janeiro for 1997. In 1999 he was awarded a Getty Fellowship for painting, followed by a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Fellowship in 2001. In 2007 he was an artist in residence at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2008.

SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART
The San Jose Museum of Art is located at 110 South Market Street in downtown San Jose, California. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 408-271-2787 or visit http://www.SanJoseMuseumofArt.org.

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Location

  1. Camera 12
    201 S 2nd St, San Jose, CA