Public Art Documentary Film Series

Discover inspiring and thought provoking cinema at the 2013 Palm Desert Public Art Documentary Film Series. Beginning in January, the public is invited to a fifth season of free screenings of public art-themed documentaries presented by the City’s Public Art Department and the University of California, Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center. Each screening will include a featured speaker who will discuss that night’s film.  

THE LOST BIRD PROJECT

Series Schedule

All films screen the third Thursday of the month, January through April, at 6 p.m. in the auditorium at UCR Palm Desert, 75080 Frank Sinatra Drive. Admission is free, but reservations are recommended. For more information, or to make a reservation, please call 760-837-1663.

Series Schedule:

January 17 – THE LOST BIRD PROJECT
Gone and nearly forgotten, the Labrador Duck, Great Auk, Heath Hen, Carolina Parakeet and Passenger Pigeon have left a hole in the American landscape and in our collective memory.  Moved by their stories, sculptor Todd McGrain sets out to bring their vanished forms back into the world by permanently placing his elegant, evocative bronze memorials at the location of each bird’s demise.  The Lost Bird Project follows McGrain's attempts, in the face of bewilderment and bureaucracy, to find homes for the sculptures in the wild.  The film will be followed by a Q & A with the film’s co-producer and cinematographer Scott Anger.

February 21 – DOWNSIDE UP
How does a dying working class town end up betting its future on art? With 80% of its downtown buildings closed, North Adams, Massachusetts united blue-collar locals with art world luminaries to transform economic failure into America's largest center for contemporary art, MASS MoCA. A film by North Adams native Nancy Kelly, DOWNSIDE UP is about the tentative, dangerous notion of hope in a city widely viewed as hopeless.  The film will be followed by a Q&A with Bill Schinsky, founder and director of the Coachella Valley Art Center.

March 21 – WASTE LAND
Filmed over nearly three years, Academy Award nominated WASTE LAND follows artist Vik Muniz from Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho in Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs and collaborates with an eclectic band of “catadores” - self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. He collaborates with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage while revealing both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives.  The film will be followed by a Q&A with Karen Riley, S.C.R.A.P. Gallery Executive Director and Lisa Soccio, Director, Walter N. Marks Center for the Arts Assistant Professor of Art History College of the Desert.

April 18 – MAYNARD DIXON:  ART AND SPIRIT
This film reveals the rich canvas of the artist’s life through interviews with his family, friends, and members of the art community. Dixon’s sons, Daniel and John, share intimate recollections of their parent’s complex relationship and his friends, artists Ray Strong and Milford Zornes, recall his unique character. The film is enriched with more than four-hundred Dixon paintings and drawings, portraits of Dixon, family photographs and rare audio by his second wife, celebrated photographer, Dorothea Lange.  The film will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s writer, producer, and director Jayne McKay.  This film is being shown in conjunction with Desertscapes 2013.  For more information on events throughout the month of April based on historic and contemporary plein air artwork in the Coachella Valley visit www.Desertscapes.net.

Attending the Event

Film screenings are free, but reservations are recommended.  To make a reservation visit http://palmdesert.ucr.edu/programs/ArtDoc13.html. For questions or more information, please call 760-837-1663.