Noah Teichner's NAVIGATORS (2022) - U.S. premiere with filmmaker in person!
A mesmerizing work of meticulous archival research, Teichner's essay film explores the unlikely crossover between the history of Hollywood and early-20th-century anarchist thought.
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Jan 28, 2024, 7:30 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA
NAVIGATORS
directed by Noah Teichner
2022, 85m, France, DCP
U.S. premiere, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Noah Teichner
doors 7:00
film 7:30
Paris-based artist Noah Teichner’s debut feature is a mesmerizing work of meticulous archival research – a Surrealist essay film that explores the unlikely crossover between the history of Hollywood and early-20th-century anarchist thought. In 1924, Buster Keaton filmed his classic The Navigator on an ocean liner that was formerly the U.S.A.T. Buford, a ship the U.S. government used in 1919 to expel hundreds of anarchists—some self-proclaimed, others alleged—to Russia, including among them prominent radicals Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Chronicling these deportees’ journey on the same vessel, Teichner uses split-screen juxtaposition of Keaton’s film with a vast array of audiovisual materials – including a soundtrack of languorous 78 rpm records from the era – to create a sensuous and hypnotic assemblage, and a hybrid documentary par excellence.
Official Selection: Cinéma du Réel, 2022
“Teichner’s success in marshaling a range of citations to track the ship’s journey from capital-h History to Hollywood [brings to] mind Jean-Luc Godard’s Film socialisme (2010)…. Both rely on a painstaking assemblage of primary sources to emphasize history as a vessel ripe for repurposing—and they both suggest convincingly that cinema is the ideal tool for the job.” – Film Comment
"With his erudite approach, Noah Teichner builds on the principle of the famous chase scene with Keaton and Kathryn McGuire on the deck of the ocean-liner. Slapstick film prints, newsreels, post cards, press clippings, and various writings (including The Bolshevik Myth by Alexander Berkman, also one of the deportees) come together and play off each other in a split screen which takes the form of both an editing table and an animated book.... Navigators’ humor and sensuousness offer a refreshing take on the essay form.” – Cahiers du Cinema
“[Teichner] interconnects archives, films from the era, logbooks, and assembles these traces to flesh out the story of missing images. Getting rid of undesirables, their stories, and their ideas through forced exile… This is what crosses oceans and also time, and resonates with the stories of today. From the passengers’ inner turmoil and the affirmation of their unshakeable ideas to their disillusionment with Soviet Russia, where the deportees finally arrived, the film infiltrates stories of disappearance and fills in the gaps to to the sound of a pounding black flag.” -Cleménce Arrivé, Cinéma du Réel