Community Room: Film Screening
Thurs Feb 20
MAYA CIARROCCHI
BARBARA HAMMER

UNFORGETTABLES: Portraits of Korean Diving Women and Hasidic Rebels.
An evening with Barbara Hammer and Maya Ciarrocchi

Thursday, February 20, 2014 at 7:00pm

Diving Women of Jeju­do, 30 min., Color/Sound, 2007 by Barbara Hammer
In Korean with English Subtitles

Jeju-do is the largest of Korean islands and lies between Korea and Japan.
There, for hundreds of years, women dive without breathing apparatus to
the ocean floor and collect shellfish, octopus, and urchins that they sell.
This ancient woman’s tradition is about to die. Filmmaker Barbara Hammer
dives with the women and records the reasons behind their disappearing work
and lifestyles.

Frei, 25 min, Color/Sound, 2013 by Maya Ciarrocchi

Frei focuses on six individuals who left the ultra-Orthodox enclaves they were
raised in to enter secular life. A hybrid between documentary and video art,
the work is comprised of interviews, time-based portraiture and environmental
documentation of each individual in their current and former communities.
The men and women in this film have been living outside the community for
many years, yet whether it is their pronounced accent or the keeping of ritual
custom, traces of their former selves lie just below the surface. Frei allows
the viewer to witness a world that exists within contemporary society yet remains
removed from it, ultimately asking viewers to consider the artificiality of their
assumptions about communities, individuals, and religious identity.

Artists in attendance.

Westbeth Community Room
55 Bethune Street
New York, NY