Microscope is pleased to welcome to the gallery artists and filmmakers Derek Jenkins and Sara Sowell, who are respectively based in Hamilton, Ontario, and Milwaukee, WI, for a screening of both of their works as part of our emerging series YES. The screening will also take place online.
The eight short works in the program, including several NY premieres, were made between 2016 and 2023 and were primarily filmed on 16mm film, with others shot on Super 8mm and video. The works will be screened on site in their original formats.
In works often borne out of the interaction of 16mm film with the endless digital TV stream, and utilizing DYI experimental methods, Sowell offers sociological and ecological critiques such as on the culture of and standards proposed by America’s Next Top Model and the environmental impact of private jet personal transportation, or that created by the celluloid film her works are made with.
Jenkins’ personal and playful filmmaking — often resulting from unconventional film processes or ideas used to source sound — in these works formulates odes to obsolete newsprint machinery, a large Canadian herbarium, and everyday family moments, finding meaning and opportunity for social activism even in an unmown flower field.
Jenkins and Sowell will be in attendance and available for a Q&A following the screening.
Derek Jenkins (Canada/USA) is a motion picture photographer born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1980. His practice is handmade, personal, and documentary, with an interest in labour, ecology, and technology—specifically the reciprocal relationships between tools, materials, and ways of knowing. His films have been exhibited at festivals, museums, and galleries, including DocLisboa, Prismatic Ground, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, McMaster Museum of Art, ARKIPEL – Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Antimatter Film Festival, the8fest, FRACTO Experimental Film Encounter, Photophobia, Media City Film Festival, Experiments in Cinema, Mimesis Documentary Festival, and non-syntax Experimental Image Festival, among many others. Previously a technician at Niagara Custom Lab, he is Executive Director of Hamilton Artists Inc. and board chair at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. He lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario.
Sara Sowell is an artist and filmmaker who works with pre-existing images and expanded cinematic form. Her work has shown in international film festivals, artist-run spaces and galleries including Underscore, Milwaukee, WI; CROSSROADS, San Francisco, CA; The Nightingale, Chicago, IL; The Wexner Center, Columbus, OH; Baltic Analog Lab, Cēsis, LV; and The Film-makers’ Cooperative, New York.