Cinema Reset – “Monkey”: A Journey West

Cinema Reset will present three screenings of experimental videos, art, and cinema during the New Orleans Film Festival.

“Monkey”: A Journey West

“I have to render myself to what surrounds me. I have to morph into a union with the clouds and the rocks, in order to be what I am.” –Werner Herzog

In both The East and The West, journeys west are reserved for visionary escapades. This West is the home of Enlightenment, gold rushes, spiritual transcendence, and Manifest Destiny. The Journey West can be the classic path in which the seeking is the goal—as in the Buddhist versions of the Monkey King’s journey or in Attar’s Conference of Birds. It can also be a form of longing that destroys what it seeks. It is a place made of equal parts myth and misinterpretation. The West is defined as much by what its seekers are trying to escape as what they hope to find there.

 “Monkey”: A Journey West features five short pieces of art and cinema by Jean-Gabriel Périot, Claudio Romano, Travis Diehl, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, Janne Schäfer, and Jin Kyu hn. Organized by Blake Bertuccelli. Program notes by Michael Zachary Mallow. Additional thanks to Laura Harris, Rachel Steinberg, Amanda Cassingham, Jerald White, and Sangbum Heo.

Works include:

Nijuman no borei – 200000 Phantoms, Jean-Gabriel Périot (France, 2010)

Human Beings, Claudio Romano (Italy, 2013)

WALK THRU WALLS, Travis Diehl (USA, 2013)

Passage, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli and Janne Schäfer (Italy, 2010)

ORGAN, Jin Kyu Ahn (Korea, 2012)