Pentimenti + HPAC present:

Documentary Video Bootcamp

Please note: this class is currently full, but a waitlist is available. Contact HPAC to add your name, or receive more information.

Oct. 8 - 29th, 1 - 3 pm
Hyde Park Art Center
Suggested donation: $125

Pentimenti Productions, the film company responsible for the critically-acclaimed 2014 documentary Hairy Who and The Chicago Imagists, as well as the upcoming 3D documentary film, Cliff, about artist H.C. Westermann, is pleased to partner with the Hyde Park Art Center to host Documentary Video Bootcamp, a four session filmmaking workshop. Through illustrative examples from various films, this hands-on class will explore dynamic techniques in documentary filmmaking. Each meeting will address a different phase of the production process, including pre-production, cinematography, and editing, as well as a final session on documentary ethics.

This class will appeal to: documentarians interested in workshopping a project; artists, curators, and conservators who wish to learn best practices for using video for documentation and marketing purposes; and first-time filmmakers looking for a crash course on production essentials. All experience levels are welcome. The class will be taught primarily by Pentimenti’s editor/cinematographer Ben Kolak, and writer/producer Brian Ashby, who are both partners in Scrappers Film Group. Additional instruction will be provided by Leslie Buchbinder, Pentimenti’s Founder and Artistic Director, as well as Harrison Sherrod, the company’s Executive Director.

This October, Pentimenti Productions is pleased to collaborate with the Ed Paschke Art Center on FREAK SHOW!, a program celebrating the influence of the carnival and freak show aesthetic on the work of the artists affiliated with the Hairy Who & the Chicago Imagists, with a spotlight on Ed Paschke, whose paintings often feature lurid, carnivalesque figures adorned in costumes and masks. A similar emphasis on the outré and grotesque is also notable in the work of fellow artists Jim Nutt and Robert Lostutter, among others.

The event will feature a screening of Tod Browning’s iconoclastic 1932 Pre-code masterpiece, Freaks, which by all accounts left a major impression on Paschke. The film, which casted real sideshow performers, elicited outrage and controversy upon its release, though it later received a cult following and was chosen for preservation in the US National Film Registry.

Freaks will be proceeded by Tom Palazzolo’s short film, The Tattooed Lady of Riverview, a hallucinatory portrait of Jean Furella, an inked folk hero of Chicago’s fabled Riverview Amusement Park. Palazzolo, who was a friend and contemporary of the Imagists, will be joined in a post-screening conversation by Jason Nargis, a Paschke scholar. Please note: some imagery might not be appropriate for children. Free admission.