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“On the occasion of Anthology’s week-long theatrical premiere run of Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati’s EXPEDITION CONTENT, which concerns filmmaker Robert Gardner’s 1961 Harvard Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea (current day West Papua), we present a short series expanding on the new film’s source materials and formal strategy. This weekend-long program features screenings of Gardner’s celebrated feature, DEAD BIRDS (1964), as well as his BALIEM VALLEY 1961 series of short films, which he left unfinished upon his death but which have now been completed (thanks to the efforts of Adele Pressman, Olivia Wyatt, Ernst Karel, and Documentary Educational Resources).
“We will also present a handful of programs placing EXPEDITION CONTENT in the context of the tradition of entirely or mostly imageless films: in particular, films that have similarly placed an imageless visual track alongside field recordings or other “found” or spoken audio tracks (such as Derek Jarman’s BLUE, Jeff Perkins’s MOVIES FOR THE BLIND, and so on). These screenings will represent a sneak preview of a larger series coming later in the winter which will more deeply explore the various kinds of ‘imageless films.’” —Anthology